"The Honor of Cochise"
I just watched it on MeTV on 02-26-2019.
Of course the plot is not based an an actual historical event. But it is possible to guess more or less the period when it might happen in real history.
In real life it would have to happen before Cochise died on June 8, 1874.
And in real life it would have to happen while Cochise was still a famous and feared leader of hostile Apaches, and so after the Bascom Affair on February 3 to 19, 1861, and before Cochise made a peace treaty with General Howard on October 12, 1872.
Captain Moss Johnson mentions the Department of Arizona. The Department of Arizona was a military command & administrative area consisting of Arizona Territory and part of southern California. Since the Department of Arizona was created on May 3, 1870, one might then calculate that "The Honor of Cochise might happen sometime between May 3, 1870 and October 12, 1872.
Captain Moss Johnson mentions he is stationed at Fort Buchanan, obviously the one in Arizona instead of the one in Puerto Rico. But Fort Buchanan was a fort from 1856 to 1861, when it was abandoned. Troops from the California Column were sometimes stationed in Fort Buchanan during the Civil War.
On February 17, 1865, Corporal Michael Buckley commanded 8 other soldiers of the First California cavalry at Fort Buchanan when they were attacked by about 75 Apaches. The Apaches set fire to the building occupied by the soldiers who eventually retreated with one dead and one wounded. 3 civilians were killed near the fort. The Apaches burned the fort buildings which were never again used.
In 1867 Fort Crittenden was built about half a mile away.
Captain Moss Johnson allegedly recently fed Apaches poisoned pinole and killed about 30 during negotiations and was being chased by Cochise and his warriors who had all lost relatives. I believe that Cochise called it the "Pinole Treaty". The "Pinole Treaty" or "Massacre at Bloody Tanks" was a massacre of Apaches carried out by a civilian posse lead by King S. Woolsey in 1864. Some versions of the story have Woolsey giving the Apaches pinole poisoned with strychnine, and there are accounts of Arizona setters poisoning Apaches with strychnine on other occasions.
So that would seem to make "The honor of Cochise" happen in 1864.
Captain Johnson claimed that he was "just following orders", to coin a phrase, from headquarters in Arizona to kill all Apaches, and that the orders came ultimately from Washington DC. And depending on the fictional time period half of what Johnson said might have been true.
General James Henry Carleton (1814-1873) was in command in New Mexico and Arizona from August, 1862 to 1866. And it has often been claimed that Carleton ordered his troops to exterminate the Apaches. The first history of the Indian wars in the west, J. P. Dunn's Massacres of the Mountains: A History of the Indian wars of the Far west, 1886, claims that an extermination policy was tried with the Apaches for several years and turned out to be a failure at bringing peace to the southwest.
Geography:
The map of the Pondorosa Ranch in the opening credits of Bonanza show the Pondorosa stretching from Lake Tahoe east toward Carson City and Virginia City in Nevada.
When Captain Johnson says he is stationed at Fort Buchanan, someone says that it is near the Arizona border. That is true, Fort Buchanan was near the Arizona border - the border of Arizona with Mexco, not the border with Nevada.
If Fort Buchanan was near the Nevada border, near Lake Havasu City, for example, the Fleeing Captain Johnson and the pursing Apaches could have crossed the Colorado River into Nevada and headed northwest parallel to the Nevada-California border until they came near to Lake Tahoe and the Pondorosa Ranch.
That would be a distance of 441.69 miles straight and 568 miles by one modern highway route.
But Fort Buchanan was actually near the border with Mexico, not the border with Nevada. Fort Buchanan was about 3 miles from Sonoita, Arizona. That is a distance of 892.2 miles on US Route 95, which is a fairly straight route northwest to Carson City.
That is a long chase!
I believe that a Fort Ross was supposed to be only five hours ride away from where they were besieged by Cochise. As far as I know there wasn't any Fort Ross in Nevada.