The United States and Canada conclude their wars with the native peoples.

Victorio is credited with leading the Alma Massacre —a raid on United States settlers' homes around Alma, New Mexico—in April, 1880.

Several settlers are killed during this event.

Victorio's warriors are finally driven off with the arrival of American soldiers from Fort Bayard.

However, ...

Victorio continues his campaign with an attack on Fort Tularosa.

Victorio and his followers, numbering around two hundred men, women and children, head for Ojo Caliente, where, on September 4, as they are nearing their destination, a small patrol from Company E of the 9th Cavalry is detected.

In the ensuing skirmish, Victorio's warriors kill five Buffalo Soldiers under Captain Ambrose Hooker, before mutilating and staking their bodies to the ground.

Other accounts say eight soldiers perished along with three civilians.

Forty-six to sixty-eight army horses and mules are also taken by Victorio and the victory causes other Apache bands to leave the reservations and begin fighting.

Victorio and his band had been moved to San Carlos Reservation in Arizona Territory in 1877.

He and his followers had left the reservation twice before but came back only to leave permanently in late August 1879, which started Victorio's War.

Victorio is a Chiricahua Apache who had grown up in the Chihenne band.

There is speculation that he or his band had Navajo kinship ties and was known among the Navajo as "he who checks his horse".

Victorio's sister is the famous woman warrior Lozen, or the "Dextrous Horse Thief".

In 1853, he had been considered a chief or sub chief by the United States Army and had signed a document.

In his twenties, he had ridden with Geronimo and other Apache leaders.

As was the custom, he had become the leader of a band of Chiricahuas and Mescaleros and had fought against the United States Army.

From 1870 to 1880, Victorio and his band have moved to and left at least three different reservations, some more than once, despite his band's request to live on traditional lands.

The Ojo Caliente reservation is located in their traditional territory.

Nine American settlers have been killed by Apaches by September 10 and the army has dispatched thousands of soldiers and scouts to search for Victorio.

American militias also form in Arizona and New Mexico.

Victorio decides to head south after Ojo Caliente.

While traveling down the Animas River, the band encounters a militia made up of miners in between Kingston and Silver City.

Ten of the Americans are killed and about fifty horses captured in another short engagement, Victorio now continues south into Las Animas Canyon, in the Black Range, where he positions his warriors cunningly.

The first significant battle of the conflict is about to be fought.

There are several different accounts of the event but what is known is that on September 18 of 1879, Victorio is encamped at the canyon when two companies of cavalry under Captain Byron Dawson discover them.

About seventy-five men altogether, the Americans are apparently lured into the canyon by either an Apache woman or two warriors who open fire on them as they head down Las Animas Creek near the junction with the canyon.

Victorio's forces, numbering at least sixty men, are positioned atop of a ridge overlooking Las Animas Canyon and the adjoining Massacre Canyon.

When the Americans are inside, the Apaches open fire with their rifles and bows; the soldiers take cover behind boulders and other natural defenses.

Two other companies from the 9th cavalry are in the area and proceed to the battlefield.

When the reinforcements enter the canyon, Victorio's warriors cease firing until the Americans begin a flanking maneuver towards the ridge.

Victorio's men then open fire again and repulse the attack.

Long range skirmishing continues for the remainder of the day, and that night the Americans retreat.

Accounts of casualties differ but at least five soldiers were killed and several wounded.

Navajo Scouts also played a role in the battle; two or three are known to have been killed and are buried among the thirty-two graves at the site.

Thirty-six army horses were also killed, while Victorio's losses were negligible.

Three American soldiers will receive the Medal of Honor for courage under heavy fire: Lieutenant Robert Temple Emmet, Lieutenant Mathias Day and Sergeant John Denny.

Lieutenant Day will receive the medal for disregarding Captain Dawson's order to retreat so as to save wounded soldiers who would have been left behind.

Denny had done the same and carried one man back to friendly lines under accurate fire from the ridgeline.

Dawson will later be relieved of his company by his commander Colonel Edward Hatch.

"Lawless bands" had often crossed the border on raids into Texas throughout the 1870s. (Hoogenboom, Ari (1995). Rutherford Hayes: Warrior and President. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas.)

In June 1877, three months after President Hayes took office, he had granted the Army the power to pursue bandits, even if it required crossing into Mexican territory.

Porfirio Díaz, the Mexican president, had protested the order and sent troops to the border.

The situation had calmed as Díaz and Hayes agreed to jointly pursue bandits and Hayes had agreed not to allow Mexican revolutionaries to raise armies in the United States.

The violence along the border has decreased, and in 1880 Hayes revokes the order allowing pursuit into Mexico.

The close of the White River War, also known as the Ute War, or the Ute Campaign, sees the relegation of the Utes to reservations in southwestern Colorado and eastern Utah.

The official ceding of Ute land occurs after negotiations that had begun in November 1879 with a Peace Commission at the Los Pinos Agency.

After this commission fails to produce results, Congress summons the participants to Washington in 1880.

A treaty is agreed upon where the White River Utes agree to be removed to Uintah Reservation in Utah, and the Uncompahgre Utes, who had not participated in the uprising, are to remain in Colorado, but on a smaller parcel of land.

Later this plan is changed, and the Uncompahgre Utes too are removed to Utah.

The Southern Ute are also to be moved, although it proves difficult to find them land in neighboring states.

Ultimately they remain on a reservation along the border of Colorado and New Mexico.

Victorio and his band are surrounded and killed by soldiers of the Mexican Army under Mauricio Corredor in the Tres Castillos Mountains in the Mexican state of Chihuahua in October 1880, while moving along the Rio Grande in northern Mexico.

Some women and children escape but will later be sent with Geronimo to Florida, Alabama, and Oklahoma.