SOME IN CALIFORNIA GROANED AT THE NEWS OF STATEHOOD. The treaty transferring California to the United States had specified that land titles acquired under Spanish and Mexican law be honored under American law. But California law, and especially California practice, diverged from American law, and in an age when no federal justice department even existed, local law and practice often trumped federal law. Many Mexicans in California lost their land through unfavorable statutes of the California government, adverse rulings in California courts, or outright theft.
Mariano Vallejo, a Californio, or native-born Californian of Spanish descent, was one of the largest landowners in California at the time of the gold discovery. He was also a practical man and a forward-thinking individual. He endorsed American annexation of California even before the war with Mexico, predicting that American rule would allow California to thrive as it had never done under Mexico. “When we join our fortunes to hers, we shall not become subjects but fellow citizens, possessing all the rights of the people of the United States,” Vallejo told his fellow Californios. “We shall have a stable government and just laws. California will grow strong and flourish, and her people will be prosperous, happy, and free. Look not, therefore, with jealousy upon the hardy pioneers who scale our mountains and cultivate our unoccupied plains; but rather welcome them as brothers, who come to share with us a common destiny.”
Alas, the Americans in California didn’t reciprocate the good feeling. In 1846, just as the United States was going to war with Mexico, a group of Americans in California launched a revolt against the Mexican government there, proclaiming what they called the Bear Flag Republic. They arrested Vallejo as a symbol of the old order. He was held as a prisoner for six weeks, and contracted malaria in detention. When he was finally released, he discovered that his ranch in the Sonoma Valley had been robbed of large herds of horses and cattle. His standing crop of wheat had been stolen or simply destroyed. “All is lost,” he lamented.
In fact there was much more for Vallejo to lose. Gold-hunters took up residence on his property, helping themselves to livestock, crops and anything else not firmly tied down. Lusters after his land hired lawyers to assail him in court. Comparing the attorneys to the Sydney Ducks of San Francisco, Vallejo said, “The bandits from Australia stole our cattle and horses, but these thieves in frock coats, wrapped about with the mantle of the law, took away our lands and buildings and, with no scruple whatsoever, enthroned themselves as powerful monarchs in our houses.”
Yet Vallejo redoubled his commitment to the American way of doing things. He joined the Monterey convention as a delegate, and after Congress approved the constitution and statehood, he served as a state legislator. He donated land and money toward the construction of a state capital on a northern arm of San Francisco Bay. His gifts were accepted, but his fellow legislators chose Sacramento for their home away from home.
Vallejo’s largesse and adoptive patriotism availed him little. The courts and Congress redefined the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in a way that shifted the burden of proof of ownership to the Californios. Because records and titles under Mexican law differed substantially from their American counterparts, the Californios often found it impossible to fend off challenges. Vallejo spent many thousands of dollars in legal fees, ultimately in vain. Once a rich man, he found himself deeply in debt. Formerly the lord of a vast domain, he now held but a few miserable parcels.
Yet Vallejo retained his dignity, or tried to. “I think I will know how to be decently poor when the time comes, just as I have known how to be rich,” he said.
NOT ALL THOSE DISPOSSESSED BY THE AMERICANS WERE AS gracious as Mariano Vallejo. One who fought back violently was Joaquín Murrieta. So storied did Murrieta’s exploits become that many in California believed he was a composite of several men. He apparently didn’t mind having his powers exaggerated, the better to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies and tormentors.
Best evidence indicates that he was born in Sonora, Mexico, around 1830, and so was in his late teens when he followed the reports of gold to California in 1848 or 1849. He found enough gold to stay, even after harassment and violence against fellow Mexicans caused many to leave California and return home. Yet a series of traumatic events involving loved ones set him off on a campaign of revenge. The most common version of the Murrieta legend held that thuggish Americans raped his wife, killed his brother and horsewhipped Murrieta himself. Some of this might have been embellishment, as certainly was the part of the story that said he took his revenge only on those who had injured him, his wife or his brother.
More generally, Murrieta resented the labeling of Mexicans as “greasers” and “niggers” and their treatment as thieves for merely trying to gather gold. This attitude inspired the California legislature in 1850 to levy a tax on foreign miners. The tax was subsequently repealed, then reimposed, adding confusion to the insult Mexicans like Murrieta felt. They rejected the Americans’ assertion that Mexicans were stealing American gold, rejoining that the Americans had stolen California.
In any event, Murrieta visited his resentment on the Americans in the gold fields. Violence had been common in the region since the start of the gold rush. Crowded clusters of unattached men who carried substantial wealth on their persons were a recipe for armed robbery and the mayhem that often accompanied it. As in San Francisco, much of the crime went unpunished when those not directly harmed judged they had better uses for their time. When the crime and violence afflicted Mexicans, Chinese or other scorned minorities, the American majority felt even less incentive to intervene.
But the first months of 1853 brought an escalation of violent crime. Then as later, crime sold newspapers, and the gold-country press recounted the sprees with gusto. “For some time back, a band of robbers have been committing depredations in the southern section of our county,” a Calaveras County paper reported in January. “During the week a party of three Mexicans entered a Chinese tent at Yaqui Camp, near San Andres, and ransacked everything, despite the opposition of the inmates, carrying off two bags of gold dust, one containing $110 and the other $50.” This was just the start. “Three armed Mexicans—supposed to be the same who committed the above outrage—entered another Chinese tent in the same vicinity, assaulted its inhabitants, holding loaded pistols to their heads to keep them quiet, and robbed them of two bags of gold dust, $90 and $60. One of the Chinamen, named Ah Kop, refused to give up his money and attempted to defend himself, when one of the ruffians drew his knife and ran the unfortunate celestial through the body, causing almost instant death.” A second area paper, not to be outdone, recounted “the dreadful murders and outrages committed in the lonely gulches and solitary outposts” of the county, and identified the ringleader: “a robber named Joaquin, a very desperate man, who was concerned in the murder of four Americans some time ago at Turnersville.”
The violence intensified and the coverage grew more lurid. “We publish today the details of fourteen horrible murders, all committed within seven days, in Calaveras county,” a paper said in mid-February. “A condition of society exists in that important region far worse than that which prevailed in the early days of its settlement. No man dare travel a step unless armed to the teeth, or sleep without having fire-arms already in his grasp; life is not safe for a day and the utmost excitement prevails at every camp.”
The story reached San Francisco, where it grew the more. “Joaquin was born in the Villa de Catoce, in the department of Jalisco,” asserted The Whig. “He is aged about 35 years, and has ranked among the most crafty and daring guerrillas of Mexico. He is chief of a notorious band of robbers now infesting the vicinity of Mexico, and though living in California, has a regular chain of communication with his associates in his native country. He has been known to enter the capital cities disguised as a friar—has been arrested several times, but through the expertness and influence he wielded among the soldiery, he has been discharged. He is about six feet in height, and of immense muscular strength; is well versed in the use of arms, and in disposition cruel and sanguinary.” Most of this was wrong, but no one except Joaquín could disprove it, and he had no incentive to do so.
Soon Joaquín Murrieta began popping up everywhere. He was sighted on the Salinas River, and then suddenly as far away as San Diego. Reasonable persons concluded that he couldn’t have committed all the crimes laid to his account; unreasonable persons said he had almost superhuman powers, to travel that far that fast. He was impervious to gunfire. “When shot at, he receives the balls in the breast with a complacent smile,” a gold-country paper reported. “It has been a matter of surprise to his pursuers that the balls fired at him have no effect.” This writer was too practical to give Murrieta special powers. The bandit simply cheated. “We learn from a gentleman who shot from a short distance that he wears a coat of mail beneath his clothes. To what base use has the armor of the days of chivalry come!”
The news coverage forced local officials to order a manhunt, which made the story even better. “I have been engaged a week in hunting Mr. Joaquin and his party,” the posse leader reported. “And we had a right lively time of it after the greasers. We followed them all over the country, and, while we were on their trail, they killed and wounded 15 Chinamen and stole seven or eight thousand dollars. We got one or two chances at them, but they were so well mounted that they beat us running all to hell.”
The state legislature stepped in. The assembly appropriated funds to create a ranger squadron modeled on the Texas Rangers and headed by Harry Love, a former Ranger captain. Love mustered a company of frontier lawmen, guns-for-hire and Indian fighters. The governor of California placed a bounty of one thousand dollars on Murrieta’s head.
Love and the California Rangers chased Murrieta across gold country. They captured one of his brothers-in-law. “He says he will take and show us to Joaquin if we will release him,” Love reported. “I will try him a while to see what it will end in.”
Love’s Rangers, with the help of the prisoner—who likely inferred, not improbably, that he would meet a bad end if he did not betray his kinsman—tracked Murrieta’s gang to a wooded camp. The Rangers charged, and one of the officers spied the leader. “This is Joaquin, boys,” he shouted. “We have got him at last.”
Not quite, as a correspondent who got the story from the Rangers recounted. “At the mention of the word Joaquín, seeing that he was recognized, the Mexicans threw off their cloaks and serapes and commenced firing and retreating. Joaquín, himself, was unarmed, having evidently just been awakened from a sound sleep, and in his hurry to get his horse forgot his weapons. However, he made a bold dash for the animal, jumped upon him unsaddled, hastily threw his lariat over the animal’s nose and leaped down off the bluff, 14 or 15 feet in height, into the dry bed of the creek. One of the rangers followed him immediately down the bank and another down the side of the creek to cut him off. They had fired at him several times but without effect, and seeing that there was a danger of his escaping, they aimed at the animal and succeeded in bringing him down. Joaquin then commenced running, and had gone some thirty yards when he received two shots, and as he was falling cried No tire mas, yo soy muerte—Don’t shoot any more, for I’m dead. He immediately expired.”
Harry Love was a professional man-hunter. To reassure the citizens of California that he had got Murrieta, and to make certain he and his men received the bounty, he cut off Murrieta’s head. Lacking a better preservative, he soaked it in a jar of whiskey.
The head persuaded the governor to pay up. And it convinced the papers that Joaquín Murrieta had met his end. Crime in the gold country didn’t cease, but it was ascribed to lesser mortals. Murrieta began to appear in dime novels that cast him as the Robin Hood of El Dorado.
His pickled head became a curio in itself. To the soberly law-abiding, it was a symbol of justice vindicated. To Mexicans it represented a martyred hero. The last of Joaquín Murrieta finally rested in a San Francisco museum, where it gathered dust until the 1906 earthquake and fire, after which it was never seen again.