The Battle of Cieneguilla

I found this article while searching for Taos County Genealogy Links:

In 1856, a military court cleared U.S. Dragoon Lt. John Davidson of any wrongdoing two years earlier in the Battle of Cieneguilla above Embudo — despite testimony that he had taken a “war whoop” as a threat and needlessly led his troops into a fatal fight.

During the short battle in the early spring of 1854, about 60 U.S. Dragoons got trapped in a canyon and, before retreating, suffered their worst defeat — 22 dead, 22 wounded — in the campaign against American Indian tribes, in this case the Jicarilla Apache.

Ironically, the Jicarilla victory only served to intensify the U.S. Army’s efforts to run American Indians off their homelands and sequester them on reservations.

For more information about the article "Archaeologists fill in some blanks of Battle of Cieneguilla" click on this link.