4 June 1854; Trinidad, Colorado: By the spring of 1854, the army had not yet subdued all the Jicarilla Apaches. Capt. James H. Carleton of the 1st Dragoons led 100 of his own men and James Quinn's battalion of irregulars on a sweep to the north. They went to Fort Massachusetts, a post of 85 miles north of Taos, midway up the San Luis Valley on the slopes of Sierra Blanca Peak. There, the force found a trail heading southeast, past the Spanish Peaks and up into the Raton Mountains. With Kit Carson guiding, they found the Apache camp in a basin on the east side of treeless Fisher's Peak, about six miles south of present-day Trinidad, Colorado.
Carleton held his troops back in the brush and off the trail until they slowly worked into position. At 2 p.m. on 4 June, they fanned down the mountainside in a surprise attack. The startled Apaches scattered immediately. The soldiers destroyed 22 lodges and captured 38 ponies, but the Apaches fled so fast, Carleton's men killed only 3 of them. The soldiers suffered no casualties.
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