Battle
1872 American military engagement
The Skeleton Cave massacre was the killing of Yavapai people by the US army on December 28th, 1872 in the Arizona Territory during the Yavapai wars.
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Text from the Wikipedia article “Battle of Salt River Canyon”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The Skeleton Cave massacre was the killing of Yavapai people by the US army on December 28th, 1872 in the Arizona Territory during the Yavapai wars.
On December 28, 1872, the US army men encountered the Yavapai hiding out at Skeleton Cave, located in the Salt River Canyon northeast of present-day Phoenix, Arizona. The US forces were composed of men from the 5th Cavalry Regiment led by Captain William H. Brown, and were accompanied by 30 Apache scouts. Captain James Burns also participated and led a force of 100 Pima people in the attack.
At least 76 Yavapai were killed in the attack including women and children. Women and children who survived the attack were taken as prisoners to Camp Grant.
A Yavapai boy named Hoomothya, later named Mike Burns, who witnessed the massacre wrote that "over 225" Yavapai were killed in the attack.
The remains of the vitims were not removed from the cave until 1925 when Mike Burns and a number of other Yavapai recovered and buried them at Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation.
Historian Jeffrey P. Shepherd called the massacre a "genocidal act".
Text from the Wikipedia article “Skeleton Cave massacre”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.