Gold! (21 page)

“The poor devil, doubtless frightened so badly that he would hardly know one moment what he had said from the moment previous, was held strictly accountable for any and all contradictions. If not satisfactorily explained, he was invariably taken by the wise heads of the said committee to be conclusive evidence of guilt.”

Bell had walked into the Spanish Inquisition, California style. Six men were being tried, all Sonorans, except one, Felipe Read, whose mother was an Indian, and whose father was a Scotchman. All claimed, of course,
to be innocent. Finally one Reyes Feliz, made a confession. He was probably under the hypothesis that hanging would be preferable to such inquisitorial torture as was being practiced on him by the seven wise men of the Angels.

“Reyes said in his confession that he and his brother-in-law, Joaquin Murieta, with a few followers, had, about a year previous, ran [sic] off the horses of Jim Thompson from the Brea ranch, and succeeded in getting them as far as the Tejon, then exclusively inhabited by Indians.”

After that, Zapatero, the Tejon chief, recognized Jim Thompson's brand and arrested the whole party, some dozen in all, men and women, and stripped them all stark naked. Zapatero tied them up and had them whipped half to death. He finally turned them loose to shift for themselves in the best way they could.

“Fortunately for the poor outcasts, they fell in with an American of kindred sympathies, who did what he could to relieve the distress of the forlorn thieves, who continued their way as best they could toward the Southern Mines on the Stanislaus and Tuolumne [rivers], no mining being done south of those points at that time. In the meantime, brave old Zapatero, who was every inch a chief, sent Thompson's herd back to him—an act for which I hope Jim is to this day duly grateful.”

While the confession was being given by Reyes, his brother-in-law Joaquin Murieta was walking around as unconcerned as any other gentleman—as he should have been. If he had received the flogging from the chief, there would have been scars on his back. But there were none; Reyes had lied.

Murieta was of proud Mexican heritage. He had come to America to try his hand in the mines; he was looking forward to making his fortune. Unfortunately, his brother-in-law had been a coward, and that changed Joaquin's life forever. Tipped off that “the minions of the mob” were coming “to lay heavy hand upon him, he was gone.” Joaquin Murieta was not going to sit around and wait for the Anglos to hang him.

In Los Angeles as well as in all of California, rustling was a hanging offense. According to Bell, “From that day until the day of his death, Joaquin Murieta was an outlaw and the terror of the southern counties. Until that [Reyes] confession, he stood in this community with as good a character as any other Mexican of his class.”

Like Victor Hugo's Jean Valjean (whom Murieta may very well have inspired in the author's
Les Misérable
), Murieta became a fugitive on the run. He escaped to northern California, where he made the acquaintance of A. D. Hobson. Born in Yadkin County on the Yadkin River in East Bend, North Carolina in 1825, A. D. Hobson was of English and Welsh ancestry that went back to pre-Revolutionary times.

“In the spring of May 25, 1850, A. D. Hobson and Stephen Hobson in the company of five other young men, including David Hobson, brother of A. D. Hobson, Robert Spainhauer, and Stephen Potter, outfitted with mule teams and light wagons to join the Gold Rush to California,” A. D.'s son James Cornelius Hobson, later wrote.

“On reaching Salt Lake City, the Hobson party who
were becoming short of means, decided to stop and work for a while in the Mormon town, where they disposed of their equipment. Alfred D. Hobson did some brick work for the wife of Brigham Young, while other members of the party found various other employment in the embryo city.

“Father said that the people in the city treated them very kindly. When preparing to leave Salt Lake City, the party equipped themselves with saddle horses and pack mules in order to travel lighter and make better time on their way to California.

“One man in the Hobson party had previously made the overland trip across the Plains to California. This man was chosen captain of the company on account of his familiarity with the route over which they traveled. When the party reached the edge of an 80 mile desert, the Humboldt Sink in Nevada, the captain of the party advised all members to cut a supply of grass and carry it along as fodder for the animals and to supply themselves with canteens of water as they were to start across the desert at nightfall. They would make a forced march, endeavoring to make the trip in one day and night, which was done.

“My Father having a brother, George Hobson, living in San Jose who had preceded him to Californian, went directly there to visit his brother. While there he provisioned and with his cousins, Stephen and Jesse Hobson who lived in San Jose, went to the southern mines locating a mining claim near Shaws Flat on the Tuolumne River. There, they were very successful in mining.”

The mining camps were nothing more than canvas tents and shacks against the elements. With no sewage system, with men using the same groundwater for drinking as well as for defecating and urinating, cholera ran rampant. It was one great muddy sore of a hole in the ground, sitting on top of what looked like the biggest cache of gold in history.

“The mining claims adjoining that of the Hobson claims were owned and operated by a young Spaniard by the name of Joaquin Murieta, a fine looking affable fellow who often paid a pleasant visit to the Hobson cabin. Murieta had a very well paying claim,” James Hobson continued.

Murieta established his claim after fleeing north from Los Angeles. But before too long, the Foreign Miners License Tax was imposed on Murieta. That plus the governor's first “dibs” edict forced Murieta off his claim. Whether Murieta was married at this point is unclear. Some versions of his life have Murieta married, his wife raped by the gringos, his claim stolen, and him beaten up. Married or not, beaten or not, subsequent events make it very clear that Murieta, to put it mildly, had had enough.

Horace Bell takes up the story.

“In the spring of 1853, Murieta commenced a succession of bold and successful operations [robberies] in the southern mines, beginning at San Andres in Calaveras County. His acts were so bold and daring, and attended with such remarkable success, that he drew to him all the Mexican outlaws, cut-throats and thieves that infested the country extending from San Diego to Stockton.

“No one will deny the assertion that Joaquin in his
organizations, and the successful ramifications of his various bands, his eluding capture, the secret intelligence conveyed from points remote from each other, manifested a degree of executive ability and genius that well fitted him for a more honorable position than that of chief of a band of robbers.”

On about March I, Murieta commenced his raids in Calaveras County, by the murder and robbery of teamsters and traveling miners. Emboldened by success, in April, trading posts and mining camps were raided and robbed. Stages were captured, the passengers robbed and murdered. Murieta even managed to pirate a ship on the San Joaquin River, capturing and stripping it, “in open daylight. He raided up and down the coast, slicing the throats of anyone with a hint of gold dust in their satchel or anything else of value.

“By the middle of May, the whole country from Stockton and San Jose to Los Angeles, a distance of 500 miles, was in arms. Murder and rapine were the order of the day. The bandits seemed to be everywhere, and to strike when and where least expected.”

Murieta also traveled the road between Truckee, California, and Lake Tahoe. He would stop at Clinkenbeard's Road House for food and drink, where Clinkenbeard's young son would wait on him. It was like that all over wherever he rode—people
liked
Joaquin Murieta. That was the essential element of his popularity. Though barely twenty-three years old, Murieta had already become so famous that others were imitating his depredations.

Rallying to Murieta's banner came four other men; all
were bandits, and all had the first name of Joaquin. They, too, commenced raiding the southern mines. But none seems to have had Murieta's panache; his ability to appear and disappear at whim; and his intelligence network, which helped him consistently avoid capture and remain one step ahead of pursuing posses.

Finally, newly elected civilian governor John W. Bigler had had enough. Showing how ruthless the state could be in stopping violence without taking into ethical consideration the means employed, Bigler got the state legislature to commission $1,500 to hire gunfighter Harry Love, a former Texas Ranger, to raise a posse and bring in, dead or alive, the “party or gang of robbers commanded by the five Joaquins: Joaquin Botellier, Joaquin Carrillo, Joaquin Murieta, Joaquin Ocomorenia, and Joaquin Valenzuela.”

These men were believed to be responsible for the majority of all cattle rustling, robberies, and murders perpetrated in the mother lode region since 1850. While all five engaged in cattle rustling, robberies, and murders, Murieta was the principal target because it was he who inspired the Mexicans, Spanish and Californios.

Love and his group of gunfighters were perhaps the first group of licensed American mercenaries assembled to kill men on American soil. They called themselves the California Rangers. It sounded better than hired guns or hired assassins. Showing a nascent public relations propensity, Love penned weekly columns on the rangers and their unrelenting search for Murieta, making them out to be the lawful scourge of the California frontier.

Love would later claim that in 1853, he and his rangers tangled with a group of Mexicans near Panoche Pass in San Benito County. The pass is more than a hundred miles from the mother lode region, which immediately cast doubt on Love's story. He said that during his standoff with the Mexicans, the rangers managed to kill two of them. The rangers then cut off the head of one and the hand of the other, placing these body parts in jars filled with alcohol.

When they got back to Sacramento, Love claimed it was the head of Joaquin Murieta and the hand of Murieta's equally famous lieutenant, “Three-Fingered Jack.” There was no positive identification, and subsequent examination of the head by people who knew Murieta led all of them to claim it wasn't Murieta at all.

To the governor and the legislature, it made no difference. They had a head, they had a hand, the matter was settled; Joaquin Murieta was dead and so was Three-Fingered Jack. Not only did Love and his posse get the $1,500 as promised, but also the state legislature voted them another $5,000 in grateful appreciation of their services. Soon after, the deprivations of the Five Joaquins ceased, leading most to assume that Murieta's head was pickling in that alcohol jar.

Within a year, the truth of Murieta's life was irrevocably distorted. In 1854, a fictionalized version of Murieta's life was published that most took as fact. Horace Bell, though, sized up Murieta's place in California history quite accurately:

“In any country in America except the United States,
the bold defiance of the power of the government, a half year's successful resistance, a continuous conflict with the military and civil authorities and the armed populace, in any other country in America other than the United States, the operations of Joaquin Murieta would have been dignified by the title of revolution, and the leader with that of rebel chief.

“For there is little doubt that Joaquin's aims were higher than that of mere revenge and pillage. Educated in the school of revolution in his own country, where the line of demarkation [sic] between rebel and robber, pillager and patriot was dimly defined, it is easy to perceive that Joaquin felt himself to be more the champion of his countrymen than an outlaw and an enemy to the human race.”

Murieta was the first of a true American archetype, but because of his Mexican and Spanish ancestry, he received his due only among his own people. He was a true rebel, an angry young man with a cause. His nearest successor in the next decade would be Jesse James.

The Mexicans had Murieta, the Chinese had unions, the Indians had.… no one.

Indians were discriminated against all over the United States, usually by forcing them off valuable lands that they owned by native right, onto reservations where they were herded and fed like pent-up cattle. In California, it was worse.

Organized civilian campaigns, sometimes with the support of the military, were organized against the Indians. Massacres and murders of Indians without
impunity, were common events during the Gold Rush years. Miners regularly attacked Indians for the simple reason that they were Indians.

Prior to 1848, Indians outnumbered whites and Hispanics in California. There were approximately 150,000 Indians in the state. By the early 1850s, the white man was in the majority. By 1870, the former number had dwindled to 30,000. It would later be estimated that between 1848 and 1880, whites killed, conservatively, 100,000 Indians. The rest were felled by disease, starvation, and being worked to death.

After the discovery of gold by Marshall, there weren't enough people to work the diggings. The miners adopted a modified version of the Spanish/Mexican practice of peonage. Slavery may have been outlawed, but forced labor wasn't. The state legislature gave it the imprimatur of law.

In 1850 it passed the “Act for the Government and Protection of the Indians.” It was actually a law that allowed any American to indenture an Indian for work. Indians were forced into work as indentured servants in the mines and on the ranchos.

Fall and winter, when it was hardest to get miners, that's when the white miners liked to conduct their Indian hunts. They were hunted down by the miners and taken forcibly, under the law, to the diggings, where they were put to work. They did not receive wages, they did not receive clothing, only food and a damp blanket to sleep on at night.

A favorite technique for getting the most work out of them was to hold back on the food, a carrot-and-stick
approach. The harder the Indian worked, the less food he received, all the time thinking he would get more. Finally, many just keeled over from starvation, overwork, exhaustion. It seemed that everyone, north or south, east or west, rich or poor, Protestant or Catholic, everyone hated the Indian.