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No matter how many murders and robberies he actually committed, California's most notorious bandit cast a wide shadow on the gold rush. But it is hard to catch a shadow
Like the American Forty-Niners, Joaquin Murrieta came to California to mine for gold. He found it near Sonora, the Tuolumne County town founded by fellow miners from the Mexican state of Sonora. His claim was rich, and some greedy American prospectors reportedly decided to drive him away. Murrieta (or Murieta) went without putting up a fight. Then, around April 1850, he found another claim nearby to work. Again he struck gold. This time two Irish-American FortyNiners asked him to leave. Paying a foreign miner's tax was bad enough, but losing another productive claim was intolerable. The young Mexican refused the demand, and a fight ensued. One of the interlopers picked up a whiskey bottle and struck Murrieta in the face, leaving a permanent scar. Not that Murrieta needed a facial scar in the months ahead to call to mind the injustice of it all or to remember the reason he chose a different path to acquire riches.
And so Joaquin Murrieta became a bandit. According to one viewpoint, he was justified in his outlaw actions because of the injustices done to him - like the legendary Zorro or equally fictitious Robin Hood. Walter Noble Burns, the same author who glorified Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid, portrayed Murrieta as a Hispanic protagonist in his 1932 book The Robin Hood of El Dorado. Even in Murrieta's own day, a segment of the population - mostly Mexicans and Californios (Hispanics who had settled in California prior to the 1846-48 Mexican War) viewed him as a rebel with a cause. After all, Californios lost much of their land and horses to Americans, and Americans drove off many other Mexican placer miners besides Murrieta, exorbitantly taxing those allowed to remain. Resentment brewed, and by 1850 vengeful young Mexicans and Californios had formed outlaw bands. Joaquín Murrieta was the most notorious of these banditos, but even many honest and hard-working Mexicans and Californios came to admire him. In truth, though, not all of Murrieta's victims were Americans, and some California residents saw Joaquín as depraved and greedy. The California...