Earp Vendetta Ride - South Pass Shooting

South Pass Shooting

On the morning of March 22, a portion of the Earp posse including Wyatt, Warren, Doc Holliday, Sherman McMaster and "Turkey Creek" Johnson rode into Spence's woodcutting camp in the South Pass in the Dragoon Mountains, looking for Spence. Unknown to the Earp posse, Pete Spence was in jail, but at the wood camp, the Earp posse found Florentino "Indian Charlie" Cruz. The Arizona Weekly Star had previously identified "Florentino Saiz as "the 1878 murderer of two U.S. Marshals", and they may have been the same person. According to witnesses in the wood camp, as the Earp posse arrived, Cruz ran and the Earp posse chased him, firing several shots, then a final shot. Earp told his biographer Lake that he got Cruz to confess to being the lookout, and that he identified Stilwell, Hank Swilling, "Curly Bill" and Johnny Ringo as Morgan's killers. After the confession, Wyatt Earp shot Cruz, telling his biographer J. H. Flood that he had given Cruz a pistol, and told him to draw. The coroner's inquest identified him as Florentino Cruz. Dr. George Goodfellow testified that he found that Cruz had a minor wound to his arm, a wound in his thigh, a serious wound in his groin and pelvis, and a shot in the side of his head. The coroner thought either of the last two shots would have been fatal.