from Ehrenberg, on the Colorado River, to Ft. Whipple, Camps Wood, Verde, Apache, and Ft. McDowell. His business called him to different posts and he generally travelled by stage from one post to another. When there was no stage route he generally used a saddle horse or mule, of which he had several good ones. Bryan had an acquaintance with whom he generally took his meals when in Wickenburg, which was a central point for his teams. One day Donna Tomase, as the woman was called, (she was a California Spaniard. Her right name was Mrs. Bouns), called Bryan into her house, and told him not to ride in the Wickenburg and Ehrenberg stage any more. When questioned she told him that there was a plan laid to rob the stage; that she had overheard some Mexicans talking in a brush shack behind a saloon nearby where she lived, and cautioned him again about going by stage. He took the advice and did his travelling in the saddle from that on. It was not long before the woman's story was confirmed. The stage left Prescott at night on account of Indians, arriving at Wickenburg before daylight on the following morning. At a point about nine miles from Wickenburg toward Ehrenberg, the road crossed a small sandwash which had scrub oak brush growing on either side. In this wash, hidden by the banks and brush, lay the Mexicans. When the stage was well into the wash, the horses were stopped and the stage riddled with bullets.

*

*

"Of course this was supposed by most people to be the work of the Indians, quite a number of whom were at that time at Camp Date Creek

about twenty-five miles northwest of Wickenburg. The Mexicans had worn moccasins and scalped Adams in order to mislead the public. At the time I was working from twenty-five to thirty of the Date Creek Indians, gathering my crop of corn, beans and potatoes on my ranch in Peeples Valley, twenty-seven miles north of Wickenburg, and I had some men among them that I knew I could trust. As soon as I heard the news I sent two Indians across to Date Creek to learn if these Indians knew anything about the matter. They returned the same day and assured me their people knew nothing about the massacre, but that it must be Tonto Apaches from the eastern country.

"In a very few days Bryan came by my place, on his way from Wickenburg to Prescott, and told me the story. Among this band of fifteen Mexicans was one who Mrs. Bouns was slightly acquainted with, and whom she called Parenta; his name being the same as her family name. She got him into her house, filled him up with wine and he told her the whole story; how these men had all stayed at a house out on the road a little west of the town the night before the massacre, and went out to the place before daybreak. The place had been picked out some days before. This young Mexican claimed that he was sick that night and did not accompany the crowd that did the work, but told of Adams shooting one of the party; that they had taken the wounded man to the Agua Caliente springs on the Gila River to get well. The officers went from Phoenix and got the fellow with the hole in his shoulder, brought him to Phoenix, and he was killed in

the jail by a man who still lives in Phoenix. John Burger killed one of them in a corral at the lower station on the Agua Fria near where the S. F. P. & P. R. crosses that stream. The ringleader, a redheaded native of Gibraltar, named Joaquin Barbe, with another of the band, got on the warpath and run amuck in Phoenix, and Joe Fye and Milt Ward, deputy sheriffs, chased them out of town and killed both of them, and they all got what was coming to them, but one. He got wise and left the country. Bryan was very careful who he told the story to, and it was passed among the right men to attend to such matters. The scalping of Adams was all right to fool a tenderfoot, but we oldtimers knew that Apaches never scalped, although they frequently mutilated otherwise."

If this massacre had been committed by Indians, it is strange that Mike Burns knows nothing of it, because he has been collecting Indian history and Indian stories, and recording them carefully, no matter whether to the credit of his race or not, and if the Indians had been the culprits, some of the Indians, the Yavapais or Apache-Mohaves, with whom he has been associated since his early youth and manhood, would certainly have given him an account of it. On the contrary he professes to know nothing of this massacre, and never heard of any attempt to assassinate General Crook, although he says this might have happened and he never know of it; so I give all the evidence tending to show that it was committed by the Indians, and also the evidence of Mr. Genung going to show that it was committed by Mexicans. It will always remain

a mystery as to who were really the murderers. General Crook, as we shall see, at first believed that it was committed by the Indians, and, according to Captain Bourke, spent a long time in ferreting out the perpetrators, but from the fact that a month later, or thereabouts, he employed these same Indians, whom he tried to capture or kill at Date Creek, as scouts to run down the renegade Apaches, it would seem that he might have changed his mind, although there is no record of that extant.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE WICKENBURG MASSACRE (Continued). GENERAL CROOK TAKES UP HUNT FOR MURDERERS -INVESTIGATION STOPPED BY PEACE COMMISSION-INVESTIGATION BY GENERAL CROOK RESUMED MEETING WITH INDIANS AT CAMP DATE CREEK-SELECTION OF MURDERERS BY MOHAVE INDIANS ATTEMPTED ARREST BRINGS ON FIGHT-C. B. GENUNG'S ACCOUNT OF HAPPENING-CAPTAIN JOHN G. BOURKE'S ACCOUNT OF ATTEMPT ON GENERAL CROOK'S LIFE-DEATH AND BURIAL OF CAPTAIN PHILIP DWYER-FIGHT WITH INDIANS.

William Gilson, at that time a prominent citizen of Date Creek, and afterwards one of the early settlers of the Salt River Valley, during the latter part of January, 1872, informed General Crook that he believed the Date Creek Indians committed the Wickenburg Massacre. Mr. Gilson was friendly to these Indians, and this opinion was given only upon well grounded suspicions. General Crook took the matter in hand, determined to ferret out the murderers, arrest them, and turn them over to the civil authorities for trial. He set spies, both Indians and whites, at work to hunt up the testimony, plenty of which was soon after forthcoming, and what was at first a mystery, was soon cleared up by a strong chain of evidence. First came an Apache-Mohave Indian boy, who had been raised by Dan O'Leary, the well-known