In late January of 1850, Apaches took two boys who were working in the fields of the village of Doña Ana and later the same day took twenty-three head of oxen from a wagon train camped five miles southwest of Doña Ana. Days later, on February 2nd, people from Paso del Norte and other places converged on the village of Doña Ana to attend a big fiesta for Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria. But just before festivities began, Gila Apaches approached the village, and drove off cattle, injured four herders, and took a boy. An Army surgeon and other U.S. military personnel watched the Apaches from a fence at the front of an Army hospital. After a resident of Doña Ana asked for military assistance, U.S. soldiers chased the Apaches northwest.
(Source: Transcription of Letter dated February 10, 1850 from P.G. Stuyvesant Ten Broeck to his mother, NMSU Library & Special Collections, Mary Taylor Papers, Box 20, Folder 6.)