Joaquin, the Claude Duval of California; or, The Marauder of the Mines: a Romance Founded on Truth

He was once a young man with a future. Then American miners burned his home, murdered his brother, and branded him an outlaw. What followed was a campaign of violence that turned the California hills into a theater of terror. Henry L. Williams's 1854 dime novel traces Joaquin Murrieta's bloody transformation from wronged farmer to the most feared name in the Gold Rush territories: a masked avenger who robbed the wealthy to feed the poor, or a cold-blooded killer who bathed the mines in blood? The book refuses to resolve the contradiction. Part gritty historical account, part romanticized legend, this is the original story of the Robin Hood of El Dorado, the man believed to have inspired Zorro. It captures a California still wild, still burning with gold fever and racial violence, where justice wore a rope and every man carried a gun.