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Frank Latta, fascinated by the tale, spent much of his adult life researching, chronicling, writing letters of inquiry, field interviewing, he was as much an anthropologist as he was a historian. He travels to Murrieta’s place of birth in Sonora, interviews 3^rd generation relations, examines church records, birth certificates, gravestones, talking to anyone who might have some memory. Of course everyone does, which is not a strong argument to the veracity of all the accounts, combined with his own enthusiasm, which is that of a romantic, does raise an eye and his critics are quick to point this out, however, and I cannot over state this, Latta is determined, more than any other scholar to get to the essence of the myth a motivation that has driven historians since the time of Odysseus Even a cursory glance at Latta’s sprawling tomb and one can see there’s more than enough that’s irrefutable to make it a blistering human saga, at the least it’s enough to hang your spurs on. I understand Latta’s obsession, I too am a romantic, but I also understand his need to verify the story, for the gravity of such a tale is magnified tenfold if it be true. And most of it is, even the popular accounts have a ring to them. In one, the cousin of a cousin’s great grandmother says she heard the story of how Rosa, Murrieta’s childhood sweetheart, left with him to the gold fields of California. Following a letter, sent by Jesus Carrillo, Joaquin’s half brother, who had staked a claim and begun pulling gold from the Stanislaus, to come and join him. Before he left, Murrieta stopped by his Rosa’s pueblo, as she was just returning from fetching water from the well. Murrieta told her of his plans to join his brother in the Sierra’s of Alta California, the journey was a long and difficult one Murrieta told her, “but if you want to come, I’m leaving in the morning.” Rosa pulled the 2 leather water buckets off the family donkey, looked at Murrieta, and said, “Why wait until morning”

The next day they set out on the 800 mile trek. Who knows if the scene played out exactly that way, but that’s how the descendants of Rosa Feliz tell it to Latta, a 120 years later. And it has the makings of a myth. The fact is, his half brother did send a letter, and Rosa was 15, and they rode all the way from Sonora along a trail established by Anza, 75 years earlier. They ended up at Niles Canyon, south of San Francisco, and bought a little ranch. All of this is documented in Latta’s book. The most amazing theory presented by Latta is, Murrieta wasn’t killed by Captain Love, and the head in the jar wasn’t his. This blows everything up in the breech, and so like all good mythologies, puts more spin on the yarn. One fact, and I will revisit this theme later, is that Murrieta was light skinned, blond haired, and blue eyed, and ‘could speak English so well he could pass for an American, even an Englishman. The famous head in a jar, the one destroyed in the fires after the San Francisco earthquake; the head that Captain Harry Love took as bounty, was brown haired, dark eyed, and dark skinned. Anyone who has carefully viewed the Zapruder tapes knows there was more than one gunman, eyes don’t deceive, even if chopping off his head with a Bowie knife got a little nasty, it wouldn’t change the color of his hair.

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There are many other incongruities, particularly about Los Tres Piedras – The place where I am headed – Joaquin Rocks, his hideout, at the foot of the San Benito mountain range, where he spent his last night alive, or did he? We will be exploring such questions in some detail coming up, but first I have to get there. I’m dallying, the sun is at my back, it’s a mellow evening, lingering warm, and yellow, and I feel like my body is expanding outward in a full embrace of this mountain path. I am in that twilight place, mainly because I haven’t sleep much, but oddly, I’m not tried at all, and just over the next rise, I’m sure of it, can’t be more than an hour or two

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May 1

A soldier stationed at Monterey during the Bear Flag Revolt by the name of Benjamin Kooser writes in his diary that Three Fingered Jack ambushed the Americans, guerrilla style, at the battle of Salinas, and that Jack killed the Captain and took his horse and saddle. In 1846, just after the Battle of Salinas, witness say, Juan de Tres Dedos, killed Captain Burroughs and made off with Sacramento, one of finest California Sorrel’s ever owned by a military man. So great an impression it made on Tres Dedos, that just after the battle, when the horse busted the corral and ran off, he hunted the plains west of Stockton for several years vowing to bring it in.

May 1

Murrieta slept out here under the stars, like he did everywhere along La Vereda del Monte, driving his horses on a trail that stretched from the Sierras to San Diego, crossing the Diablo Mountains, always the remote path, always the badlands, to discourage any over zealous lawman from trying to make a name for himself, until Harry Love tracked him down for a wage of 150$ a month, until the deed was done, dead or alive, he paid each of his California Rangers, plus a bonus after he cut his head off.
One look at Harry Love, and you know you’re in trouble

Harry Love, Lawman of the California Rangers

In the middle of July, the month he lost his head, Spanish Lake would have been as dry as a bone, just as it is here, but it does hold water earlier in the year and it is likely that Murrieta named it, just as he named Horse Thief Trail, and Joaquin Rocks, all bear witness. It is not unlikely that Joaquin and his gang went swimming and LaMolinara too, who suddenly didn’t look like a man any more, but instead, the woman of Joaquin, naked, and unashamed, and no one even blunk an eye, for there was honor and respect, and even though Three Fingered Jack was as ugly as one of his beloved horses, she flirted with him, just to show off how big a tease she could be. But her heart was his, at least until she betrayed him. At Spanish Lake I have less than a half-tank of gas, and I’m still no clearer on how far it is to the rocks. Ranger Toms says, just keep going, and then the road ends. “Ends?” I ask him, and he nods an affirmation which seems great at the time, but now I realize I should have asked him a bunch of other questions before driving off. A half a tank will get me back to Coalinga, no worries, my other halfway point pertains to my thesis, which is still formulating, but has something to do with the question of how did Murrieta end up being such a scoundrel? and this is, more than anything, a question of character.
In her book , Lori Wilson discusses this at length citing newspaper editor Manuel Rojas who was following the story in 1852 and explores the avenger angle – the vengador, which more or less claims that he ruthlessly butchered Anglos to avenge his birthright and the injustice they inflicted upon Mexicans who were the rightful heirs to the land.Did he have an altruistic motive? something more in line with a conspiracy to assassinate General Joshua Bean? – it is staged, like Shakespeare, with the maromas, and the drunken corrupt political official, and Joaquin, and his lover’s testimony, and then there are the slogans, and the five Joaquins, like something out of Sparticus, with all of the gang captured and each one of them claiming ‘I am Joaquin’ There are a few accounts in the press that speak to this, one, I have already mentioned, was Ana Benitez, in her testimony at the murder trial of Bean, which resulted in Reyes Feliz getting strung up, and the other is an editorial by Rojas, who claims that the reason Murrieta was so famous, even in his day was:
“…because he had a remarkable talent for losing his pursuers, because he could manage horses with remarkable skill and because he was utterly indifferent to the fate he knew awaited him. He was also a dangerous pistolero. And he had a way with people, including American Anglos. He could win people over when it suited his purposes. Californio rancheros hosted him, youths admired him, and many of the Americans who met him dismissed him as harmless. He did not look intimidating to them” – Wilson
So the question I have is: was this all a ruse, a mercurial Joaquin who could shift his persona just to manipulate people, or did it speak to his character? Did other Californios share his hatred for the Yankee but did not have the courage to carry out a revenge? was this a form of justice, vicariously experienced through Murrieta, a social vigilante, aka: Robin of Locksley? And what of this attraction by the youth? General Vallejo, who knew of Murrieta, and Antonio Colonel, twenty years after Murrieta’s death, comments on this as well, in his account of California days, in a letter to Bancroft – Cosas de California (1880’s)
What seems certain is Murrieta had a charisma, something like a rock star. There are echos, even in Harry Love’s account, of guilt or shame, as if he were plagued later in life by the event that made him famous, and he realized later in life, that he’d tracked down and murdered a person of rare talent, who had character and courage, and was too young to die.
I’m going to stop at the lake for a rest, not a swim, alas, like I was hoping, but maybe I can find a clue as to what I am looking for, maybe at the bottom of a dry lake a gold coin some vaquero tossed in for luck, or maybe just get another photograph.

Im rounding San Benito Mountain, which peaks at over 5,000 feet, so Ranger Tom tells me it snowed here last year and often the temperatures are twenty degrees one minute and then shift to mild, and then back again exemplifying the mercurial elements at work on the land where nothing has changed and nothing remains the same and even the side of a hill which suddenly seems to shift the closer I get until I realize it’s just an illusion playing tricks and that it‘s May and that isn’t snow at all but my sleepless night in which my dreams intersected outward from the edges of my eyes where the brittle light is and I want to look the other way and as soon as I look back it disappears and if the one thing I’m chasing out here doesn’t manifest itself soon I’ll know Spanish Lake is just a mirage too and not a part of anyone’s reality, even Joaquin’s. Or even his dreams because he must have had them out here sleeping under the stars at his hideout where his gang had lookouts and could see anyone coming for miles, past Spanish Lake, further along the ridge, until it heads back in the direction I came from, all the way east down Horse Thief Canyon, almost back to Coalinga where Harry Love tracked him after Ana Benetiz, – or LaMolinera, depending on who you believe, betrayed him the year after she was dressed up like a man and slept out here under the stars and had dreams too, way out at the place called Joaquin Rocks. It’s all starting to come back to me now, almost like I can see her face dressed up like a man under the stars forever on the horizon, not quite here, but just up ahead, just around the bend at Spanish Lake with a hundred stolen horses.

May 1

Up the incline, following Clear Creek, on the way I’ll pass the turn off to the New Idria mines, once the largest Mercury mine in the west – see previous post. Mercury is processed by mining cinnabar, then calcination in large ovens (heating it up to release the gas) It is then bottled and when it cools, turns into liquid mercury. 38 million pounds were mined from New Idria before it closed – now a Superfund site – EPA. I’m not going to the mines, I’m headed for Joaquin’s Ridge, and according to the BLM map, I need to stay on Route 11. But what I’m really after is the austere beauty that zaps me in between the eyes. Everything seems to vibrate out here, and the road is like riding a frequency that suddenly and without notice changes. There is a magical element here – Hermes, the Shapeshifter, the eclectic messenger, and all of its association with alchemy. This is an alchemical land, full of contrast and modality and everywhere it’s coming up just over the next rise.

May 1

Around the next bend, I’ve come to a lone pine and I am caught off guard by its simplicity as if deliberately crossing my path with intent it stands without hesitation to witness our congress and recognize my existence for as long as time lasts. There is a moment of gratitude here, singular, and in a flash it passes, but I remain, climbing to the ridge of Joaquin, on my way to Spanish Lake and the spring where he last watered his horse, then rode down to Cantua Creek, where he lost his head.

May 1

I believe we left off somewhere with sulphur and mercury as a construct of alchemy and even if we didn’t, that’s where we’re picking it up. I realize it’s quite a stretch, and what does this have to do with Joaquin Murrieta? but bear with me, all will be made clear soon enough. New Idria was a Quicksilver mine, first opened a year after Murrieta’s murder, in 1854, off to the left, right up here is the turn off. I’ll show you the sign later. I’m not going to the old mines, I’m headed for Joaquin’s Ridge, then to Joaquin Rocks and according to the sworn testimony of Ana Benetiz at the trial of Reyes Feliz, just before they hung him, this was Joaquin’s hideout. On my way out there, I come across, Hermes Trismegistus manifesting the properties of Sulphur and Mercury – right before my eyes – Hermes lived about the time of Moses and is considered the grand father of alchemy and Joaquin lived about the time of my great grandfather’s father – I have no clear idea what the connection is, only that there is one, I’m sure of it. Just as the alchemists were sure, for centuries, that base metals could be reduced to gold, thus in accordance with the understanding that Sulphur is the fatness of the earth, dug up from mines miles below the surface, and Mercury is the cause of perfection; the distillation, from course into fine. I haven’t a clue what the connection is, other than Murrieta mined gold from the Stanislaus and had he been left the fortune he rightfully claimed, I wouldn’t be on this road. And just like that majestic river in the Sierra foothills, there is a confluence happening in front of me, I can feel it, an oddness that illuminates as if the source of light, along with everything else, comes from within.
Just around the bend I am about to encounter something I have not understood for a very long time, as if sulphur and mercury were playing itself out in a transubstantial dance in front of my eyes and inside my head at the same time.. My tires are holding up fine, I’m taking it slow. I’m in the land of gypsies and outlaws, back on the mountain path – La Vereda del Monte.