Wickenburg massacre

The Wickenburg massacre was the November 5, 1871 murder of six stagecoach passengers en route from Wickenburg, Arizona Territory westbound for San Bernardino, California on the La Paz road. In mid-morning, about six miles from Wickenburg, the stagecoach was attacked by fifteen Yavapai Indians (sometimes mistakenly called Apache-Mohave Indians) from the Date Creek reservation. [cite news |title=The Indian Attack Upon an Arizona Stage - The Driver and Five Passengers Killed. |author= |publisher="The New York Times" |date=1871-11-20 |url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B02EFDC1639EF34BC4851DFB767838A669FDE |accessdate=2008-03-23] [cite news |title=THE INDIANS.; Verdict of the Coroner's Jury in the Wickenburg Massacre |author= |publisher="The New York Times" |date=1871-11-22 |url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9904E6DB1639EF34BC4A51DFB767838A669FDE |accessdate=2008-03-23] Six men, including the driver, were shot and killed, including Frederick Wadsworth Loring, a young writer from Boston. [cite news |title=The Late Frederick W. Loring. |author= |publisher="The New York Times" |date=1871-11-24 |url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9D0DE3DB1639EF34BC4C51DFB767838A669FDE |accessdate=2008-03-23] One male passenger and the only female passenger escaped, though wounded. [cite news |title=THE WICKENBURG MASSACRE; First Authentic Account from an Eye-Witness |author= |publisher="The New York Times" |date=1872-01-01 |url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9D06E7DC163DE43BBC4953DFB7668389669FDE |accessdate=2008-03-23]

Over the next two years General George Crook conducted an investigation into the attack, and finally identified all the participants. He tried to arrest the ringleaders, but failing, sent Captain J. W. Mason to Burro Creek, where he encountered both guilty and innocent Indians in three rancherias. Many were killed in the battle which followed.

Seven months earlier 135 Indians had been killed in the Camp Grant massacre, near Tucson, and Eastern sentiment was with the Indians, but the death of one of Boston's most promising young writers at Wickenburg turned the tide against the Indians. In February 1875, after being promised reservation land near Prescott "forever and forever," the Yavapai tribe was uprooted and driven 180 miles south to the San Carlos reservation, where they were forced to live beside their enemies from centuries past.

References

Further reading

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* [http://southwest.library.arizona.edu/hav8/body.1_div.15.html Another account of the massacre] from Arizona University