Will the Real Joaquin Murrieta Please Stand Up

It is hard to find a greater distance between fact and fiction than in the legend of the California bandit Joaquin Murrieta. To begin, Joaquin seemed to be a favorite name of Californian bandits. Perhaps the bandits found it convenient to call themselves Joaquin to take advantage of the name's formidable reputation and lay their crimes on the other Joaquins out there. As a result, when the lawmen killed one Joaquin, they seemed to have believed they had taken care of all the other Joaquins.    

As far as the facts go, there are no good guys in this story—only bandits, the victims of bandits,  mostly Chinese miners, and the people exploiting the situation for their own ends, including a governor running for reelection and lawmen who wanted to collect on the fat reward. So it was convenient to take the attitude that one dead Mexican, probably named Joaquin, was as good as another. Then there followed the sorry spectacle of 'Joaquin's Murrieta's' head in a jar toted around and shown to everybody but those who could actually identify him.

On the other hand, the myth is a worthy subject for a Quentin Tarantino movie—a rich gold mine seized by evil, envious Anglo miners, Joaquin's brother murdered, his wife raped, his just revenge on the perpetrators. He was a Robin Hood. He inspired Zorro. The best evidence for this comes from a dime novel.

The problem was California had a lot of gold and few lawmen. Honesty within a mining camp was noteworthy—you could leave your gold on your cot while you worked, and it would not be touched—but vicious little wars broke out between camps. Desperation, as much as greed, played a role. Most forty-niners returned poorer than they arrived. If the miners in the nearby successful camp had a different skin color, then they were foreigners, trespassers. The gold they found didn't belong to them, of course.

The question I ask myself is, what would a reasonable villain do in Joaquin Murrieta's place? There is a story that he returned to his hometown in Sonora and lived comfortably for the rest of his days. That rings true. Robbing miners was a profitable enterprise, but only if you knew when to stop. The Americanos got their Joaquin, so why draw attention to yourself? I wish Joaquin had been the romantic who retired to a well-deserved rest after dispensing justice to those who had harmed his family. Likely he was just a lucky bandit and not a very nice guy.