The Negros Mascogos lived in relative cultural isolation from the rest of Mexico until the 1930s. The violence of the Mexican civil wars did not entirely skip over Nacimiento, but the majority of men living there were able to avoid conscription by offering their free labor to haciendas willing to harbor them, by hiding in the mountains as they had from Indian raiders, and in some cases by donning dresses.
Nonetheless, not all could escape and some men were conscripted into guerilla bands led by Pancho Villa and other revolutionaries. In response some Negros Mascogos such as John Payne, joined forces with the federales in order to fight the hated Villa and his army. In response, Villa kidnapped several Negras Mascogas and took them with him to Veracruz where he hoped to hold them as hostage until John Payne and the other Mascogo men fighting with the federales surrendered.
In 1914 the United States inserted itself into the conflict and seized the port of Veracruz. A sympathetic Spanish man offered to help and passed along a note from one of the women, Mirtes Payne, to the Americans. The news of the missing women made its way to Brackettville. Family members of the kidnapped women made their way to Nacimiento to confirm the women were indeed gone.