Doug Hocking's Blog: Way Out West - Writing about the West

Battle of Cieneguilla

The following are excerpts from the book Terror on the Santa Fe Trail: Kit Carson and the Jicarilla Apache, Oct. 2019, Doug Hocking.

Apache Scout Rowdy and the Medal of Honor

Rowdy���s trail twists and turns. The White Mountain Apache replied to an inquiry about Rowdy saying:

Billy the Kid Kills His First Man

We see William H. Bonney, Henry McCarty, Henry Antrim (Antrim was his step-father���s name), Billy the Kid, small for his age pictured at Pete Maxwell���s ranch, formerly Fort Sumner (aka Bosque Redondo) in a bib front shir...

Battle at Cumbres Pass

The Jicarilla Apache were plains Apache who lived in tepees and hunted buffalo, but like most Apaches they were also at home in the mountains. Dismissed by some as a small, insignificant tribe, in May and June 1848, they...

Kit Carson Confronts the Jicarilla, July 1848

Kit Carson and the Jicarilla

Manco Burro Pass, June 1848

Manco Burro Pass, (in Spanish, Lame Donkey), is a few miles from Raton Pass and runs through the same mountains. Mexican settlers in New Mexico were familiar with it. Charles Bent, first American governor of New Mexic...

Raton Pass June 1848

Lucien Bonaparte Maxwell was destined to become the owner of the largest parcel of land in the United States, over 2,700,000 acres in extent. And all of it was within the range of the Jicarilla Apache. Together with ...

Will Rogers Medallion Finalists

Terror on the Santa Fe Trail

In June 1848, the Jicarilla Apache closed the Santa Fe Trail. This was the first of three times the wagon trains and mail parties turned back on their account. This was terrifying to the military and civil leadership...

Will Rogers Medallion