Mohave County miner and our mineral wealth., 1922-05-26
The Lure Of Arizona Gold

 trict late in the '50S and the early COS were the Hualapais and Mohaves. In 1864 a days journey east of the Colorado more than 70 persons were found murdered by Indians along the road within distance of a few miles.
 In April, 1859, 1900 Mohaves were routed by whites near the Colorado. In January of the same year Lieut. Col. Hoffman killed sixty Indians and drove off 1,500. The Indians were comparatively "easy pickings" due to the fact that they had no rifles.
 Miners and soldier-miners in the early days of Fort Mohave sent their mail through from Fort Mohave to Prescott under guard of soldiers, stone stations being established every forty miles. In one engagement not far from Oatman IA soldier-miners, killed I6 Indians and drove off more than a hundred.
 In 1868 the Mohaves became parti- ,cularly troublesome to the Oatman miners. In that year score of Fort Mohave soldiers were surrounded by 200 redskins. The soldiers ran out of ammunition and then fixed bayonets. The Indians, believing, as their chief expressed it.. that "the whites have stopped up their rifles, closed in. Whereupon one of the. very rare in stances of soldiers bayoneting Indians occurred. More than sixty Indians were given the "cold steel'. Oatman miners to this day occasionally find the scattered bones of these Indians.
 OATMAN MASSACRE
 James H. McClintock in his history of Arizona, thus relates the famous Oatman massacre:
 "One of the most notorious features of the Indian warfare was the murder of the Oatman family, at what ever since has been known as Oatman Flat, on the Gila River, not far from Agua Caliente. (On the border between Maricopa and Yuma counties in south western Arizona:)
 "Royse Oatman and family were a part of an expedition organized in In dependence, Mo-, in August, 1850, with an expectation of settling about at the junction of the Colorado and Gila rivers, from which reports had come of fertile soil and of god pros poets for the amassing of wealth.
 "The journey into the Southwest was made without particular incident, through Tucson, to the Pima villages, which were reached February 16, 1851. The food supply was getting low and the Indians themselves had little. Much against the protests of the rest of the party, the elder Oat- man concluded to push on to Fort Yuma.
 "He had heard from travellers that no Apaches had been seen along the road for months. About half the dis tance to Fort Yuma had been passed in slow travel, for the two wagons were hauled by oxen and cows, when danger closed in.
 A dozen Tonto-Apaches, masquer- ading as Pimas, came to the wagons and demanded food. This they were given from a slender stock, but with in a very few minutes the generosity of the white hosts was rewarded with death. The father and mother were clubbed. An infant child was trans fixed with spear. The son, Lorenzo, then about Is years old, was clubbed and thrown over rocky point, with the assumption that he had been kill ed, and the two daughters, Olive Oat- man aged about 16, and Mary Ann, aged 2, were taken captive. Lorenzo regained consciousness and managed to reach the Pima villages, from which a party set out, only to bury the dead.
 "The two girls were hurried off to- ward the northeast, finally to reach an Indian village in north-central