The mid-morning ambush of the Wickenburg stage—the…
November 1871 CE
The mid-morning ambush of the Wickenburg stage—the Wickenburg massacre, in which a driver and five of seven passengers are killed about six miles from Wickenburg on November 5, 1871—sparks the Yavapai War.
The stagecoach is attacked by fifteen Yavapai warriors, sometimes mistakenly called Apache-Mohaves, from the Date Creek Reservation.
Six men, including the driver, are shot and killed, among them Frederick Wadsworth Loring, a young writer from Boston.
One male passenger and the only female passenger escape, though wounded.
Eastern sentiment had been with the victims of the Camp Grant Massacre, but the death of one of Boston's most promising young writers at Wickenburg will turn the tide against the Yavapai.