Although Chief Cochise and War-Captain Geronimo had moved with their band of Chiricahuas upon the Cottonwood Canyon reservation near Fort Craig in southwestern New Mexico, and Commissioner Colyer had been so confident that all _his_ Indians were about to gather upon _their_ reservations, the white people of Arizona had no faith in this peace policy. Almost every copy of the Tucson _Citizen_ and the Prescott _Miner_ received by Joe Felmer or at Camp Grant contained accounts of Apache attacks upon settlers and miners and soldiers, by the Tontos and the Apache-Mohaves, and the Chiricahuas raiding up from Mexico. The _Miner_ published a list of three hundred Americans and Mexicans who had been killed by the Apaches from 1864 to the present time, October 14, 1871. Toward the end of November the worst news yet, arrived. A band of “Colyer’s babes,” thought to be Apache-Mohaves, had attacked the stage near Wickenburg, south of Prescott, and murdered the driver and five passengers. Three of these passengers were members of the Government surveying expedition which, under Lieutenant George Wheeler, of the U. S. Engineers, had been exploring through Nevada and Arizona, getting facts upon the mines and the country. The name of one was Fred Loring――a well-educated, especially fine young surveyor, from Washington. This attack, said the papers, ought to convince the Government that the Apaches of Arizona were far from “civilized.” These very Indians had been living “peaceably” upon one of Commissioner Colyer’s tracts, where they were protected. Lieutenant Wheeler and his main party commanded by Lieutenant David A. Lyle of the Second Artillery, with an escort of the Third Cavalry (Company I), supplied by the Department of California, rode into Camp Grant only a few days after the word of the Wickenburg Massacre had been received. They were on their way from Camp Apache to Tucson; had been exploring since the middle of May, and were pretty well worn out. They had found many of the Indians met to be rude and insolent, but―――― “No, they never attacked us,” said Lieutenant Lyle. “And now, to think that they’ve killed poor Loring, when he was all through and was going home! He had his hair cut very short, on his road out, and laughed when he claimed that the Apaches would never be able to take _his_ scalp.” “One drop of that fine young man’s blood was worth more to the United States than the whole Apache race is,” declared Lieutenant Wheeler. “In my opinion, the peace policy of forbidding a military campaign that shall drive the Apaches in upon the reservations is encouraging them to commit such outrages. The Indian question in Arizona will never be settled until the campaigns of an energetic officer shall thoroughly whip and subdue them.”