Joaquin Murrieta

Joaquin Murrieta Carrillo (c. 1829 – July 25, 1853) is a Mexican figure whose historical reality is uncertain. He has been called the Robin Hood of the West or the Robin Hood of El Dorado. The main source for his story is a 1854 novel by John Rollin Ridge, The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit. During the California gold rush of the 1850s, stories spread about a notorious outlaw, but hard evidence for a real Murrieta is thin.

A court record from 1852 mentions a minor horse thief with that name. Around the same time, newspapers wrote about a bandido named Joaquin who robbed and killed several people. A California Ranger, Harry Love, was sent to find Murrieta and reportedly brought back his head to claim the reward.

The popular legend says Murrieta was a forty-niner, a gold miner, and a vaquero from Sonora. In the story, his brother was hanged, Murrieta was horse-whipped, and his young wife was raped—in one version, she died in his arms. Swearing revenge, he hunted down the men who hurt her and began a short, violent career killing Anglo tormentors. The state of California offered a reward of up to $5,000 for him, dead or alive.

Controversy over his life

Controversy surrounds nearly everything about Murrieta. Historian Susan Lee Johnson noted that so many tales have grown up around him that it is hard to separate fact from fiction. There seems to be general agreement that Anglos drove him from a rich mining claim, and that soon after, his wife was raped, his half-brother lynched, and Murrieta horse-whipped. He may have worked as a monte dealer for a time, and then, depending on the version, became either a horse trader and occasional horse thief, or a bandit.

John Rollin Ridge, a grandson of Cherokee leader Major Ridge, wrote the dime novel about Murrieta. This fictional account built the legend, especially after it was translated into several European languages. A portion of Ridge’s novel was reprinted in 1858 in the California Police Gazette.

That story was later translated into French. The French version was then translated into Spanish by Roberto Hyenne, who changed every reference from “Mexican” to “Chilean.” Because Chileans were so visible in California, the term “Chilean” came to mean any Spanish-speaking non-European, often associated with a “bronze-coloured” skin tone. Early 20th-century writer Johnston McCulley is said to have based his character Don Diego de la Vega—better known as Zorro in his 1919 novel—on Ridge’s 1854 novel about Murrieta.

Early life and education

Most biographical sources say Murrieta was born in Hermosillo, in the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora. Historian Frank Forrest Latta, who wrote Joaquín Murrieta and His Horse Gangs (1980) after decades of research, claimed Murrieta came from the Pueblo de Murrieta on the Rancho Tapizuelas, across the Cuchujaqui River (locally called the Arroyo de [los] Álamos). This was north of Casanate, in southeastern Sonora near the Sinaloa border, in what is now the Álamos Municipality. Murrieta was educated at a school nearby in El Salado.

1849 migration to California

Murrieta reportedly went to California in 1849 to seek his fortune in the Gold Rush. His older Carrillo stepbrother, Joaquin Manuel Carrillo Murrieta, was already in California and had written him about the discovery of gold, urging him to come. Like many Sonorans, Murrieta and a party that included his new wife Rosa Feliz traveled across the Altar and Colorado Deserts in 1849. This large family expedition included his younger brother Jesus Murrieta; his other Carrillo stepbrother Jesus Carrillo Murrieta; three Feliz brothers-in-law (Claudio, Reyes, and Jesus); two Murrieta cousins (Joaquin Juan and Martin); four Valenzuela cousins (including Joaquin, Theodoro, and Jesus); two Duarte cousins (Antonio and Manuel); and a few other men from Pueblo de Murrieta or nearby.

Five Joaquins Gang

In the rough mining camps, Murrieta faced prejudice and hostility. According to the dime novel by John Rollin Ridge, while he was mining for gold, American miners jealous of his success supposedly attacked him and his wife, beating him and raping her. This is the only source for that account.

Historian Latta wrote that Murrieta formed a gang with well-organized bands, one led by himself and the others by trusted Sonoran relatives. Latta documented that the core of these men gathered to help Murrieta kill at least six Americans who had lynched his stepbrother Jesus Carrillo and whipped him on a false charge of stealing a mule. The gang began illegal horse trading 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, using the remote La Vereda del Monte trail through the Diablo Range, then south to Sonora for sale. At other times, the bands robbed and killed miners or American settlers, especially those returning from the goldfields. The gang is believed to have killed up to 28 Chinese and 13 Anglo-Americans, based on accounts of their raids in early 1853.

By 1853, the California state legislature listed Murrieta as one of the so-called “Five Joaquins,” suspected criminals named in a bill passed in May 1853.