Joaquin Murrieta Carrillo, called the Robin Hood of the West or the Robin Hood of El Dorado, was a Mexican figure of disputed historicity.
17 Facts About Joaquin Murrieta
2.
Newspapers reported banditos named Joaquin Murrieta, who robbed and killed several people during the same time.
3.
The popular legend of Joaquin Murrieta was that he was a forty-niner, a gold miner and a vaquero from Sonora.
4.
Joaquin Murrieta embarked on a short but violent career to kill his Anglo tormentors.
5.
Joaquin Murrieta said that Murrieta was from the Pueblo de Murrieta on the Rancho Tapizuelas, across the Cuchujaqui River.
6.
Joaquin Murrieta was educated at a school nearby in El Salado.
7.
Joaquin Murrieta reportedly went to California in 1849 to seek his fortune in the California Gold Rush.
8.
Joaquin Murrieta encountered prejudice and hostility in the extreme competition of the rough mining camps.
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However, the only source for this account was a dime novel, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murrieta Murieta, written by John Rollin Ridge and published in 1854.
10.
Historian Latta wrote that Joaquin Murrieta formed a gang, with well-organized bands, one led by himself and the rest led by one or two of his trusted Sonoran relatives.
11.
Latta documented that the core of these men had gathered to help Joaquin Murrieta kill at least six of the Americans who had lynched his stepbrother Jesus Carrillo and whipped him on the false charge of the theft of a mule.
12.
Joaquin Murrieta's preserved head was destroyed during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fire.
13.
Joaquin Murrieta's nephew, known as Procopio, became one of California's most notorious bandits of the 1860s and 1870s.
14.
Joaquin Murrieta was said to have wanted to exceed the reputation of his uncle.
15.
Joaquin Murrieta is believed to have inspired the fictional character of Zorro, the lead character in the five-part serial story, The Curse of Capistrano, written by Johnston McCulley, and published in 1919 in a pulp fiction magazine.
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For some political activists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Joaquin Murrieta has symbolized Mexican resistance against Anglo-American economic and cultural domination in California, as Spanish colonists, Native Americans, mixtos, and independent Mexicans were there first.
17.
Joaquin Murrieta has been used frequently as a romantic outlaw figure in novels, stories, and comics, and in films and TV series.