A 112-man detachment of Confederate Cavalry under Captain Bethel Coopwood with his Spy Company and units of the 2nd Texas Mounted Rifles followed a route north toward Fort Craig west of the Rio Grande and the wagon road along the foot of the mountains.

Two days before the engagement at Canada Alamosa, on 23 September 1861, Coopwood's Confederate troops captured nine men from the New Mexico Volunteers, after a brief skirmish due north of Fort Craig.

The Union Army, specifically the Regiment of Mounted Riflemen at Fort Craig, had launched a reconnaissance mission to guard against the approach of Confederate forces up the Rio Grande.

Before the corral and breastworks were finished on September 24, at about 5:00 pm, the Union force of around 100 and under Captain Minks, received information that mounted rebels had been seen in a southern direction from the camp.

A six-man cavalry troop with a Mexican scout was dispatched who returned saying the sighted men were Union deserters who evaded capture.

At this same time a few horses escaped the corral, about ten men were ordered to bring them back but some thirty ended up in the chase before Minks could prevent it, most of the thirty men deserted into the desert, crossing the Rio Grande to the east bank and headed for Paraje where another independent company of New Mexican cavalry guarded the approach along the Jornada del Muerto.

At that moment the Union force knew they were not being attacked by Apaches but by twelve to fifteen Confederate troops, commanded by Captain Bethel Coopwood, from Mesilla.

The dozen Confederate cavalrymen had attempted to rout the Union army with the cover of nightfall but failed due to the lack of firepower.

Union Colonel Edward Canby, in his report of the engagement, said ten Confederates were killed and over thirty wounded in a fight that lasted one hour and forty-two minutes long.

The intelligence Coopwood's Confederate troops obtained from nine men from the New Mexico Volunteers captured north of Fort Craig was returned to Baylor.

Additionally, their work finding water sources along the mountains west of the Rio Grande would, the next year, allow the defeated Confederate Army to survive their retreat south to Fort Thorn following the Battle of Peralta that trapped them on the east bank.