Massacre on the Lordsburg Road: A Tragedy of the Apache Wars

In the spring of 1883 Apache raiders massacred Judge McComas and his wife and kidnapped their six-year-old son, Charley, as the family traveled on a desolate road in southwestern New Mexico Territory, all victims of revenge sought by the Apaches for Gen. George Crook's campaign. At the time, the entire circumstances concerning this tragic incident had not been fully understood - or perhaps cared about. In Massacre on the Lordsburg Road, historian Marc Simmons brings to light one of the last massacres of the Indian wars, presenting exactly why and how the McComases met their end on that desolate road, the events that led up to it, and the public reactions that followed. The puzzlement of why a reputably wise and able man would lead his family into such a fatal predicament, the pursuit of the Apaches into Mexico by General Crook, and the ironic circumstance of Charley McComas's death at the hands of Crook's troops in a raid on the Apache camp, illustrates that past events were as complex and as human as those today.