The Santa Fe Weekly Gazette reported that the action "was one of the severest battles that ever took place between American troops and Red Indians.

While on patrol, 60 dragoons engaged in an unauthorized attack on the Jicarilla Apache encampment near Pilar, then known as Cieneguilla, after First Lieutenant John Wynn Davidson exceeded the orders of his superior officer, Major Blake.

At once, Lieutenant Colonel Philip St. George Cooke of the Second Regiment of Dragoons organized an expedition to pursue the Jicarilla.

Gen. John Garland praised Davidson when stated that "The troops displayed a gallantry seldom equaled in this, or any other country and the Officer in Command, Lieut.

To have sustained a deadly control of three hours when he was so greatly outnumbered, and to have retired with the fragment of a company, crippled up, is amazing and calls for the admiration of every true soldier.

[15] After many witnessing declarations, the court declared that Davidson could not have avoided the confrontation and "that in the battle he exhibited skill in his mode of attacking a greatly superior force of hostile Indians; and prudence, and coolness, and courage, throughout a protracted engagement; and finally, when he was obliged to retire from the field, owing to the great odds opposing him, the losses he had sustained, and the scarcity of ammunition; his exertions to bring off the wounded men merit high praise.