Reading post: The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta

This has been quite a week, but as things have quieted down a bit at last, I'm going to do a reading post. I have finished my second book for the 2021 Classics Challenge: The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit by John Rollin Ridge (aka Yellow Bird, or Chee-squa-ta-law-ny in Cherokee), which was published in California in 1854. I chose to read this for category #11: Travel or Adventure Classic. Kind of a goofy choice for that category, but hey. The main character travels up and down California, dipping into northern Mexico now and then, and he has many exciting adventures.

John Rollin Ridge, the author, was Cherokee on his father's side, and was born into a wealthy, powerful family in Cherokee Nation, in Georgia, in 1827. After an overly exciting youth which included the forced relocation of the Cherokee Nation to what is now Oklahoma, the murders of his father and grandfather and uncle, and at least one murder committed by himself in a related conflict, in 1850 he decided to try his luck in the California Gold Rush. He was unsuccessful as a miner, and instead earned his living over the next 20 years through writing and clerical work (he had studied law before he came to California). He died in 1867 -- just after the Civil War -- of a brain ailment.

One interesting thing I learned from reading about Ridge was that he was a cousin of Stand Watie, the Cherokee Confederate sympathizer described in the children's book Rifles for Watie that I am thinking of reading later on this year. Some of what is known about Ridge comes from letters he wrote to Watie. Small world. Ridge himself was pro-slavery (his grandfather, his father, and he himself were all slave owners) and wrote newspaper articles criticizing President Lincoln during the Civil War. There exists a biography of him, and another book about his family, but of course our library doesn't own either volume and of course I can't get them through Prospector.

Joaquin Murieta is famous for being the first novel written by a Native American, but it isn't about Indians, at least not much. Ridge, who was also a poet, wrote Joaquin Murieta to make some money off the muddled history of several Mexican bandits in California, all named Joaquin, one of whom may have been killed in 1853. Although Ridge begins his novel by claiming it is a true story, there is almost no truth in it -- and anyone who read it in 1854 would have known that. Five years later, someone rewrote the story slightly and published it again, and that version was rewritten and republished over and over again, around the world, for the next 70 years or so. Occasionally Ridge's original version was also tinkered with and republished. Gradually, as the true story faded in memory, people began to believe the fiction. The 50-page introduction to the edition I read includes a fascinating description of how the novel mutated into "truth."

It's not a very good book. (Supposedly the 1859 rewrite is a little better.) There are no chapters, no divisions of any kind. The Wikipedia article about the book describes 11 separate chapters, but that must have been a different version (the paperback I read is a reprint of the very first edition, which can be viewed online here). Instead, the book I read just rolls along for 150 pages, one incident after another after another after another after another. Joaquin and his gang attack a miner and steal his money and gold, they attack another miner and steal his money and kill him, they attack a group of miners and steal their money and horses and kill them all. Sometimes someone decides to kill Joaquin, but is always foiled in the attempt (until the last few pages). One of Joaquin's compatriots, a man called Three-Fingered Jack, wants to kill everyone he meets, but since Joaquin is a gentleman, he prevents Jack from committing murders he considers unnecessary.

Although the book is badly organized, the writing is OK. It starts oddly, with a first sentence that made me doubtful about what was coming next:

I sit down to write somewhat concerning the life and character of Joaquin Murieta, a man as remarkable in the annals of crime as any of the renowned robbers of the Old or New World, who have preceded him...

Hmm, I thought. That "somewhat" is not very encouraging. But there are dramatic passages too. How about this, where one of Joaquin's compatriots witnesses a love scene through a window:

Upon a settee on the further side of the room, half-reclining, sat a blushing girl of seventeen years, her golden ringlets showered down upon her neck and shoulders, and her bosom heaving as if it would burst its gauzy covering and strike the gazer blind with its unspeakable loveliness.

The image of that "bosom" bursting out and striking someone is really hard to forget.

Although the real Joaquins were mainly cattle thieves, in the novel, members of Joaquin's gang are constantly stealing hundreds of horses and driving them down to "a fine tract of rich pasturage" called Arroyo Cantoova for safekeeping. With the help of an interesting paper called "Mapping Joaquin," I learned that Arroyo Cantoova was in what is now Fresno County. It's less remote now since I-5 goes right past it, but back then I guess it was a good place to hide thousands of horses.

It's not a book about Indians, but there are Indians in it, and I was interested in how Ridge would portray them, especially since he published the book under his Cherokee name and he was already known in California as an Indian writer. For the most part his descriptions are unflattering. He refers to one group of local Indians as "these simple people," and a few pages later notes that the "ignorant Indians" were often blamed for the misdeeds of "civilized hands." A few pages later he describes members of the Tejon Nation thusly:

They soon reached the capital, which consisted of twenty or thirty very picturesque-looking bark huts scattered along the side of a hill, in front of the largest of which they found old Sapatarra [the chief], seated upon his haunches in all the grandeur of "naked majesty," enjoying a very luxurious repast of roasted acorns and dried angle-worms. His swarthy subjects were scattered in various directions around him, engaged for the most part in the very arduous task of doing nothing.

A page later he refers to them as the "poor, miserable, cowardly Tejons," who nevertheless manage to get the better of Joaquin and his gang. Later in the book, however, mention is made of "Cherokee Camp." The "half-breed" Cherokees who live there appear to be more capable than the Tejons.

The book is interesting about race/ethnicity: Joaquin and his followers, though referred to as bad guys, are absolutely the heroes of the book, and Joaquin is described on the first page as a "truly wonderful man." Joaquin turns to banditry because he and his mistress are abused by "Americans." The Americans also pass laws that are unfair to all Mexicans in California. Joaquin is brave, honorable, and very good at being a bandit. All the Mexicans in the book are impressive, whereas the Americans are basically incompetent. (I'm not sure what "Mexican" meant to Ridge, other than a nationality: Joaquin has "long, glossy, black hair" and "large dark eyes," and his complexion is "neither very dark or very light.") Some readers feel that Ridge sympathized with Mexicans because of what other "Americans" did to his people. On the other hand, Ridge is thoroughly racist regarding the "Chinamen" who Joaquin steals from, and of course he was a slave owner (but I don't remember any slaves in the book).

Finally, much to the relief of this reader, Joaquin and Three-Fingered Jack and other members of the group of bandits are captured and killed by Captain Harry Love and his men, and the book ends. The head of the man who was actually killed (whether or not it was Joaquin Murieta who died, or even one of the other Joaquins) was put in a jar and displayed at fairs and such for some time after the killing, as was a three-fingered hand purported to have belonged to Three-Fingered Jack.

Joaquin's story has been filmed numerous times, but of course the Boulder public library system doesn't have any of the versions and of course doesn't belong to Prospector anymore so I can't get a hold of any of them that way. I did request the 1998 film The Mask of Zorro, which apparently has a distant connection to the Murieta legend, and it is now waiting for me at the library, so I may add a note about that when I watch it.... Okay, I watched it! It's not a bad movie, very cheerful, good acting. Swashbuckling. And the Murrieta connection is interesting -- in the film, there are two Murrieta brothers, and Captain Harry Love kills Joaquin, but Alejandro escapes to become the new Zorro. I liked it. *I haven't read The Curse of Capistrano by Johnston McCulley, the 1919 novel that launched Zorro (and of course the Boulder Public Library doesn't own it -- but Longmont does, so I requested it from there), but I don't think it has anything to do with Murrieta. Still, I think it was a good idea inserting him into the movie. Might as well keep his name alive.

*Postscript: I have now read The Curse of Capistrano (retitled The Mark of Zorro after the success of the silent film) and it's a lot of fun. It's set in Spanish California, probably some time before the Gold Rush and the events that caused Joaquin Murieta to become a famous bandit (at least in John Rollin Ridge's imagination). But it's the story of a Robin Hood-like character who goes after bad guys who have injured the poor and helpless. It's quite funny, and there is a little suspense here and there, when Zorro gets himself into difficult situations and you're not sure how he's going to get out. I enjoyed it.