Second Battle of Mora

The Second Battle of Mora was a military engagement during the Taos Revolt of the Mexican-American War. Seeking revenge for the death of Capt. Hendley, Waldo, Noyes, Culver and others in the First Battle of Mora, Capt. Morin and his men destroyed the village on February 1, with the insurgents fleeing into the mountains. The dead bodies of the Americans were buried at Las Bagas.

Battle

On February 1, approximately 200 United States troops led by Captain Jesse I. Morin returned to Mora armed with two howitzers. Israel R. Hendley was defeated and killed in the First Battle of Mora due to his lack of artillery and overwhelming enemy forces. The two forces were about the same strength of one company each, 200 men. The Americans set up their artillery and began the battle with a short artillery barrage on the fort protecting Mora. The Americans then attacked and the New Mexicans quickly gave up. They were routed after the fort fell and a few minutes of skirmishing in the dirt streets of Mora. The majority of insurgents fled up and over the surrounding mountains, to other villages of northern New Mexico. Morin directed his men to pursue the fleeing New Mexicans and ordered the complete destruction of Mora.

Morin's men burned the wheat fields that surrounded the town while others chased after the New Mexicans through Mora Valley. The inhabitants fled to the mountains also. They left because the burning of the town, no food was apparently left by Captain Morin who later justified his actions by stating that he fought the New Mexicans in such a manner in revenge for their killing of Captain Hendley at Mora just a week earlier. This battle marked the end one campaign during the New Mexican revolt. No American casualties were reported and the Mexicans suffered several dead or wounded as well as seventeen men captured. Captain Jesse I. Morin would go on to fight the final engagement of the revolt at the Battle of Cienega Creek. The New Mexican civilians returned to Mora later and rebuilt their town.

Additional Reading

• Sources: R. E. Twitchell. Old Santa Fé (Santa Fé: R. E. Twitchell, 1925), p. 146
• Twitchell, Ralph Emerson, The History of the Military Occupation of the Territory of New Mexico from 1846 to 1851, Denver, Colorado: The Smith-Brooks Company Publishers, 1909
• Herrera, Carlos R., New Mexico Resistance to U.S. Occupation, published in The Contested Homeland, A Chicano History of New Mexico, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000
• Niles' National Register, NNR 72.081, April 10, 1847, available at [1]