The Wickenburg Massacre

On November 5, 1871 the stagecoach bound for Ehrenberg left Wickenburg, Arizona Territory at 7:00 A.M., “Dutch” John Lance driving. When the coach was an hour out of town, or eight miles west, it was attacked by fifteen Indians, each having a rifle and two rounds of ammunition. Typical of such attacks with firearms, the natives were within a few feet of their target, having less confidence in guns than in their bows and arrows. There were two simultaneous volleys, killing one horse and six men. Mollie Sheppard, the only woman aboard, was severely wounded and her paramour, William Kruger – an employee of the Army Quartermaster who was only slightly wounded – escaped through the right (north) door and fled into the desert. Killed were Peter M. “P. M.” Hamel, William George Salmon, and Frederick W. Loring who had come down from Prescott the previous day, and had arrived in Arizona a few weeks earlier with a military survey party. Also killed were Charles S. Adams who was returning home to San Francisco, Frederick Shoholm bound for his home in Philadelphia via San Francisco, and driver Lance.
 Two parties were dispatched, the first to Culling’s Well to rescue the two wounded survivors, and this party returned to the scene and recovered five bodies, leaving Salmon’s remains behind as it was sixty yards from the coach and off the road. The second party arrived and camped at the scene until daybreak, found Salmon’s remains, determined he had been scalped “Yavapai-style,” and buried his body nearby. This style of scalping involved taking all the skin of the head from the mouth to the nape of the neck, unlike Apache-style which took the topknot of hair only. Scalping was a ritual honoring an enemy who had died bravely, fighting for his life. The second party then trailed thirty Indian foot tracks for miles, noting that seven pairs of tracks left about where twenty others joined the large party. Forty-three foot trails led directly toward the Date Creek Indian reservation while the seven tracks went east toward Walnut Creek, and one of these was unusually large for Indian feet. The trails were also distinct as they were toe in, as only Indians walked, and had rough edges around the tracks showing them made by Yavapai moccasins.
 The following day, after the inquest in which it was found Hamel had been scalped Apache-style, and the burial of five victims, Cavalry Captain Charles Meinhold arrived with a party of soldiers and made a thorough investigation of the scene. His report, laying the blame on Date Creek Reservation Indians, went to General George Crook, but the General was delayed in taking action while he conducted a meticulous investigation, and by the arrival of two Indian commissioners. However, by mid-1872 Crook knew the names of each Indian involved and planned to arrest them and turn them over to the civil authorities for trial. The Indians, knowing the General was after them, planned an ambush during a council but it failed. Eventually nearly all of the guilty Indians were killed, and along with them many innocent Indians.
 The killing of a favored Bostonian, Loring, turned the sympathetic Easterners cold toward the plight of Arizona’s natives, and they called for “more sword and less Bible!” The Yavapai tribe had been promised land “Forever and forever” stretching forty miles on each side of the Verde River and twenty miles wide. This was particularly fertile land, and the farmers and ranchers near Prescott coveted this valuable real estate. After less than three years on their new reservation the entire tribe was uprooted and moved to the San Carlos Indian Reservation, nearly two hundred miles away, San Carlos was a place where the high mountain Indians were forced to live in squalor, terrible desert heat compared to their cool mountain retreat, in close proximity to tribes who had been their enemies for centuries. They were forced to remain at San Carlos until the turn of the century.
 For a comprehensive “Cold Case” investigation of the Wickenburg massacre see Massacre at Wickenburg, published by Globe Pequot Press.