At about 8:30 on the morning of December 19, 1885, Lieutenant Samuel Fountain’s cavalry column climbed a hill between Big Dry Creek and Little Dry Creek. Apache fighters fired into it from the west and from its left front, at close range. Assistant Surgeon T. J. C. Maddox and three enlisted men were killed; Blacksmith Collins died of his wounds soon afterward. Lieutenant De Rosey Cabell and two enlisted men were wounded. Fountain’s Navajo scouts climbed toward the attackers, joined by soldiers who had found cover below. The Apache party withdrew on foot through a rocky canyon. Its leader, called Josanie in a Fort Huachuca Museum history that reproduces Fountain’s report, escaped.
The action is sometimes folded into the story of Geronimo’s final campaign. That larger campaign explains why soldiers were patrolling southwestern New Mexico, but Geronimo is not identified as the commander at Little Dry Creek. The Army museum account calls the leader Josanie, also called Ulzanna. This article follows the movement of his party, the decisions inside Fountain’s column, and the result of the ambush. A regional site account places the fight near Pleasanton, in the upper Gila region of present Catron County, close to the Grant County border. In 1885 the ground lay in Socorro County; Catron County was created from part of Socorro in 1921. The engagement therefore belongs to the connected frontier surrounding Grant County without being mislabeled as a fight in today’s Grant County. It closes the six battle chapters in the Grant County Apache history series, after the Gavilan Canyon battle of 1881.
The 1885 campaign reached the Gila country
By 1885, the Apache wars in the Southwest had changed from the large movements of Victorio’s campaign to a difficult pursuit of smaller groups. People who had left the San Carlos reservation moved through mountain and desert routes across New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico. Soldiers at posts and on patrol tried to protect settlements, follow tracks, prevent raids, and intercept crossings. The National Park Service account of the Apache wars and Geronimo sets out the wider sequence. It also makes clear that the final surrender in 1886 led to imprisonment and removal of Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apache people, including people who had not fought. The end of a military campaign was the beginning of a long exile for families.
Josanie’s small party was one part of that 1885–86 crisis. The Fort Huachuca Museum study describes roughly ten warriors moving through New Mexico in November and December. It identifies Josanie as Chihuahua’s brother and says he was sometimes called Ulzanna. Spellings of Apache names varied in Army papers and later histories. Using both names helps readers recognize the same campaign, but the ambush should be attributed to the party the contemporary patrol was trying to find, not casually reassigned to another well-known leader.
The scale of this party explains some of the Army’s trouble. Ten mounted fighters could disappear along routes a larger column could only follow slowly. They could travel at night, scatter when pressed, and replace lost horses through raids. Small numbers did not mean small consequences. Families at isolated ranches and at Apache communities alike could suffer sudden attacks. Equally, reports of a party’s strength and losses could be mistaken when soldiers had seen only tracks or fired in darkness. Fountain’s encounter on December 19 gives unusually precise evidence because the officer wrote a detailed report two days later.
Josanie’s route alarmed more than one community
The museum’s account follows Josanie’s group through the Florida Mountains, the White Mountain Apache reservation, and the country west of the Mogollons. Its account says the party killed White Mountain Apache people and took captives there. The violence matters to this story because the group was not simply fighting U.S. soldiers or settlers. Other Apache communities faced danger too. Crook interpreted the attack as an attempt to punish people who remained on the reservation and intimidate others into leaving, according to the museum history. That is the general’s interpretation, not a surviving statement from Josanie explaining his own purpose.
The Fort Sill Apache Tribe’s history places the late campaigns within repeated confinement, flight, and eventual captivity. Tribal history does not excuse an attack on another Apache settlement or on a ranch. It helps explain why a short military account cannot stand alone as the entire history of Apache communities. The people attacked at White Mountain, the people who followed Josanie, and the people later imprisoned after surrender did not all make the same choices. Collapsing them into one anonymous side would conceal those differences.
For communities around Silver City, the upper Gila, and the New Mexico–Arizona route, the party’s mobility made each report urgent. A patrol sent to one location might receive news that the raiders had crossed another trail. The ranch and creek names in the Little Dry Creek story mark real working and travel places, not just labels for a battle map. People kept stock there, used springs and roads, and relied on the warning network between ranches and posts. Josanie’s group moved through that network faster than official information could always follow.
Fountain had already met the party in December
Lieutenant Fountain and his men encountered the group before Little Dry Creek. The Fort Huachuca study places a clash near Lillie’s Ranch on Clear Creek on December 9. Fountain’s command captured horses, a mule, blankets, and supplies. He thought some of the fighters might have been killed or wounded in the darkness. The museum’s later reconstruction says that belief was mistaken. The Apache fighters escaped, found new mounts, and struck Lillie’s Ranch the following day, killing its owner and a ranch hand.
The sequence changed the pursuit. Captured animals and supplies could look like a substantial victory in a short dispatch. They did not stop the party. Josanie’s fighters could abandon material when threatened, then raid for fresh horses. A cavalry column, meanwhile, needed its own animals, food, and wagons to continue. The December 9 action thus left Fountain with a trail and an adversary that had demonstrated its ability to slip away and replenish itself. By December 19 he was still searching.
Reports from that earlier contact also warned of uncertainty. Fountain estimated the size of the group from what he believed he had seen and from news of captives taken at White Mountain. Darkness, scattered movement, and civilian reports all complicated a head count. In the final battle, the source does not establish a precise number of Apache fighters on the hill. The roughly ten warriors described in the campaign study provide the scale of Josanie’s party, not a verified census of everyone who fired on Fountain at 8:30 that morning.
The patrol camped at Siggins Ranch
Fountain’s December 21 after-action report, printed by the Fort Huachuca Museum, gives the patrol’s composition and itinerary. He left camp on December 18 with nineteen men of Troop C, Eighth Cavalry; a civilian guide; ten Navajo scouts; Assistant Surgeon Maddox; Lieutenant Cabell; and ten days of rations in a six-mule wagon. After traveling to Siggins Ranch on Dry Creek, he reorganized the load. He put five days of food on pack animals, using his forge-cart mules and ponies captured earlier in the pursuit.
That preparation matters to the fight. A mobile detachment could move beyond its wagon, but someone had to guard the team and remaining supplies. The following morning Fountain left a sergeant and two men at camp. A patrol’s head count in an order or report was therefore not necessarily the number of rifles entering the ambush. The surgeon, scouts, guide, and two officers had distinct work; the split between moving column and camp guard affected who could respond in the first minutes.
Siggins Ranch was more than a name in the officer’s itinerary. It was where the force left its wagon and from which help later rode. Ranch hands knew trails that a visiting soldier might not. When the shooting began, a ranch employee named Elliot joined men riding toward the attackers’ possible retreat. The encounter was fought by uniformed soldiers and scouts, but civilians helped locate and react to it. The dependence ran both ways: the patrol sought news and a base at a ranch; the ranch depended on the military for warning and protection during a violent campaign.
The column started before its scouts were in front
Fountain recorded the start of the march at 8:05 on December 19 and the first shots about twenty-five minutes later. His report is unusually frank about the column’s arrangement. Cabell and Maddox had fresh horses and moved at a rapid walk near the front. The Navajo scouts, instead of screening the lead and flanks, were left behind. Fountain had stayed to inspect the camp and was riding up toward the head when the ambush began. He wrote that the command had been too confident as it started.
This is not proof that any one person caused the attack. Josanie’s fighters had selected a position; even a carefully screened advance might have met fire. It does show a tactical weakness acknowledged by the officer who survived. A scout ahead of a mounted column might notice fresh signs, movement, or a suspicious rise before the main body entered range. Scouts behind the column could still respond, as these men did, but they could not prevent the front ranks from reaching the hill first.
The detail also changes how Navajo scouts appear in the story. They were not a decorative addition to a cavalry unit or anonymous helpers who followed soldiers’ commands without independent judgment. They had the ability to read terrain and move quickly. Fountain’s own account credits their response as central to turning the immediate fight. To understand the ambush one must follow where the scouts were before the volley, what they did afterward, and how soldiers joined them.
Fire came from two directions at close range
The column was moving up the hill dividing Big Dry Creek and Little Dry Creek when Apache fighters opened fire. Fountain put the shooting at within forty yards, from the crest to the right or west and from the left front. Those directions are more useful than a vague statement that the patrol entered a canyon. They show a mounted column caught on a slope by fire from both its flank and front. The road cut along the hillside offered some protection to a person who dismounted, but the position could not be held once Fountain recognized the second line of fire.
The first volley struck men and animals. The Fort Huachuca study says Maddox was hit immediately and died after a second shot. The loss of the surgeon removed the one person in the party assigned to care for the injured just as the patrol needed him most. Others had to fight, move casualties, and later bring them back to camp. A horse killed under guide McKinney threw him into the same immediate danger as mounted soldiers. Close fire and a narrow route made a quick retreat on horseback difficult.
We do not have an Apache after-action report saying why the party chose that exact rise. The position’s effect can still be described. A column advancing uphill exposed its lead to a crest and a second angle of fire. The road cut gave limited cover only after men got off their mounts. Nearby ravines offered alternate routes up the slope, but using them required quick recognition under fire. The terrain made the first minutes decisive without dictating a single inevitable outcome.
Fountain rallied men at the road cut
Fountain dismounted behind the column and gathered some soldiers beside the bank formed by the road cut. They fired toward the attackers. From there he realized that shots also came from the left front and that the men could not safely remain in place. He moved them back to a small ravine leading toward the hill that had been on their right. Cabell and two more men joined him. The group moved up the ravine and reached the upper ground where the Navajo scouts were already engaged.
The movement is the tactical center of the battle. Fountain did not simply order a charge from the bottom. He first used the shelter the road provided, then withdrew from a position exposed to crossing fire, then took a ravine to contest the high ground. That choice helped the survivors break out of the trapped road position. It also meant leaving the immediate location of the first casualties until the fire could be checked. A commander facing an ambush could not treat aid and defense as separate, easy tasks. He had to stop the shooting enough to reach the wounded.
Cabell’s presence matters because his own wound appears later in the report. The officer remained part of the action while the group found a route uphill; Fountain lists him among the slightly wounded. The record does not specify when every wound was received, so a precise moment should not be invented. What it does establish is that both lieutenants survived the first fire and joined the defense while several men at the head of the column did not.
The Navajo scouts climbed first
According to Fountain, the Navajo scouts reacted at once when the shots began. They turned away from the exposed road, entered the first ravine, tied their horses, and climbed on foot. They reached the top before Fountain’s group and opened fire. When the soldiers arrived, both groups pressed the Apache fighters until they withdrew. Fountain gave the scouts explicit praise in his report. His account makes their actions a cause of the patrol’s survival rather than an incidental footnote to an officer’s decision.
The scouts’ response was fast because they recognized what the ground required. Mounted movement on the road left people under fire. A ravine could screen an approach to the crest, and men on foot could use it better than a group trying to keep horses together. We know the path and sequence from Fountain’s testimony, not from individual Navajo scouts’ surviving statements in this source. Their names are absent from the printed report. That is a limit of the record, but their role is documented clearly enough to describe without treating them as an unnamed mass.
Navajo participation also complicates a simplified account of a war between an undifferentiated “Army” and an undifferentiated “Indian” side. Indigenous men fought on both sides of the Little Dry Creek engagement. Their communities had different histories and immediate interests. Fountain’s ten scouts chose to serve in this patrol; Josanie’s Apache fighters attacked it. The distinction matters when explaining who acted on the hill and why a single label cannot account for the battle.
Elliot rode toward the retreat
Fountain sent a mounted man back to Siggins Ranch with news of the attack. Elliot, who worked there, and four men rode a trail west of the road. Fountain thought that route might bring them behind the Apache position or across a retreat. Josanie’s people did withdraw that way, but Elliot’s small group arrived just after the last fighters disappeared down a steep, rocky canyon. The report says the Apache party was on foot when it escaped this immediate contact.
That near interception shows how quickly the balance changed after the first volley. The attackers had chosen the terrain and hit the column hard. The scouts’ climb and the soldiers’ advance forced them away from the crest. A second group almost met them on their retreat. Yet almost was not capture. The party escaped into broken ground while Fountain’s men still faced dead and wounded companions on the road. The tactical success of pushing the attackers off the hill did not erase the ambush’s severe cost or end the pursuit.
The local guide McKinney also remained in the fight. Fountain wrote that his horse was shot from under him at the head of the column and that he reached the lieutenant and continued to help. As with Elliot, the episode shows a civilian role distinct from the cowboys in the Gavilan Canyon fight. McKinney was the patrol’s guide and remained with it when his horse fell. Elliot came from the ranch after word reached camp. Both were involved, but neither should be mistaken for an enlisted soldier or one of the Navajo scouts.
Five men died and three were wounded
Fountain’s casualty list names Assistant Surgeon T. J. C. Maddox and Privates Gibson, Hutton, and McMillan as dead at the position. Blacksmith Collins was mortally wounded and died about an hour and a half later. Lieutenant Cabell, Corporal McFarland, and Trumpeter Hirchfeld were slightly wounded. The report also lists three horses killed, four horses and one mule wounded, and another horse that later died. The human losses are not simply an abstract count of five. Maddox had been the medical officer; the enlisted men and blacksmith had particular work in the detachment. Their deaths weakened a force that still had to move and care for survivors.
The museum account includes Fountain’s recollection of speaking with Collins as he died. The detail humanizes a short entry in a casualty table. Collins survived the first minutes, knew his wound was grave, and asked Fountain to pray. It is not necessary to turn the scene into invented dialogue or a dramatized last stand. The documented exchange, the time before his death, and the officer’s report are enough to make clear what the battle cost one member of the troop.
The museum history says Josanie’s party withdrew without reported casualties. That is an account of the known result, not proof that no Apache fighter was struck anywhere in the encounter. Fountain’s report does not provide a verified list of Apache dead or wounded. It describes the group leaving the crest and escaping. A claim that all ten fighters were unharmed would be more certain than the evidence permits; a claim that several were killed would be unsupported. The honest result is that the Apache party was not captured and no losses on its side were confirmed in this source.
The survivors brought the dead back to camp
Once the firing ended, Fountain moved the dead and wounded to Siggins Ranch. The evacuation took time. At 1:30 that afternoon he sent Elliot and four men to Mule Springs with a warning. That action shows the patrol still had a responsibility beyond its own casualties: Josanie’s group had escaped and might threaten another ranch or traveler. Even after an ambush, the command remained part of a warning chain that could carry news faster than a fresh attack.
Moving casualties was difficult in a mounted patrol that had left its larger wagon at camp. Men needed to bring bodies and wounded companions down from exposed ground, find animals or conveyances, and guard against another attack. The report does not inventory every stretcher or describe every trip, so the article does not invent one. It gives the concrete facts: the dead and wounded were taken back to the ranch camp, the work consumed much of the day, and a warning went out after the evacuation was underway.
Fountain’s final assessment praised his men, the Navajo scouts, and McKinney. It also criticized the column’s confidence and the failure to place scouts ahead at the start. Both judgments can stand. People can respond skillfully to a surprise even when the approach left them exposed. The report is valuable precisely because it includes the officer’s description of his own tactical error along with his account of the counterattack. That combination makes Little Dry Creek easier to understand than a battle remembered only through a medal citation or a brief casualty notice.
Josanie escaped toward Mexico
The Fort Huachuca Museum study follows the party after December 19. It says Josanie’s fighters obtained fresh horses and, by Christmas, were moving toward Mexico. Cavalry and Navajo scouts continued the pursuit, but the group eluded them. The escape completes the immediate story: an ambush killed five members of Fountain’s command, the survivors forced the attackers from the hill, and the attackers left the region without being caught at Little Dry Creek.
Military language can make that result sound paradoxical. Fountain’s men occupied the ground after the shooting, but his patrol had suffered heavy losses. Josanie’s fighters abandoned their ambush position, but they retained the freedom to move. For nearby residents, the fact that the party remained at large mattered more than which side held the hill an hour after the first volley. For the families of the dead, the pursuit’s continuation could not undo the cost. For Apache families drawn into the broader 1886 surrender, the campaign’s later outcome would bring removal far beyond this one engagement.
The study offers estimates of the party’s total damage over its extended raid. Such campaign totals combine incidents across a large area and need care when read beside a particular battle. The five deaths on December 19 are directly supported by Fountain’s report. They should not be silently added to uncertain figures or treated as the only lives lost in the wider violence. Keeping the scopes separate makes the battle’s evidence clearer.
The battle’s location needs a present-day distinction
Fountain identified the hill by the two creeks it divided. A regional site account places it near Pleasanton; Fountain’s report itself does not provide a modern survey coordinate or establish a public trailhead. A reader should not use this article as a route guide to a specific bank or ridge. Creek names can recur, channels can shift, and old ranch or road locations can be hard to match to a modern map.
The county line also changed after the event. Present Catron County was formed from Socorro County in 1921, according to a New Mexico Legislature historical memorial. The Little Dry Creek site near Pleasanton is now in Catron County, just outside Grant County; in 1885 it was in Socorro County. The article remains part of a Grant County regional series because patrols, ranch routes, Apache homelands, and military posts linked the upper Gila to Silver City and the surrounding district. Regional connection is a reason to tell the story, not a reason to move a county boundary.
Readers can follow that network through the Fort Bayard and Buffalo Soldiers chapter, the Chihenne homelands chapter, and the 1885–86 Geronimo and Naiche campaign chapter. Fort Bayard was not the starting post in Fountain’s quoted report, and it did not stand at Little Dry Creek. These links explain connected regional history rather than claiming that every engagement occurred on the fort’s grounds.
What the ambush changed, and what it did not
Little Dry Creek demonstrated that a small party could inflict severe losses on a larger mounted patrol by choosing ground and striking at close range. It also demonstrated how a surprised patrol could survive: men dismounted, used the road bank briefly, moved into a ravine, and joined scouts who had already climbed to challenge the firing position. The Apache fighters’ withdrawal prevented further immediate losses, but the cost to Fountain’s force was already high. The battle did not capture Josanie, end the 1885 raids, or settle the future of the Apache people caught in the final campaigns.
The engagement belongs beside the earlier battles in this series because it has its own people, place, and sequence. The Mimbres River attack of 1860 involved miners striking a Mimbres Apache camp. Pinos Altos in 1861 involved a mining settlement and a dispute in the surviving accounts over its exact date. Las Animas Canyon in 1879 involved Victorio and Ninth Cavalry companies. Fort Tularosa in 1880 was a prepared defense of a settlement. Gavilan Canyon in 1881 turned on Brent Woods taking command after his officer was killed. At Little Dry Creek, the distinct turning point was the Navajo scouts’ climb and Fountain’s movement from an exposed road into the same fight for the crest.
Those differences explain more than a repeated statement that Apache warriors knew the terrain. At one hill on a December morning, the patrol’s advance outran its screen, two lines of fire hit at close range, the scouts acted decisively, and five men died. Josanie’s party escaped through the rocky ground. The record is detailed enough to name the dead, describe the tactical response, and keep the outcome in proportion. It is also incomplete: the scouts’ individual voices and an Apache account of the ambush are not present in Fountain’s report. Their absence should be acknowledged without allowing it to displace the battle itself.
Questions about Little Dry Creek
When was the ambush?
It took place on the morning of December 19, 1885. Fountain reported that his column left camp at 8:05 and came under fire around 8:30 while climbing between Big Dry Creek and Little Dry Creek.
Who led the Apache party?
The Fort Huachuca Museum history identifies Josanie, also called Ulzanna, as the leader of the small party Fountain pursued. Geronimo was a central figure in the wider 1885–86 campaign, but the source does not place him in command at this hill.
How many soldiers were killed?
Fountain named five dead: Assistant Surgeon T. J. C. Maddox, Privates Gibson, Hutton, and McMillan, and Blacksmith Collins, who died after the fight. Lieutenant Cabell, Corporal McFarland, and Trumpeter Hirchfeld were wounded.
What did the Navajo scouts do?
They took a ravine away from the exposed road, tied their horses, climbed to the crest, and opened fire before Fountain’s soldiers reached them. Their action helped drive the Apache fighters from the hill.
Is Little Dry Creek in Grant County?
The battle site near Pleasanton is in present Catron County, close to Grant County. At the time of the fight, the area was in Socorro County. It is included here for its direct connection to the Apache campaigns and communities of the wider Grant County region.
Sources for the battle
- Fort Huachuca Museum, Huachuca Illustrated, volume 7, “Apache Campaigns: Josanie’s Raid,” including Lieutenant Fountain’s December 21, 1885 report.
- National Park Service, “Apache Wars: Geronimo”, for the wider 1885–86 campaign and its aftermath.
- Fort Sill Apache Tribe, “History”, for the community’s account of confinement and removal.
- New Mexico Legislature historical memorial on Catron County, for the 1921 county formation.
- Casitas de Gila regional site essay on Little Dry Creek, for the modern Pleasanton and county-line description; its site identification is separate from Fountain’s contemporary report.
