Wikenburg, Arizona Stagecoach Attack. 1871

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Frederick Wadsworth Loring.

Desert Caballeros Western Museum, Wickenburg, Arizona.

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Hello! I'm Mr. Ed

Blog Created: 6-19-2023

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From Wikipedia ~

The Wickenburg Massacre was the November 5, 1871, murder of six stagecoach passengers en route westbound from Wickenburg, Arizona Territory, headed for San Bernardino, California, on the La Paz road.

Massacre

Around mid-morning, about six miles from Wickenburg, the stagecoach was allegedly attacked by 15 Yavapai warriors, who were sometimes mistakenly called Apache-Mohaves, from the Date Creek Reservation. Six men, including the driver, were shot and killed. Among them was Frederick Wadsworth Loring, a young writer from Boston working as a correspondent for Appleton's Journal and assigned to cover a cartographic expedition led by Lieutenant George Wheeler. One male passenger, William Kruger, and the only female passenger, Mollie Sheppard, managed to escape. According to Kruger, Sheppard eventually died of the wounds she received.

Memorial plaques have been installed near the site several times, including in 1937 by the Arizona Highway Department and in 1948 and 1988 by the Wickenburg Saddle Club.

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From azcentrol ~

Wickenburg Massacre: Who really did it?

John Stanley, Special for The Republic. July 1, 2014

~ Five passengers and the stagecoach driver were killed. Two passengers survived.

~ The attack was attributed to Indians, but other theories abounded.

~ One said the survivors buried the loot in the desert and planned to come back for it.

Around 7 a.m. Nov. 5, 1871, seven passengers piled into a Concord stagecoach in Wickenburg and set out for California. An hour later, five of them and the driver lay dead in the desert. One victim had been scalped.

Obviously, a band of Indians had attacked the stage; one of the two survivors, an Army paymaster named William Kruger, said as much.

The Wickenburg Massacre was a sensation, and not just in Arizona. Blood and violence fascinate, then as now. In addition, the attack got a lot of attention in the Eastern press because one of the victims, Frederick Wadsworth Loring, was a promising young writer from Boston. A Harvard graduate, Loring was 22 when he was killed, but he'd already had a novel and a book of poetry published. He was working as a correspondent for Appletons' Journal at the time of the massacre.

But the main reason the story got such play was that the question of Indian affairs was as contentious as, say, immigration is today. Hardliners fulminated that the attack was proof that entire tribes should be removed by any means necessary.

But there were questions, even then.

The other survivor, Mollie Sheppard (usually described as a Prescott courtesan), seems to have believed that the attackers were Mexican bandits dressed as Indians to throw off investigators. Because a Mexican gang had been operating in the area, the story seemed plausible to many. And, even if it wasn't true, it provided a good excuse for townsfolk to run the Mexicans and their families out of the region.

When Gen. George Crook got wind of the attack, he dispatched an officer to investigate. The conclusion: A band of raiders from the temporary reservation at Date Creek had carried out the attack. The following March, in the wake of an attempt by some of the suspects to assassinate Crook, a cavalry unit tracked down and killed about 40 Indians. In November, Crook launched an extensive campaign against the Yavapais and Tonto Apaches, an operation that led to the forcible relocation of many of those people to the San Carlos Apache Reservation.

General George Crook. circa 1870-1880.

For many, that's the end of the story of the Wickenburg Massacre.

But as accounts of the attack got repeated over the years, embellishments accumulated to the point that many now think of the murders as an unsolved mystery.

Some authors have claimed that robbery was the real motive for the attack, which was committed by Whites dressed as Indians. According to this theory, word had gotten out that the stagecoach was carrying $100,000 in payroll money to California.

Wells Fargo And Co. strongbox.

Other writers have speculated that Kruger and Sheppard, who said they escaped by running down a wash, committed the robbery, killing the others to make it look like an Indian attack. According to that theory, they buried the loot, inflicted relatively minor wounds upon themselves and hung around until they could be "rescued."

As evidence, promoters of this theory claim that there were reports that Kruger and Sheppard were seen together in San Francisco a couple of months after the attack, in early 1872. Later, supposedly, Kruger said during a newspaper interview that Sheppard had died of her wounds, but apparently there are no records to support his claim.

Then there are stories that a man named William Kruger registered in a Phoenix hotel in December 1872. Supporters of the robbery theory speculate that he was on his way back to Wickenburg to retrieve the money that he and Sheppard had buried. But, as so often seems to happen in these sorts of tales, Kruger was killed before he could recover the stash, struck down by a stray bullet during a gunfight between two other guests in the hotel.

The treasure, according to these versions of the story, remains buried somewhere in the desert west of Wickenburg.

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NOTE:

The stagecoach from the attack was never used again. No doubt the interior was covered with blood from the attack. It was taken to a warehouse in Prescott, Arizona and stored for several years until the building burned to the ground. The coach was destroyed in the fire.