A Chihenne leader
Victorio was a leader of the Chihenne, also called the Warm Springs Apache, a band of the Chiricahua Apache whose homeland lay in the mountains and river valleys of what is now southwestern New Mexico. His birth date is unknown; sources typically place it in the 1820s or thereabouts, and he was an older man when he led his best-known campaign. Like Mangas Coloradas before him, he led through reputation, not through formal rule.
The word “brave” in the title is an outsider’s compliment that tells little. What is better documented is what he asked for: to remain with his people in the country where they had lived for generations.
Before the war
Earlier in his life, Victorio is generally described as having worked with Mangas Coloradas and with other Chihenne leaders in the years of conflict in the 1850s and 1860s. After 1863, Chihenne leadership was shared among several men. In the early 1870s, officials gradually accepted the idea of a reservation near the warm springs country, and the Warm Springs reservation was established in 1874. For a few years Victorio’s people lived there with periodic rations, farming and visits from agents.
Removal and flight
In 1876 and 1877, federal policy turned toward concentrating Apache groups at San Carlos in Arizona. In 1877, several hundred Chihenne were moved there from Ojo Caliente. The place was hot and low, unfamiliar to people from the mountains of New Mexico, and many were ill. The move itself is the subject of a separate account of the Warm Springs reservation question.
Victorio and others left San Carlos in September 1877. Over the next two years the pattern of flight and return repeated: he gave himself up, was sent back toward Warm Springs, then moved to the Mescalero reservation, and then left again. By 1879, he had reportedly come to fear arrest over earlier accusations and left for the last time. The details of these years vary between sources, so dates here should be taken as approximate.
The 1879 to 1880 campaign
From the fall of 1879, Victorio led a mixed group of Chihenne, Mescalero and others, including women and children, across a large area from southern New Mexico through west Texas and into Chihuahua. Army units, including regiments of Black soldiers sometimes called Buffalo Soldiers, as well as Texas Rangers and Mexican forces, pursued them. One often-discussed engagement took place in the Hembrillo Basin in New Mexico in 1880.
The campaign cost lives among soldiers, settlers, Apache people and Mexican civilians. The Apache fighters moved quickly and carefully, using their knowledge of the land, but they were often short of ammunition, water and food. Because most written accounts come from the military side, there are real gaps about how Victorio’s group decided where to go and why.
Tres Castillos
In October 1880, Victorio and his followers were in the Tres Castillos area of Chihuahua. Mexican forces under Colonel Joaquin Terrazas attacked them. Victorio was killed, along with dozens of others, while many women and children were taken captive. The commonly cited figures are not fully consistent between sources. Some Apache accounts say that he died by his own hand; other accounts credit the Mexican troops. Historians treat the question as unresolved.
Several Chihenne survivors, including the elderly leader Nana, continued to resist after the defeat. Lozen, Victorio’s sister, is remembered in Apache and other accounts as a fighter and a woman of spiritual gifts.
Remembering Victorio
Victorio is often described in army and newspaper accounts as a menace, and in some later writing as a doomed hero. Neither captures the man or his reasons. Many historians emphasize the reservation policy that treated Warm Springs as dispensable. His campaign is part of the larger Apache Wars chronology, but its roots lie in a specific refusal to leave a homeland.
Chihenne descendants are among the Chiricahua communities today, including the Fort Sill Apache Tribe and the Mescalero Apache Tribe. For current information, consult the nations’ own sources.