Legends subsequently arose about a notorious outlaw in California during the California Gold Rush of the 1850s, but evidence for a historical Murrieta is scarce. Contemporary documents record testimony in 1852 concerning a minor horse thief of that name.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Newspapers reported a bandido named Joaquin, who robbed and killed several people during the same time. A California Ranger named Harry Love was assigned to track down Murrieta and was said to have brought his head in for the bounty.<ref>Template:Cite thesis</ref>
The popular legend of Joaquin Murrieta was that he was a forty-niner, a gold miner and a vaquero (cowboy) from Sonora. His brother was hanged and Murrieta was horse-whipped. His young wife was raped, and in one version, she died in Murrieta's arms. Swearing revenge, he hunted down the men who had violated her. He embarked on a short but violent career to kill his Anglo tormentors. The state of California offered a reward up to $5,000 for Murrieta, "dead or alive."
Controversy surrounds the figure of Joaquin Murrieta—who he was, what he did, and many of his life's events. Historian Susan Lee Johnson says:
"So many tales have grown up around Murrieta that it is hard to disentangle the fabulous from the factual. There seems to be a consensus that Anglos drove him from a rich mining claim, and that, in rapid succession, his wife was raped, his half-brother lynched, and Murrieta himself horse-whipped. He may have worked as a monte dealer for a time; then, according to whichever version one accepts, he became either a horse trader and occasional horse thief, or a bandit."<ref name="Scholar"/>
John Rollin Ridge, grandson of Cherokee leader Major Ridge, wrote a dime novel about Murrieta. This fictional account contributed to his legend, especially as it was translated into various European languages. A portion of Ridge's novel was reprinted in 1858 in the California Police Gazette. This story was picked up and subsequently translated into French. The French version was translated into Spanish by Roberto Hyenne, who took Ridge's original story and changed every "Mexican" reference to "Chilean". Given the strong presence of Chileans and their visibility, in California the term "Chilean" garnered a wider meaning often including any Spanish-speaking non-European nationality and usually associated with a "bronze-coloured" skin tone.<ref name=consulate>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Early 20th-century writer Johnston McCulley was said to have based his character Don Diego de la Vega—better known as Zorro in his 1919 novel of that name—on Ridge's 1854 novel about Murrieta.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Early life and education
Most biographical sources hold that Murrieta was born in Hermosillo<ref name="Scholar">"Review: Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush", American Scholar, January 1, 2000, p. 142 Vol. 69 No. 1 Template:ISSN.</ref> in the northwestern state of Sonora, Mexico. Historian Frank Forrest Latta wrote Joaquín Murrieta and His Horse Gangs (1980) based on decades of investigation of the Murrieta family in Sonora, California, and Texas. He said that Murrieta was from the Pueblo de Murrieta on the Rancho Tapizuelas, across the Cuchujaqui River (known locally as the Arroyo de [los] Álamos). This was north of Casanate, in the southeast of Sonora and near the Sinaloa border, within what is now the Álamos Municipality, of Sonora.<ref name=Latta/>Template:Rp Murrieta was educated at a school nearby in El Salado.<ref name=Latta/>Template:Rp
Murrieta reportedly went to California in 1849 to seek his fortune in the California Gold Rush.<ref name="Scholar" /> His older Carrillo stepbrother Joaquin Manuel Carrillo Murrieta, who was already in California, had written him about the discovery of gold and urged him to come. Like many Sonorans, Murrieta and a party including his new wife Rosa Feliz, traveled there across the Altar and Colorado Deserts in 1849. This large family expedition included Joaquin's younger brother (Jesus Murrieta); Jesus Carrillo Murrieta, his other Carrillo stepbrother; three Feliz brothers-in-law (Claudio, Reyes, and Jesus); two Murrieta cousins (Joaquin Juan and Martin Murrieta; four Valenzuela cousins (including Joaquin, Theodoro, and Jesus Valenzuela); two Duarte cousins (Antonio and Manuel); and a few other men from Pueblo de Murrieta or nearby.<ref name=Latta/>Template:Rp
Five Joaquins Gang
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Murrieta encountered prejudice and hostility in the extreme competition of the rough mining camps. While mining for gold, his wife and he were supposedly attacked by American miners jealous of his success.<ref name="Scholar" /> They allegedly beat him and raped his wife. However, the only source for this account was a dime novel, The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta, written by John Rollin Ridge and published in 1854.<ref name="Scholar" />
Historian Latta wrote that Murrieta formed a gang, with well-organized bands, one led by himself and the rest led by one or two of his trusted Sonoran relatives. Latta documented that the core of these men had gathered to help Murrieta kill at least six of the Americans who had lynched his stepbrother Jesus Carrillo and whipped him on the false charge of the theft of a mule. The gang began to engage in illegal horse trade with Mexico, using stolen horses and legally captured mustangs. They drove herds of stolen horses from as far north as Contra Costa County, the gold camps of the Sierras, and the Central Valley via the remote La Vereda del Monte trail through the Diablo Range, then south to Sonora for sale.<ref name=Latta>Frank F. Latta, Joaquin Murrueta and His Horse Gangs, Santa Cruz, California: Bear State Books,1980. xv, 685 pages.Template:ISBN?</ref>Template:Rp
At other times, the bands robbed and killed miners or American settlers, particularly those returning from the California goldfields.<ref>Latta, Joaquin Murrieta, p. 43 – Note: The author's uncle may have been one of their victims. Samuel N. Latta disappeared after mailing a letter to his wife and daughters from Robinson's Ferry, saying he had sold his gold claim and in a few days was going to Stockton and San Francisco to arrange for his return to Arkansas with $8,000 in gold.</ref><ref name="joaquin-murrieta-slept-here">Template:Cite web</ref> The gang is believed to have killed up to 28 Chinese and 13 Anglo-Americans.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> This figure is based on accounts of their raids in early 1853.
The state paid the California Rangers $150 a month, and promised them a $1,000 governor's reward if they captured the wanted men. On July 25, 1853, a group of rangers encountered a band of armed Mexican men near Arroyo de Cantua on the edge of the Diablo Range near Coalinga. In the confrontation, three of the Mexicans were killed. The rangers claimed one of the dead was Murrieta, and another Manuel Garcia, also known as Three-Fingered Jack, one of his most notorious associates.<ref name="joaquin-murrieta-slept-here" /> Two others were captured.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
A California Historical Landmark plaque has been installed near Coalinga at the intersection of State Routes 33 and 198 to mark the approximate site of the incident.<ref>#344</ref>
As proof of the outlaws' deaths, the Rangers cut off the hand of Three-Fingered Jack, and the alleged head of Murrieta. They preserved these in a jar of alcohol to bring to the authorities to claim their reward.<ref name="Scholar" /><ref name="joaquin-murrieta-slept-here" /> Officials displayed the jar of remains in Mariposa County, Stockton,<ref name="tessa2.lapl/101082" /> and San Francisco. The rangers took the display throughout California; spectators could pay $1 to see the relics.
Love and his rangers received the $1,000 reward money. In August 1853, an anonymous Los Angeles-based man wrote to the San Francisco Alta California Daily, claiming that Love and his rangers had murdered some innocent Mexican mustang catchers, and bribed people to swear out affidavits as to their identities.<ref>"The Head of Joaquin Murieta not Taken – A Strange Story", Alta California, August 23, 1853, p. 2,</ref> On May 28, 1854, the California State Legislature voted to reward the Rangers with another $5,000 (~$Template:Format price in Template:Inflation/year) for their defeat of Murrieta and his band.<ref name="Rangers">WPA, "California State Rangers: History", 1940, California State Military Museum, accessed August 7, 2011</ref>
Some 25 years later, myths began to form about Murrieta. In 1879, O. P. Stidger reportedly heard Murrieta's sister say that the displayed head was not her brother's.<ref>*The Pioneer, Sat., November 29, 1879.
</ref> At around the same time, numerous sightings were reported of Murrieta as a middle-aged man. These were never confirmed. His preserved head was destroyed during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fire.
Murrieta's nephew, known as Procopio, became one of California's most notorious bandits of the 1860s and 1870s. He was said to have wanted to exceed the reputation of his uncle.
For some political activists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Murrieta has symbolized Mexican resistance against White Anglo-Saxon Protestant domination of California, as Spanish colonists, Native Americans, mixtos, and independent Mexicans were there first. The "Association of Descendants of Joaquin Murrieta" says that Murrieta was not a "gringo eater", but "He wanted to retrieve the part of Mexico that was lost at that time in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo" (after the Mexican-American War).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Representations in media
File:JoaquinMurrieta-headflyer-02.jpg"The head of the renowned bandit Joaquin Murrieta to be exhibited...at the Stockton House on August 19, 1853. Ignacio Lisarraga of Sonora has given a sworn statement authenticating the identity of the head"<ref name="tessa2.lapl/101082">Template:Cite web</ref>
Joaquin Murrieta has been used frequently as a romantic outlaw figure in novels, stories, and comics, and in films and TV series.
Yellow Bird (John Rollin Ridge), The Life and Adventures of JOAQUIN MURIETA, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1955. With introduction by Joseph Henry Jackson, a reprint of the only known copy of the 1854 original book by John Rollin Ridge.
Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda's play Fulgor y Muerte de Joaquín Murieta, (tr. The Splendor and Death of Joaquin Murieta by Ben Belitt, 1972)
Robert Gaillard, L'Homme aux Mains de Cuir (The Man with the Leather Hands) (1963 in French)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Alexei Rybnikov and Pavel Grushko's opera, Звезда и смерть Хоакина Мурьеты (Zvezda i smert' Khoakina Mur'ety – The Star and Death of Joaquin Murieta), 1976, is based on Pablo Neruda's play.
"The California Trail" by Ralph Compton, a small part in chapters 22 and 23
In Sunset Specters by Gary Jonas, the purported head of Joaquin Murrieta was preserved in a jar at Doctor Jordan’s Museum of Horrors in San Francisco in the late-1800s.
Jeffrey J. Mariotte and Peter Murrieta, Blood and Gold: The Legend of Joaquin Murrieta (2021). Written by one of Murrieta's own descendants, the novel tells the story of how Joaquin Murrieta grew to become a legend.
Film, radio, and TV
Timeless, United States NBC TV series, Season 2, Episode.11, "Miracle of Christmas p.1-2, Season Finale, Dec.20, 2018, TV-PG, 2 hours runtime, <ref>Joaquin Murietta</ref> During Part 1., Murrieta is played by Paul Lincoln Alayo. He assists the Team to obtain Gold at the onset of the California Goldrush<ref>California Goldrush</ref>*
Rawhide, United States CBS TV Series, May 3, 1963, episode "Incident of White Eyes" with Nehemiah Persoff as Domingo, suspected to be Joaquin Murrieta
The Man Behind the Gun, (1953 film) Murrieta aids an undercover army officer fight insurrectionists who want Southern California to secede and become a slave state in 1850s Los Angeles. Robert Cabal as Joaquin Murrieta
Death Valley Days, long running television and radio Western anthology series, episodes "I Am Joaquin" (1955) with Cliff Fields (credited as Field) as Murrieta; and "Eagle in the Rocks" (1960) with Ricardo Montalbán playing Murrieta.
Faces of Death II, 1981 fake documentary film about death. Murrieta's head in the jar was believed to have survived the earthquake, and was sold to different collectors; its current "owner" has it on display, and explains the legend. However, the head is a wax fake that was formerly on display in the now-closed Almaden Museum in San Jose.
The Mask of Zorro (1998 film) features a youthful Joaquin Murrieta and his death at the hands of Captain Harrison Love (A Fictionalized version of Murrieta's real killer Harry Love). Joaquin's fictional brother Alejandro (Antonio Banderas) assumes the role of Zorro, and kills Love in revenge. Victor Rivers played Joaquin and Matt Letscher played Capt. Love.
Murrieta is referenced in CSI S05E12 "Snakes" by a suspect claiming to be his descendant and therefore protected by him.
Behind The Mask of Zorro (2005) a History Channel documentary about Murrieta and how he inspired the character of Zorro.
The Head of Joaquin Murrieta, (2015) PBS short-documentary. As producer John Valadez seeks the head of Murrieta, and seeks to bury it.
Timeless, (2018) in the first half of the two-part series finale "The Miracle of Christmas". Murrieta is played by Paul Lincoln Alayo.<ref>Template:Cite news
"Cueca de Joaquín Murieta" recorded by both Víctor Jara and Quilapayún, in the style of Chile's national dance, the cueca – the song is featured on the album X Vietnam
"Premonición de la Muerte de Joaquin Murieta" (Premonition of the death of Joaquin Murieta), a tribute to Murrieta, performed by Quilapayún – the song is featured on the album Quilapayun Chante Neruda
In the late 20th century a Los Angeles Chicano community center was named Centro Joaquin Murrieta de Aztlan.<ref name="communityarts">Template:Cite report</ref>
Yellow Bird (John Rolin Ridge), The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, University of Oaklahoma Press, Norman, 1955. With introduction by Joseph Henry Jackson, a reprint of the only known copy of the 1854 original book by John Rolin Ridge.
Jackson, Joseph Henry, Bad Company, The Story of California's Legendary and Actual Stage-Robbers, Bandits, Highwaymen, and Outlaws, from the Fifties to the Eighties. Reprint of the first edition, published in 1939. Bison Books, 1977.
Frank F. Latta, Joaquin Murrieta and His Horse Gangs, Bear State Books, Santa Cruz, California. 1980. xv, 685 pages. Illustrated with numerous photos. Index. Photographic front endpapers.
Varley, James F., The Legend of Joaquin Murrieta, California's Gold Rush Bandit, Big Lost River Press, Twin Falls, ID, 1995. Includes the California Gazette, February 21, 1852, Confession of Teodor Vasquez in Appendix A.
Seacrest, William B., The Man From The Rio Grande: A Biography of Harry Love, Leader of the California Rangers who tracked down Joaquin Murrieta, The Arthur H. Clark Company, Spokane, 2005. Includes a very extensive account of the outlaws career including many quotes drawn from period news sources and personal accounts.
Wilson, Lori Lee, The Joaquin Band, The History behind the Legend, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2011.
Iddings, Ray, Joaquin Murrieta, The True Story from News Reports of the Period, Create Space, 2016. Includes military reports and news reports from 1846–1931.
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