15 magg 1853 anni - Hunt for Murrieta

Descrizione:

At long last the campaign bore fruit; on May 17, 1853, Governor Bigler approved “An Act to authorize the Raising of a Company of Rangers,” designating Harry Love as commander.51 Mariposa County petitioners had first suggested Love because of his “experience in border warfare and a long residence on the frontiers of Texas.”52 The legislature must have thought those were good qualifications for chasing Mexicans.

Virtually all Anglo accounts agree that among the rangers was a lieutenant, William Byrnes, who had known Joaquin personally in the early years of the Gold Rush; many further agree that Byrnes and Joaquin played monte together. This man Byrnes is variously credited with having identified Joaquin either when the rangers rode into Arroyo Cantúa or after the shooting had stopped, when corpses littered the ground. Many say it was Byrnes who cut the heads off two of the dead men (and perhaps the hand as well?), and all agree that Byrnes was one of the rangers who took the body parts to Fort Miller for preservation.

According to Noyes, Mike Byrnes was one of four men who worked together on the Texas Claim and called themselves the “Texas Rangers.” Noyes claimed that these Texans made “enormous sums of money which was all plaid off at Monte and expended for bad Whiskey.” He added that they “delighted in swagaring around Town with a Big Six Shooter and Boey Knife . . . usually half drunk and acheing for a quarel.” William Byrnes seems not to have mined with his brother’s company, but he lived in the area and Noyes knew him, at least by reputation: “Bill Burnes . . . Gambled was a Shooter from Texas and inclined to quarel.”

Martínez was emphatic about the identity of the decapitated men—one was Tres Dedos, who became known to Anglos as Three-Fingered Jack, and the other was his fellow hostler Chappo. Murrieta was not among the dead; he helped bury them. The “head of the renowned bandit Joaquin” exhibited first at Stockton in August 1853, then, belonged to a mission Indian named Chappo

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