The Legend of Joaquín Murrieta

Author: Traditional Mexican American

Time Period: 1851 CE–1900 CE

Country or Culture: North America

Genre: Legend

PLOT SUMMARY

Joaquín Carillo Murrieta is thought to have descended from a noble Basque family that relocated from Spain to Mexico early in the nineteenth century. Joaquín was born in 1830 in the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora, possibly near Alamos, a mining center. Those who claim to know him describe Joaquín as a handsome, well-spoken youth with flowing hair, flashing eyes, and impeccable manners. Joaquín falls in love with a young woman in a neighboring village, Rosa “Rosita” Féliz, and the couple run off together.

After the discovery of gold in California in early 1848, Rosa’s three brothers travel north, joining half a million others in the rush for treasure. Joaquín, his paramour, and his half brother, Jesús, also trek to California to seek their fortunes.

The Murrieta-Féliz party begins mining a potentially rich claim in the Mother Lode Country of the Sierra Nevada. To supplement their income, they round up wild mustangs to sell. In the lawless boomtown climate of the gold rush, the new immigrants soon run afoul of Anglo miners hostile to foreign intrusions. After falsely accusing Joaquín and his half brother of stealing a mule, they lynch Jesús, bind Joaquín to a tree and whip him, and force him to witness the brutal gang rape of his beloved Rosa. The incident transforms honest, hardworking Joaquín into a bloodthirsty criminal bent on taking revenge against white settlers, particularly those who humiliated him and dishonored his woman.

Joaquín and his brother-in-law Claudio Féliz, accused of horse stealing, form a band of like-minded Mexican outlaws. The gang becomes known as the Five Joaquíns for Murrieta and his companions, four of whom—surnamed Botellier, Carrillo, Ocomorenia, and Valenzuela—are also supposedly called Joaquín. The bandits embark on a campaign of terror, ruthlessly robbing other miners, holding up stagecoaches, raiding ranches to rustle livestock, and indiscriminately killing anyone who opposes them. The men involved in the rape of Rosa are tracked down, savagely knifed or dragged to their deaths, and horribly mutilated.

By 1853, Murrieta and his felonious companions have murdered forty people and committed scores of crimes throughout California. That year, the state government authorizes the creation of the California Rangers and charges a twenty-man salaried posse, under the leadership of former Texas Ranger Harry Love, to hunt down and end the depredations of the Five Joaquíns.

In July 1853, the Rangers encounter a band of Mexicans in the mountains. Harsh words are traded, leading to an exchange of gunfire. In the aftermath, several Mexicans lie dead. One, a man with a mustache, is identified as Joaquín Murrieta. Another corpse with a missing digit is thought to be a bandit called Three-Fingered Jack. The Rangers decapitate the mustachioed man, lop off the disfigured hand, and preserve the relics in brandy for transport. They collect their pay and disband. Murrieta’s head and Jack’s hand are widely exhibited before being permanently displayed in San Francisco.

To this day, it is said that on foggy nights in California’s central valleys, the ghost of Joaquín Murrieta can still occasionally be glimpsed, galloping in search of his missing head.

SIGNIFICANCE

Like all legends worthy of the designation, the story of Joaquín Murrieta is long on supposition and short on facts. The individual most responsible for establishing the legend was John Rollin Ridge (also known as Cheesquatalawny or Yellow Bird), who, in 1854, published a romanticized, highly fictionalized account, The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta. The half-Cherokee Ridge slanted the story to make the hero not a mere bandit but a noble patriot, a righter of racial wrongs.

There undoubtedly were, and are, people named Joaquín Murrieta (or Murieta or Murrietta) in both Mexico and California. Allegedly, according to church records, a boy named Joaquín Murrieta was indeed born in Sonora in 1830. Additionally, there is some historical evidence that a Joaquín Murrieta was part of a band of outlaws led by Claudio Féliz, and it is true that a head purported to belong to Murrieta was exhibited in San Francisco after 1853. However, there is no evidence that Murrieta’s wife was raped or that his brother was murdered, as the legend claims. It is far more likely that if Murrieta the bandit did exist, he was motivated simply by greed. The nineteenth-century discovery of precious minerals in the American West—in California, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, South Dakota, and elsewhere—lured starry-eyed and greedy people from around the world. Hastily built gold-rush communities were hotbeds of criminal behavior and transient violence.

California’s gold rush had an added element. Before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War (1846–48), the territory had belonged to Mexico, and tensions ran high between whites newly in control and Mexicans suddenly relegated to the status of second-class citizens. An anti-immigrant state legislature exacerbated conditions by imposing special fees on foreign miners. Nativist masters likewise blamed rampant crime on the most convenient scapegoats. Robberies and murders simultaneously committed hundreds of miles apart were all blamed on Mexican banditos and on Joaquín Murrieta in particular.

There is no question that such gangs roamed the California hills: Claudio Féliz confessed to numerous crimes before he was imprisoned, escaped, and then shot to death. There is also no doubt that the California Rangers later killed and beheaded a Mexican man. Afterward, more than a dozen people came forward to identify the dead man’s head as that of Joaquín Murrieta. However, others who knew Joaquín intimately claimed the head was not his. Some swore they had seen him alive years after his presumed death. The head is said to have been destroyed during the great San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fire of 1906.

Dead or alive, bandit or hero, the legend of Joaquín Murrieta, known as the Robin Hood of El Dorado, has provided material for countless songs, poems, plays, novels, stories, nonfiction books, articles, movies, and television shows. Murrieta’s alleged exploits may have inspired the fictional character of Zorro, and they have certainly raised Mexican American awareness and helped give impetus to the modern Chicano movement.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boessenecker, John. Gold Dust & Gunsmoke: Tales of Gold Rush Outlaws, Gunfighters, Lawmen, and Vigilantes. New York: Wiley, 1999. Print.

Crutchfield, James A., Bill O’Neal, and Dale L. Walker. Legends of the Wild West. Lincolnwood: Publications International, 1995. Print.

Johnson, Susan Lee. Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush. New York: Norton, 2000. Print.

Latta, Frank F. Joaquín Murrieta and His Horse Gangs. Exeter: Bear State, 1980. Print.

Paz, Ireneo. Life and Adventures of the Celebrated Bandit Joaquin Murrieta: His Exploits in the State of California. Trans. Francis P. Belle. Introd. Luis Leal. Houston: Arte Público, 2001. Print.

Ridge, John Rollin. “From The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta.” Gold Rush: A Literary Exploration. Ed. Michael Kowalewski. Berkeley: Heyday, 1997. 222–27. Print.

Sherman, William T. “The California Gold Rush.” Warriors and Pioneers. Ed. T. J. Stiles. New York: Perigee, 1996. 28–40. Print.

Thorton, Bruce S. Searching for Joaquín: Myth, Murieta, and History in California. San Francisco: Encounter, 2003. Print.

Wilson, Lori Lee. The Joaquín Band: The History behind the Legend. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2011. Print.