On the 28th day of January in 1918, Texas Rangers aided by US Cavalry soldiers and local ranchers filling out the posse executed 15 villagers from the tiny Presidio County village of Porvenir. Situated on the Rio Grande, across from Pilares, Chihuahua, Porvenir was in the wrong place at the wrong time. With the Mexican Revolution raging for its eighth year, raiding parties of Villistas and Carrancistas spilled over into towns and ranches near the border, most notably in Columbus, New Mexico but most pertinently to this incident at Brite Ranch on Christmas Day of 1917.
In the Brite Ranch raid, a handful of Anglo settlers died protecting the property as a raiding party of 45 presumed Villistas (there is some disagreement on who comprised the raiding party, as Carranza’s men have elsewhere been implicated) overran the ranch and made off with horses and clothes, food, and money stolen from Lucas Brite’s general store, killing an unsuspecting postman Mickey Welsh and his two Mexican passengers when he went to the general store surely unaware the raid was transpiring.