On hearing of the Apache attacks on the Mimbres River settlements, Dr. Lewis Owings, the unofficial territorial "governor," asked for military help from Fort Fillmore but no troops were available. A group of fifteen volunteers from the town of Mesilla under Samuel S. Jones, a former Kansas sheriff, armed and mounted themselves and reached the settlement but the Apache attackers had long been withdrawn before they arrived. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Edwin R. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, Chief of the Chiricahua Apaches (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 389-390.