Battle of Big Dry Wash

Overview

The Battle of Big Dry Wash was fought on July 17, 1882, between troops of the United States Army's 3rd Cavalry Regiment and 6th Cavalry Regiment and warriors of the White Mountain Apache tribe.The location of the battle was called "Big Dry Wash" in Major Evans' official report, but later maps called the location "Big Dry Fork", which is how it is cited in the four Medal of Honor citations that resulted from the battle.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Significance

The Battle of Big Dry Wash on July 17, 1882, brought U.S. Army forces from the 3rd Cavalry Regiment and 6th Cavalry Regiment into direct engagement with White Mountain Apache warriors led by Na-tio-tish. The engagement produced four Medal of Honor citations, indicating the intensity of the fighting as assessed by the Army. A discrepancy in how the location was recorded — listed as 'Big Dry Wash' in Major Evans' official report but rendered as 'Big Dry Fork' on later maps — created an inconsistency that persisted into the Medal of Honor citations, reflecting the administrative ambiguities common to frontier campaign documentation. Within the broader Apache Wars, the engagement represented continued U.S. military pressure on White Mountain Apache resistance in the early 1880s, a period of intensifying operations in the Arizona Territory.

Commanders (2)