The Age of Gold (48 page)

That such details of Joaquín’s background and activities were at this point almost entirely conjectural didn’t diminish the alarm the undeniable violence aroused in the populace of the mining regions. And not only there: Joaquín was said to have been sighted along the Salinas River and as far south as San Diego. Almost needless to say—but only almost, as the opposite enjoyed credence at the time—no one person could have committed all the crimes attributed to Joaquín, or been everywhere he was said to have been. Yet it was human nature (besides making good copy for the papers) to personalize the crime wave, laying responsibility on a single mastermind, the more lurid and bloodthirsty the better. Imaginative drawings of Joaquín—swarthy, armed to the teeth, but handsome in a piratical sort of way—began circulating, along with elaborations of his great strength and his imperviousness to capture. “When shot at,” the
Calaveras Chronicle
explained, “he receives the balls in the breast with a complacent smile. It has been a matter of surprise to his pursuers that the balls fired at him have no effect. We learn from a gentleman who shot from a short distance that he wears a coat of mail beneath his clothes. To what base use has the armor of the days of chivalry come!”

Predictably, a hue and cry arose for the capture of the bandit chieftain. A posse was formed at Mokelumne Hill, and set out on the trail. But they had no luck. “I have been engaged a week in hunting Mr. Joaquín and his party,” the posse leader reported on their return, “and we had a right lively time of it after the greasers. We followed them all over the country, and, while we were on their trail, they killed and wounded 15 Chinamen and stole seven or eight thousand dollars. We got one or two chances at them, but they were so well mounted that they beat us running all to hell.”

By now Joaquín’s reputation had spread across the state, and his capture became a political priority. Legislators from Mariposa County convinced their colleagues in the state assembly that a general manhunt was required. An outfit of rangers, modeled on the Texas Rangers, was commissioned, and Harry Love, a veteran of the Texas border, was appointed first captain. Love hired several assistants—a mix of Indian fighters, frontier lawmen, and gunslingers—at $350 per month, and raised a company of men. To give the Rangers an added incentive, Governor Bigler placed a bounty of $1,000 on Joaquín’s head.

Love and the California Rangers chased Joaquín across the Mother Lode country; when they heard that the bandits had escaped toward the west, Love and the Rangers followed them there. At San Jose they surprised and captured a man thought to be one of Joaquín’s accomplices. As Love explained to Governor Bigler, “I have arrested a Mexican, Jesus, a brother in law of Joaquín’s. He says he will take & show us to Joaquín if we will release him. I will try him a while to see what it will end in.” The kind of encouragement to cooperation the prisoner received is unknown; considering the background of Love and the Rangers, he might reasonably have believed they would kill him.

In any event, on the intelligence thus acquired, Love and the Rangers trailed the bandits to a camp in the foothills of the Coast Range. They found a large herd of horses, including some that had been stolen, but initially no bandits. A Stockton paper, which had the story from one of Love’s men, reported what happened next:

Love was fairly certain he had the right man—or right body, at this point. But in order to verify the identity of the deceased, for the dual purpose of reassuring the citizens of California and claiming the $1,000 bounty, he cut the head off Joaquín’s body and preserved it in a large jar filled with whiskey. He carried the head about the neighborhood of the robberies and murders, obtaining testimony from victims and others that this was indeed the terrible bandit leader. “There is not the least doubt that the head now in my possession is that of the noted Joaquín Murrieta, the chief and leader of the murderers and robbers of the Calavaras, Mariposa and other parts of the state,” he informed Governor Bigler.

Bigler and the legislature were convinced, at least sufficiently to pay out the reward. But others wondered. Crimes of violence continued in the southern mines, if on a somewhat diminished scale. Reports circulated that
Joaquín had escaped and gone back to Sonora. The uncertainty added to a sense of romance that began to spring up around the bandit leader, especially among those with complaints against the status quo. Within a year an author named Yellow Bird, an unsuccessful gold-seeking son of a Cherokee chief, published a book called
The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murrieta, the Celebrated California Bandit
, which made Joaquín out to be the Robin Hood of El Dorado. (A book by that name—
The Robin Hood of El Dorado
—eventually entered the genre as well.)

As for the head in the jar, it did the rounds of the mining country, an object lesson in the wages of crime—or, alternatively, a relic of the martyred Mexican hero. It wound up on the shelf of a San Francisco museum, where it remained until 1906, when it was lost in the great earthquake and fire.

L
IKE LATINOS, THE CHINESE
of Gold Rush California suffered from the bigotry of the Anglo majority. But in the case of the Chinese, it was not always easy—and historically it may be beside the point—to distinguish racism from ethnocentrism, xenophobia, and plain incomprehension. Most Americans in the 1850s had scarcely a clue what to make of the Chinese. Prior to the Gold Rush, few Americans had ever encountered a Chinese outside the pages of Marco Polo; as a people, the Chinese seemed almost as exotic as Martians would have seemed to a later generation of Americans. The majority of Chinese, of course, were non-Christians, which made them immediately suspect in an era in America when even Catholics were eyed with suspicion. Many of the Chinese spoke little or no English, and although this by itself didn’t distinguish them from thousands of Chileans and Mexicans and French and Belgians in California, the Chinese language and especially the Chinese script appeared downright bizarre next to the tongues and orthography of Mother Europe. Chinese dress and tonsure—the long pigtails, or queues, evoked endless comment—made the Chinese recognizable at a distance. Their eating habits—they ate
dog
!— and their use of opium put additional distance between them and others in California. (The irony of despising the Chinese for using opium, which
American merchants joined the British in selling to China, was lost on most Americans in California.) Finally, in an era when racial thinking was unabashed and nearly universal, most whites had no difficulty classing the Chinese as inherently inferior.

American stereotyping of the Chinese limited their opportunities as a group; yet at the same time, it enhanced the opportunities available to certain Chinese individuals. Yee Ah Tye was one of those so advantaged.

Not long after the immigration from China began, the Chinese in San Francisco organized into four associations, or houses. The associations corresponded to the regions from which the various Chinese emigrated, and new arrivals were easily sorted into the appropriate associations on the basis of their dialects. In some respects the associations acted much like the joint-stock companies of many of the other argonauts, with members pledging mutual protection and assistance. For the Chinese, a particular obligation of the associations was the return to China of the bones of any argonaut who died in America, that he might be honored by his descendants.

Partly because of his command of English, and partly because of an evident appreciation of power and its uses, Yee Ah Tye became the principal agent of the Sze Yup association not long after his arrival. The association agents represented the interests of the associations to the civic authorities; they also presided over disputes among association members. In this latter regard they sometimes acted extralegally but with the acquiescence of the authorities, forming a kind of vigilance committee for Chinese.

On occasion the leaders of the Chinese associations overstepped their bounds. A San Francisco grand jury registered its concern in a report on the Chinese situation:

Yee was the most notorious of the association leaders. The
San Francisco Herald
called him a “would-be Mandarin” and a “petty despot” who “inflicted severe corporeal punishment upon many of his more humble countrymen… cutting off their ears, flogging them and keeping them chained for hours together.” The
Alta California
dubbed him a “Grand Inquisitor” who was “endeavoring to coerce his brethren into such measures as he may suggest and dictate.” Various reports indicated that Yee had put a bounty on the head of a Chinese who defied him; this man then sought protection from the civil authorities. Within a week, however, the
Alta California
explained that the quarrel had been “satisfactorily settled outside of the judicial tribunal.” In another case, Yee struck a deal directly with the court. Convicted of assault and battery, he was sentenced to five days in the city jail. But he appealed the sentence, posted bond of $1,000, and was allowed to remain at large.

That he commanded this kind of money indicated that things were going well for him—whether by fair means or foul. (The California press wasn’t unbiased in reporting on Chinese affairs, but the direction of the bias in matters internal to the Chinese community was neither obvious nor consistent). Unfortunately for Yee and the Chinese community in general, their very success provoked the displeasure of many Americans. American miners repeatedly drove Chinese miners from the goldfields, as Tom Archer noted in Stockton. American workers constantly accused Chinese workers of stealing jobs and driving down wages. American politicians and editors regularly recommended barring the Chinese from California.