by Sarah A. Peterson-Camacho

“The Weekly Alta has recently begun the publication of the story of Joaquin Murrieta, revised. The story is more attractive in its new form than ever before, and the publishers have been unable to supply the demand for back numbers.” —The Santa Barbara Times, Saturday, November 26, 1870, p. 2

His infamy as the Golden State’s most notorious outlaw would outlive him by centuries—and the California press had no qualms embellishing indisputable fact into pure fiction.

A legend in his own time, Joaquin Murrieta had become more of a Gold Rush myth than any flesh-and-blood man less than two decades after his alleged 1853 assassination and beheading at the hands of the California Rangers—an admission made public by The Santa Barbara Times near the end of 1870.

And in the decades that followed, the epic narrative culminating in his larger-than-life demise would become a California folk tale for the ages—and a chilling chapter in the haunted annals of Golden State ghost lore … that of California’s very own Headless Horseman…

It all began with the California Gold Rush.

Born around 1828 in Trincheras, Sonora, Mexico—one of seven sons and three daughters born to Juan Murrieta and Juana Orozco—Joaquin Murrieta was a 20-year-old newlywed when gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in California, on Monday, January 24, 1848. His older brother Jose Jesus was the first of the Murrietas to head north for Gold Country, to commence with prospecting and make his fortune.

The Sonoran family had mostly avoided the tumultuous Mexican-American War—started in 1846 when the United States Army invaded Mexico, and ending in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on Wednesday, February 2, 1848. With the so-called peace treaty, Mexico lost roughly 55% of its territory, including: California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming.

But the treaty coincided with the discovery of gold, and racial tensions ran high as everyone descended into the Mother Lode simultaneously. Gold Fever proved to be contagious by 1849, and soon Jose Jesus Murrieta “wrote a letter to his younger brother Joaquin,” inviting “Joaquin and his younger brothers to come to prospect for gold” (Garza 8).

Excited by the twin prospects of first-time fatherhood and riches beyond his wildest dreams (his wife Carmen Feliz was newly pregnant with their first child), 21-year-old Joaquin Murrieta headed north for California with his wife, three of his other brothers, and some of his Sonoran cousins, friends, and neighbors. Soon they had settled in Niles Canyon with Jose Jesus.

The Murrietas established a gold claim in no time at all, but just as speedily, they were claim-jumped. At this point, “his former neighbors and friends from Sonora, the Valenzuelas, gave up prospecting and commenced a very lucrative business of capturing wild mustangs in the San Joaquin Valley and herding them to Mexico. The Murrieta brothers and cousins also quit the mining business and became merchants, hauling and selling supplies to the miners in the Mother Lode…

“But Joaquin’s gold fever was too strong, and this … compelled him to try his luck again; he headed for the Mother Lode, accompanied by his wife and three of his brothers, including Jose Jesus. They struck a placer and were working their rich claim at Murphy’s Diggings…

“The mustang-running business was generating plenty of cash; the business of providing supplies to the miners via mule train was prospering; and their claim was yielding plenty of gold dust. Jose Jesus bought more mules for hauling supplies, and Joaquin dealt monte [a Mexican card game] in the evenings outside his home, a blue tent that was located just outside Angels Camp” (Garza 8-9).

But tragically, everything was about to change. One Saturday in 1850, while two of the Murrieta brothers were away in San Francisco on a supply run, Joaquin was holding down their makeshift homestead with Carmen and Jose Jesus. It was then that a mob of miners—led by a wild card named Bill Lang—descended upon the Murrieta camp, accusing Jose Jesus of stealing one of Lang’s mules.

Joaquin’s oldest brother protested vehemently, claiming truthfully that he had already paid Lang for the mule, but the drunk and rowdy miners were not interested in the truth. Over Jose Jesus’ pleas and cries for help, the mob hung him from an enormous oak tree—and tied Joaquin to that same tree, horsewhipping his stripped form as his big brother’s body twitched above him.

Hearing the commotion outside, Joaquin’s wife Carmen—now eight months pregnant—exited the blue tent with a rifle, and Joaquin could only watch helplessly as the miners formed a line to gang-rape his pregnant wife, while he was horsewhipped to within an inch of his life.

Joaquin and Carmen were left for dead, Jose Jesus swinging silently about them on a slight mountain breeze. By the time his two other brothers—Joseph Anselmo and Jose Antonio—returned from San Francisco that evening, Joaquin’s wife was dead, and he himself was on the brink of death as well.

But Murrieta burned with hatred for that mob of predatory miners, and his rage kept him alive.

It took the grieving Joaquin weeks to recover, and when he was able to, he sought justice from two powerful friends of his—Calaveras County Sheriff Benjamin F. Marshall and Alameda County Sheriff Andrew H. Broder. But when both lawmen informed Murrieta that there was nothing that could be done—and then flat-out refused to further investigate or press charges—Joaquin decided then and there to take the non-existent law into his own hands.

With his four remaining brothers—along with four of his cousins, including two other Joaquins—Murrieta unleashed the full fury of his righteousness. “After finding the men responsible for these atrocities against his family, he discharged his own justice to the malefactors who had violated and killed his wife, lynched his innocent brother, stole his gold claim, and nearly bullwhipped him to death.

“In short, it was this horrible episode—committed against his family—that triggered Joaquin Murrieta’s infamous odyssey, and his quest for justice” (Garza 10).

The next three years flew by in a whizz-bang rush of blood and bullets—the Murrieta gang thrived, thieving and herding an estimated 10,000 horses down to Mexico, stealing over $1.5 million in gold, and killing scores of men unfortunate enough to be caught in the crossfire.

By 1853, Joaquin’s organization comprised 82 associates (known as jinetes, or “horsemen”) operating eleven different mustang stations throughout the San Joaquin Valley. Collectively, the desperadoes became known as the Five Joaquins. And as such, Joaquin Murrieta appeared to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time, perpetually confounding the California authorities.

“Such being the case, deeds attributed to Murrieta were often done at the same time at widely separated places,” wrote F.T. Humphrey in The Fresno Morning Republican in 1926, “so that he was invested with a phantom-like quality of being in several places at the same time.”

But it was the murder of General Joshua Bean—first mayor of San Diego and brother of infamous “Hanging Judge” Roy Bean of Texas—in a targeted November 1852 ambush outside his Los Angeles saloon, that spurred on calls for the capture of Joaquin Murrieta and his jinetes. For even though the alleged killers had been caught and executed in rapid succession, scapegoating the notorious bandit with the crime gave the state the excuse it needed to go after him with a vengeance.

So in February of 1853, California Governor John Bigler offered up a $1,000 reward for the capture of Murrieta, dead or alive, and—on May 11th of that same year—signed an act into law that created the California Rangers, a 21-man posse to apprehend the elusive Joaquin and his cohorts in crime.

Heading up this legally-established assassin squad was Captain Harry S. Love, a Mexican-American War veteran-turned-lawman and bounty hunter—known for his hair-trigger temper, a fondness for the bottle, and a particular vanity when it came to his luxurious mane of hair.

Love rallied his Rangers on May 28th, and off they rode to capture the Five Joaquins—dead or alive…

What happened next is purely a matter of scholarly debate and speculation—lost as the truth is in the sands of myth and time—but the generally accepted version of events unfolded something like this…

In the hot, blood-red dawn of Monday, July 25, 1853, at Cantua Creek in the rocky foothills of Fresno County, Captain Harry Love and the California Rangers ambushed Joaquin Murrieta and eight of his jinetes, just as they were waking up, their bedrolls circling the charred remains of a campfire—gunning down Murrieta, his right-hand man Manuel Garcia (called “Three-Fingers Jack” by the Rangers), and two others. Two more were captured alive, but three managed to escape.

Captain William W. Byrnes had allegedly been the one to take out Joaquin, and Ranger William T. Henderson the one to sever Murrieta’s head—which was stored and preserved in a jar of whiskey, for the long journey to collecting that $1,000 bounty. (Garcia’s head and three-fingered hand were severed and preserved as well, though only the hand survived.)

Love and the California Rangers collected their reward a month later—as well as three months’ backpay for their 90 days of service to the state—and then parted ways. Another year had passed before the California legislature kicked in an additional $5,000.

Later in 1854, Captain Love allegedly struck it rich by discovering a 125-lb gold nugget, settling down with the widow next door…

But of course the story didn’t really end there; it was only just beginning, as all worthwhile legends will and do…

Not everyone, however, believed that the leader of the Five Joaquins was actually dead.

“The citizens of Los Angeles have a curious story among them,” reported The Nevada City Journal only a month after the alleged assassination, “that the capture and decapitation of Joaquin Murieta did not take place on the person of the bandit! It is stated that the portion of Joaquin’s gang alleged to have been surprised and routed was none other than a party of native Californians and Sonorians who had gone to the Tulare Valley for the express and avowed purpose of ‘running mustangs.’

“‘Three of the party,’ our correspondent states, ‘have returned to Los Angeles and report that they were attacked by a party of Americans, and that the balance of their party, four in number, had been killed—that Joaquin Valenzuela, one of the party, was killed and his head cut off by his captors!’”

And around this same time, The San Francisco Herald printed a letter it had received, purportedly written by none other than Joaquin Murrieta himself. “Senor Editor Herald,” it read, “As my capture, or supposed capture, seems to be the topic of the day—I will through your kindness, inform the readers of your valuable paper—that I still retain my head, although it is proclaimed…that I was recently captured, and became very suddenly decapitated.”

After the head had made its rounds throughout the state of California in late 1853 and into 1854, the alleged noggin of Joaquin Murrieta “was sold at auction in 1855…The San Francisco County Sheriff received $36 from the purchasers, Judge Lyons and J.V. Plume. They exhibited the head in the Atlantic states, the Midwest, and ultimately, at the Pacific Museum of Anatomy and Science in San Francisco…

“Authorities claimed that the head was destroyed in the great fire caused by the earthquake of 1906; others claimed the head survived the fire and is probably in the possession of some collector” (Garza 30,87).

Joaquin Murrieta sightings proved quite frequent in the months and years immediately following the bandit’s alleged demise. The Nevada City Journal reported one such sighting in its Friday, March 30, 1855, edition.

“A correspondent of the Alta says that the notorious Joaquin Murieta…is alive, and promises to give the people of Los Angeles another call,” the Journal breathlessly divulged. “He stated that he had returned from Sonora, and was going to the upper country for the sole purpose of revenging the death of a poor devil called Gregorio Lopez, who—having some slight resemblance to him—had fallen victim to Love’s thirst for the reward offered for his (Murieta’s) head.”

Meanwhile, the horse thieving continued unabated, for even if it really was Joaquin Murrieta’s head pickled in that jar of whiskey, most of his associates were still very much alive and kicking.

“Several horses have been stolen within the last week…in and about the Pajaro Valley,” The San Andreas Independent revealed on Saturday, November 1, 1856. “Everything indicates an organized band of horse thieves in that vicinity…The native Californians say that the band are under the direction of the celebrated robber chieftain Joaquin Murrieta, who has returned from Mexico; we were told yesterday, that he had been seen in this county by a man who knew him…

“The natives say he murdered an American a short time ago, in the mines for the purpose of getting his horses…it is, however, quite proper to state that nearly or quite all of the native population believe that he is still alive—and that he paid a dollar to see the head exhibited as his in San Francisco.”

The epic saga of the celebrated Mexican desperado spread far and wide after his reported 1853 assassination, thanks in no small part to a San Francisco reporter by the name of John Rollin “Yellow Bird” Ridge.

Born to a Cherokee father and a Caucasian mother, he, too, had experienced his fair share of tragedy at far too young an age. After his father was stabbed to death in Georgia in 1839, the 12-year-old Ridge fled north with his mother, where he grew up, went to law school, and opened a practice in Arkansas.

But like a dark storm cloud perpetually chasing away the sun, tragedy followed John wherever happiness led. After starting his own law firm at the age of only 20, Ridge married in 1847, becoming a first-time father the following year. But in 1849, he shot and killed the man he believed responsible for his father’s murder—and found himself on the run to California, caught up in the waves of westward migration triggered by the Gold Rush.

Ridge quickly found he made for a lousy miner, however, so fell back on his pen, instead. Once he had established himself a journalism career in San Francisco, he was reunited with his wife and daughter. And he followed the exploits of the Five Joaquins almost obsessively, perhaps seeing something of himself in the daring, but dangerous, exploits of the California desperadoes.

So in the wake of the state-sanctioned, alleged 1853 massacre of Murrieta and three of his jinetes, John Rollin Ridge poured the epic tale onto the page, into what would become the first Native American novel—The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit—published in 1854.

Ridge had put Murrieta on the map for all posterity, but the Grim Reaper would nevertheless stalk the first editor of The Sacramento Bee to an early grave. After returning to his family in California following the end of the American Civil War, John Rollin Ridge would die of encephalitis in 1867, at the age of only 40.

As the years flew past—as years are wont to do—Captain Harry S. Love’s good fortune finally ran out. His marriage to the widow next door had crumbled by 1866, having devolved into a sad series of drunken domestic abuse incidents, which led to several separations and restraining orders. (The poor woman had already unsuccessfully petitioned the Golden State for a divorce, so instead settled for a personal bodyguard—who was also rumored to have shared her bed.)

Love had become an alcoholic by 1867, having lost his home and property to fire, flood, and finally, squatters. The former California Ranger now found himself eking out a meager existence on his wealthy estranged wife’s property, a decade and a half past those heady glory days of 1853 (pun intended), when he had served up the severed head of California’s deadliest desperado on a platter to the Golden State’s third governor.

In June of 1868, after ambushing his wife and her bodyguard lover in a jealous rage, he bled to death when his bullet-riddled arm had to be amputated in the altercation’s aftermath.

Mrs. Love was free at long last.

And as the decades hurtled past, the indisputable fact of the Five Joaquins melted into Western myth, woven into the very fabric of Gold Rush folklore—and with the turning of the nineteenth century into the twentieth, one of California’s earliest urban legends was born…

Works Cited
“Joaquin.” The Shasta Courier, Saturday, July 9, 1853, p. 1.
“The citizens of Los Angeles…” The Nevada Journal (Nevada City, California), Friday, August 26, 1853, p. 2.
“A correspondent of the Alta…” The Nevada Journal (Nevada City, California), Friday, March 30, 1855, p. 2.
“Horse Stealing.” The San Andreas Independent, Saturday, November 1, 1856, p. 2.
“The Weekly Alta…” The Santa Barbara Times, Saturday, November 26, 1870, p. 2.
“Joaquin Murieta.” The San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, May 17, 1874, p. 1.
Humphrey, F.T. “Ghosts of Joaquin Murieta.” The Fresno Morning Republican, Sunday, October 24, 1926, p. 9.
Smith, Joe. “Tales of the San Joaquin: Headless Ghost of Bandit Chieftain Disturbed Dreams of Ranger Captain.” The Fresno Bee, Sunday, September 12, 1954, p. 22.
Smith, Joe. “Tales of the San Joaquin: Fulfilling of a Boast.” The Fresno Bee, Sunday, September 16, 1973, p. 22.
Latta, Frank F. Joaquin Murrieta and His Horse Gangs. Santa Cruz, California: Bear State Books, 1980.
Garza, Humberto. Joaquin Murrieta: A Quest for Justice! San Jose, California: Chusma House, 2001.
Garza, Humberto. Joaquin: Demystifying the Murrieta Legend. San Jose, California: Sun House, 2004.
Secrest, William B. The Man from the Rio Grande: A Biography of Harry Love, Leader of the California Rangers, Who Tracked Down Joaquin Murrieta. Spokane, Washington: Arthur H. Clark Co., 2005.

All photos provided by the author unless otherwise stated.

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Sarah A. Peterson-Camachois a library assistant with Fresno County Library, with a Bachelor’s in English and a Bachelor’s in Journalism from California State University, Fresno. In her free time, she makes soap and jewelry that she sells at Fresno-area craft fairs. She has written for The Clovis Roundup and the Central California Paranormal Investigators (CCPI) Newsletter.