From their hastily constructed ranchería on the southeastern slope of the Animas Mountains (eighty miles northwest of Janos in today's Hidalgo County, NM) Juan José and Juan Diego Compá's mixed group of Southern Apaches watched an Anglo-American pack train move up the broken cattle trail in late April 1837. Numbering approximately three hundred men, women, and children and boasting eighty armed men, the Apaches, who included many former Apaches de paz from Janos and Galeana, held an impressive numerical advantage over the group of eighteen Anglo-American traders and five Mexican mule drivers who pursued them. Nonetheless, Juan José and Juan Diego had been suspicious of the merchants’ intentions since witnessing their kinsmen's first smoke signal warning in the surrounding hills. Why were these Americans coming to trade in such a remote area, especially on the heels of recent Apache revenge raids in Sonora? (see Map 6.1.)

The leader of the party, Kentucky native and recently naturalized Mexican citizen John J. Johnson, approached the Apache camp. After explaining that they were on their way from Sonora to the Santa Rita del Cobre mine (near present-day Silver City, NM), Johnson told the Compás that, in exchange for a guide and safe passage, he could offer them flour, sugar, and gunpowder the following morning. Upon hearing this, Juan José felt reassured, for he had bought arms and ammunition from American traders many times since the opening of the Santa Fe Trail without incident.

Two days later, on the morning of April 22, Johnson finally seemed ready to make good on his promise. As the Apaches gathered to receive bags of pinole (corn meal) and panocha (brown sugar), however, Johnson's men opened fire on them, using a mounted swivel gun that probably came from Fronteras presidio. In less than five minutes, nearly all of the principal headmen, including Juan José, his brother Juan Diego, and Marcelo, lay dead. Only the Chihene leader Antonio Vívora, a long-time Janos resident, managed to escape. After more than two hours of fighting, Johnson's men suffered no losses other than a third of the pack train containing clothing and expense money. Nineteen Ndé men, women, and children died and another twenty were wounded.