All language subtitles for Kevin.Costnes.The.West.S01E05.The.Robin.Hood.Of.El.Dorado.1080p.NOW.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

The West has always been
America's fabled Promised Land,

a place where ordinary people
dreamed of carving their destiny

on land of their own.

In the first half
of the 19th century,

settlers seeking that dream

fuelled a violent clash
with Native nations

protecting their way of life.

Then in 1848, California offers up
a new kind of dream:

the chance to get rich
without land, by finding gold.

New migrants flock west
from every corner of the country

and globe, but in this lawless land,
for every man making a buck

there are three men
bent on stealing it.

That's doubly true
for Mexican outlaw

Joaquin Murrieta.
He came to California

seeking a fortune,
and found his calling

as a common criminal.

His life and death forged a legend

inspiring fictional heroes
like Zorro and Django.

His story begins
with a fleck of gold.

People live on myths,
and the myths that really stick

in American experience
are those of the West.

The mountains were taller.
The deserts were harsher.

The snows were deeper.

The American West conjures
wonder, possibility, opportunity.

The figure of the mountain man.

Notorious outlaws.
- The cowboy.

The discovery of gold
in California.

This train of wagons
trailing across the prairie.

Everybody has a reason
for wanting this land.

But most of that land
was already occupied.

We have been residents
for more than 10,000 years.

This is a clash of two different
ways of seeing life itself.

Fighting for the future
of your homeland on the one side...

...and fighting for the destiny
of the New Republic on the other.

The history of the West
is a creation story.

It's the creation of
what we think of as modern America.

The West is a place
where anything is possible.

It is the essence
of the American Dream.

The core of this is,
what are we to be as a nation?

The reckoning is coming.

The West is this canvas
on which American dreams

become larger than life.

From the earliest days
of independence,

the United States
has been looking West.

By the mid-1840s, thousands of
Americans have crossed the Rockies

and settled in Oregon country,

giving the nation
a foothold on the Pacific.

And in 1845, newly elected President
James Polk has his sights

set on securing the West Coast.

That same year, the press
coins a phrase

that captures the spirit of the age:
'manifest destiny.'

When you take that phrase apart,
'manifest destiny,'

it's saying on the one hand,
'destiny,' this is inevitable,

cos these are a superior people
moving into this country,

and 'manifest,
that it's just obvious.

Anyone who looks at this will see

the inferiority of those
whom they are conquering.

That's the way it was seen.

That's how
American expansion was justified.

James K Polk made a pledge,
that if he's President

he was going to resolve our border
issues both in the Pacific Northwest

and on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Within a year
of Polk's election,

the U.S. turns the Republic of Texas
into its 28th state.

Mexico is powerless
to stop its former province

from joining the Union,
and Polk wants more.

The motivation for the U.S.
behind the Mexican War

primarily is this desire
to fulfil manifest destiny.

They had their eye on this territory
for a long time,

and they were intent on taking it
by any means necessary.

The Mexican-American War
is a naked land grab.

It's caused
by the demand for more land.

The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo
ends the Mexican-American War,

and formally cedes what is a third
or more of Northern Mexico

to the United States.
In 1848,

the United States gains
an additional 525,000 square miles

of territory,
land that will eventually be known

as Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado,
and New Mexico.

But the greatest prize
is California.

California
has great natural ports in Monterey

and in San Francisco,
and near San Diego.

America wants very much
to have a trade with Asia,

and so there is a huge desire
to have that access to the Pacific.

The people who negotiated
and signed the treaty had no idea

that California all of a sudden
was worth

a whole lot more
than anybody had known.

At the time the treaty was signed,
gold had already been discovered

in California, but the news
hadn't gone to Mexico City.

The discovery of gold
in California

happened within 200 hours
of the signing

of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.
In other words,

at the very moment
that we acquired the far West,

it began to be revealed that this
was the richest place on Earth.

Individuals use that
as somehow the justification

or the proof that that is
exactly what God intended,

that God intended this land for you,

and then God rewards us with gold.

At the time,
telegraph lines and railroad tracks

have not even
crossed the Mississippi River,

and news of the gold strike
spreads by word of mouth,

first to nearby Oregon,
then by ships

to ports in Mexico, Peru, Chile,

and China before finally
reaching the East Coast.

Gold was discovered
in Sacramento in 1848,

but they really didn't get there
until 1849.

Why they're called the 49ers
instead of the 48ers.

And there were only really two ways
you could get to California:

sea passage, if you had money
for the sea passage,

the other way, to go overland
through the mountain passes,

incredibly arduous journeys
either way, but still they came.

That siren call
of, "Gold, gold, gold,"

rang through the newspapers,
and they came in thousands.

Thousands of Americans

who once longed
for their own piece of land to farm

now swap their ploughs for gold pans
and blaze a trail to California.

The gold rush fundamentally alters
the American Dream. There are

sudden stories
about people striking it rich,

and in a day's work
gaining a fortune

that would've been, in other cases,
years of labour.

And then that just causes
an explosion of immigration.

So in 1848, you have
about 1,000 white people

living in
what is the state of California.

Within two years, you have 100,000.

Within another year,
you have over 200,000.

California was once home
to around 300,000 Indigenous people.

Then in the 1540s,

the Spanish came looking
for the legendary City of Gold,

known as El Dorado.

They did not find it,
but in the late 1700s

they built
a string of religious missions,

enslaved the local Indians,
and forced them

to convert to Catholicism.

Disease
wiped out thousands of Natives.

By the time Mexico
gains its independence in 1821,

California has lost almost half
of its indigenous population,

and now even Mexicans
are rapidly being outnumbered

by the 49ers,
white Americans from the East

ready to take the land.

The irony for the Mexicans
who are there,

for the people
who occupy those lands,

is that they're now deemed
foreigners. White Americans believed

tha as they won the war,

they're entitled to this gold.
- A habit of the American frontier

is that people arrive
before the law gets there.

So there are disputes about land.

And there are no rules.
People stake claims,

but that's just them saying,
"This is my spot."

If you think there's a miner
that's doing better than you,

and if that happens to be a Chinese,
Mexican, or other,

there's no-one stopping you,

if you have more might,
if you have more firepower,

you have more men,
to take that claim.

And if there's resistance,
there's violence.

Under Mexican rule,

California was
a distant northern province

beyond government control.
Even in U.S. hands,

it's still not a state.
There's no Constitution, no courts,

and no police.

Gangs run rampant
in this lawless land.

Newspapers inflame readers
with tales of bandits and murderers:

the most famous of all,

a Mexican gang leader
who goes by the name of Joaquin.

There's this murky region
in between,

where fact,
historical documentation,

meets the legend. There was a person
named Joaquin Murrieta

that people have identified.
We do know he's born around 1830

in a small town in Sonora, Mexico.

Joaquin Murrieta is one of many
thousands of Mexican miners

in Northern California
trying to make a go of it

like everybody else,
panning for gold, digging for gold,

and he enjoys some success.

Some accounts suggest
Joaquin was pushed off his land

by American settlers.

Forced to give up mining gold,
Murrieta turns to stealing it.

In the state of California
at this time in 1852,

there are reports
that there's a bandit named Joaquin

on a murderous path, robbing people,
stealing horses,

killing people in the gold fields.

You begin to see
all these stories circulating

in the newspapers
about various bandits,

which they begin
to attach the name Joaquin to.

One event in late 1852
cements his reputation

as the most feared outlaw
in gold rush California.

Joshua Bean is a military veteran
and eventually becomes

the mayor of San Diego.
And when he retires from that,

he opens a saloon in a small town
in Southern California.

One evening
there's a brawl over a girl.

In the aftermath of that,
Bean is walking home...

...when he's attacked
by persons unknown...

... and killed.

The person behind these murders
is a ghost,

a phantom who strikes in the night,
and then someone offers testimony

that gives up the name
Joaquin Murrieta.

"Joaquin Murrieta did it."
Finally, the Phantom has a name.

In the late 1840s,

dreams of gold
bring thousands to California.

Some come out to make money
off this influx of miners,

others come to rob them outright.

As violent crimes run rampant,

the name Joaquin
echoes through the gold fields.

When gold was discovered
in California, it hadn't been

formally made into a territory.
There was no government there

at that time.
California applies

for statehood in 1849,
but with the nation divided

over the future of slavery,
a crisis ensues.

After the war with Mexico,
there is new territory out West

that will have to be admitted
to the Union eventually

as slave state or free.

The admission of California
to the Union

would mean a free state.
tipping the balance in Congress,

which Southern states
could not accept.

Eventually,
a deal is reached.

The Compromise of 1850 aimed
to appease both North and South.

One of the key components
of the Compromise of 1850 is,

let the territories decide
as they apply to statehood

whether or not they're gonna be
a free or enslaved state.

In exchange, the South
gets a harsher Fugitive Slave Act.

The newly established territories
of Utah and New Mexico

will decide on the issue of slavery
themselves.

And California joins the Union
as a free state.

But the new government
can barely make an impact

on the widespread banditry.

California's a vast territory,
so it's gonna take years

before California actually is able
to unfold basic state government.

Trying
to impose law and order,

like-minded settlers
form armed posses

and call themselves
Vigilance Committees.

In 1852,
a vigilante group in Los Angeles

investigates
the murder of Joshua Bean.

Taking the word
of a former gang member,

they pin the crime
on Mexican bandit Joaquin Murrieta.

But for most Californians,

he will continue to be known
simply as Joaquin.

The Stockton newspaper,
the Sacramento newspaper,

the Los Angeles newspaper
are reporting stories of Joaquin.

It was sensationalised
in the press at the time,

and because newspapers
have to sell copies,

more lurid stories would come out.
- Newspapers are reporting

all sorts of things
attributed to Joaquin,

that he dresses in black, that he
seems to be immune to gunfire.

And this leads to speculation
that maybe

he's wearing a sort of chain mail.
- "He's an outstanding horseman."

"He's a sharp shooter."
"He'll knock you off a horse

at 50 paces."

Right as the California gold rush
is happening,

what is really striking
in American culture

is the rise of mass literacy.

We're beginning to get
public schools. Many more people

can read than before.
- This is also coinciding

with a newspaper boom
in the United States

from just 200, 50 years before,
to more than 2,000 by 1850.

This would not be possible

without the cheapening
of the printing process. Suddenly

presses mass-produce material.

By early 1853,
the press has tied the name Joaquin

to at least 20 murders.

Joaquin is striking out
against the Yankee,

but he's also reportedly
robbing the Chinese

and killing Chinese miners.

And in one case,
Joaquin sets upon a Chinese camp.

Joaquin kills
many of the Chinese miners...

... and takes
$6,000-worth of gold dust from them.

Newspapers continue to add
to the growing list of crimes

committed by Joaquin.

Some even speculate there may be
more than one bandit by that name.

The coverage
creates a climate of fear.

So the Anglo fear
is of the Mexican bandit,

and the Mexican bandit
is actually this image

that comes out of the war
with Mexico.

There's
a lot of guerilla resistance. And so

for a lot of anxious Anglos,
any Mexican male could be Joaquin.

Every Mexican
becomes a potential bandit.

California is a new state,
and this reputation

for being a region
rife with banditry, with murder,

is a big problem.
They want thousands,

eventually millions of settlers,
to come to build the economy,

and so there's a tremendous pressure
on the California government

to solve this Joaquin problem.
As panic grows,

California Governor John Bigler
offers a quick solution:

a $1,000 reward. But for some,
it's a call to arms,

and chaos follows.

All sorts of people are interested
in acquiring this bounty,

but there's no real way
to know who Joaquin is.

So Joaquin became
somebody who served as a pretext

to arm vigilantes
to roam the countryside and kill,

potentially threatening
Spanish-speaking people.

For three months,
vigilante squads

openly target Mexicans,

who, in their eyes, look suspicious,
but the bounty goes unclaimed.

Anxious Californians
demand further action.

When California
is trying to figure out

how to deal with Joaquin,
they look to Texas,

as Texas has recently created
the Texas Rangers.

Originally formed
to defend Americans in Texas

from the Comanche, the Rangers
have expanded their responsibilities

and their range,
venturing south of the border

during the Mexican-American War.

The Texas Rangers
acquire a lot of fame

during the war with Mexico
as this sort of anti-guerilla,

anti-bandit force.
In May 1853,

Governor Bigler signs a bill
creating the California Rangers.

Their goal: to find Joaquin.

But it's still unclear if Joaquin
is a single bandit or many.

So the bill names
five potential Joaquins

for the Rangers to apprehend.

So California copies this idea
that we need a heavily armed

paramilitary organisation
that is gonna impose order

where there is banditry,
lawlessness. But their main tools

are violence, intimidation,
and murder.

The Governor of California

sanctions the California Rangers
to go after Joaquin

without due process.

He's basically
empowered a death squad.

Throughout the spring of 1853,

Mexican outlaw Joaquin
evades vigilantes,

even with a bounty on his head.

California Governor John Bigler

hopes that by establishing
the state's first police force,

he can end the chase.

Our Republic is based
on due process and the rule of law,

and yet on every frontier,
extra-legal activity occurs.

And so the Governor of California
creates the Rangers,

who are really
just a group of people

willing to do the wet work
for California

under a very slight patina
of legality.

One man is chosen
by popular demand

to lead the Rangers in their hunt:

an army veteran turned bounty hunter

with a reputation
for killing fugitives

he's already captured.
A man named Harry Love.

There is as much lore
about Captain Harry Love

as there is Joaquin Murrieta
in lots of ways.

In one description,
he's half-man and half-alligator.

Harry Love had come to California
looking for gold,

and ended up finding something else.
What he found is that his ability

to kill other people
was more lucrative

than his ability to find gold.

Harry Love had military background
from the Mexican War.

He had been a Texas Ranger.

He's someone who could be trusted
to hunt people down.

You don't mess with Harry.
He'll kill you.

With Joaquin
making national headlines,

Love sees a chance
to get famous too, by killing him.

So he handpicks a posse of gunmen
who are also ready to do

whatever it takes.

So Captain Harry Love assembles
a group of about 20 Rangers.

These are young men,
probably 20s and 30s.

We don't know
a whole lot about them.

They were probably several of them,
if not most of them, miners,

who didn't strike it rich
as they had hoped,

and are looking for other things
to make some money.

As hopeful immigrants

pour into
the furthest edge of the nation,

gold is on the decline.
For most Californians,

the rush is over.

By '52,

those early pickings of gold
are gone, or depleted.

And every time the gold
becomes harder to find,

it becomes more expensive to find.
And then you have to develop

new technology for panning.
And then eventually

there is
what's called hydraulic mining:

they change the course of rivers,
and erode cliff sides,

and then you mine that.
And eventually they chase the gold

to the underground seams
where it originates.

People who go out to California
to mine gold

discover that they're just like
coal miners in Pennsylvania,

and they're working
for somebody else.

And in some ways, it's a microcosm
of the Industrial Revolution

in America at about this time
and a bit later.

What we see is this transition

from a situation
of individual opportunity, you know,

that fellow down there with the pan,
to one of big business,

of corporate power.
It's the story, of course,

that we see, especially
in the far West, unfolding

over and over again.

As gold
becomes harder to find,

miners
seek their fortunes elsewhere.

For the California Rangers in 1853,

killing Joaquin
offers a much needed paycheque:

$150 a month for the hunt,
$1,000 for the kill.

That's the equivalent of $40,000
today.

But Joaquin could be anywhere
in the 160,000 square-mile state,

and the Rangers
have just three months

to track him down.

So you have an elusive character.

Weeks and weeks and weeks,
Love and his California Rangers,

they're asking people here,
people there,

"Have there been
any sightings of Joaquin?"

There are rumours
that Joaquin is moving

between Sonora and California.
- He could be hiding

in the mountains
and disguising himself

in urban environments.
- He appears out of nowhere.

He kills,
then disappears as quickly.

It sounds at times as though
he's in two places at once.

So there is a robbery and a murder
over here,

a vengeance murder over here,
but nobody could get

from here to there in that time.
By July 1853,

the Rangers
have spent two months hunting

without a trace of Joaquin.

Harry Love
must have been getting very antsy.

The pressure is building.
We have to apprehend

or kill this Joaquin.

Newspapers
follow their pursuit,

and their sensational stories
paint the Golden State

as a lawless land.
But California is changing.

As Americans come
with more than just dreams of gold,

they're here to build homes
and start families.

Most who went to California
went thinking that it was temporary.

They would go, make their fortune,
come home.

But they looked around,
and they said, "Well,

California's kind of a nice place."

In the 1850s,
California is getting populated.

Places like San Francisco
and San Diego were becoming cities.

They were destinations.

Letters and stories
spread the allure of California

to cities back East,
and a newly popularised technology

plays a vital role. Migrants
are now sending back photographs

as proof of their prosperity.

Most of these people
couldn't really even afford the suit

they wore
when they had these photos taken,

but by sending a success photograph,
kind of a selfie

back to Boston or to North Carolina,
and your kin see that,

and they say, "See, he was right.
We should follow him."

But for Native Americans
across California,

the flood of settlers
unleashes a nightmare.

The people most endangered
by American rule

in California in the 1850s
are Native peoples.

At the time of European arrival,

California was the most diverse
and densely settled portion

of Native North America.
It had over 100 different languages

and a diversity
of indigenous peoples

that is hard to summarise.

In the two decades
after this acquisition

by the United States,
the Native population

reduced from about 150,000
to 20 or 30,000.

Their population plummeted
due in part

to factors
we could consider unintentional,

like the spread of diseases,
to a terrible extent,

intentional practices
of the U.S. state,

arming or at least
enabling vigilantes

to kill Indigenous peoples.

For California
gold rushers,

a plot of land
is a potential jackpot.

For settlers, it's an opportunity,
and both want the Native population

out of the way.

Migrants from nearby Oregon
are among the first

to attack Native Californians,
sometimes claiming revenge

for the killings
of Christian missionaries

Marcus and Narcissa Whitman.
But the new state government

soon takes the lead. Governor
John Bigler even raises funds

to exterminate Native people.

The state is paying bounties,
both sponsoring militias

and paying irregulars
to kill Indians.

As violence
becomes routine practice,

local militia and vigilante groups

are responsible for killing as many
as 16,000 California Indians,

with the state spending
around $80 million in today's money.

In hunting down Mexican outlaw
Joaquin Murrieta,

Harry Love follows
a well-trodden path

of state-sanctioned violence
against non-Americans.

Newspapers and their readers
are rooting for him,

but his time is running out.

Harry Love
has a three-month deadline

to find this elusive,
poorly described person.

As he gets closer and closer
to that deadline,

there's tremendous pressure on Love
to find Joaquin

and maybe even, in his mind,
to get creative.

There were lots of Joaquins
in the state of California,

Mexican-origin people.

If you put a bounty on the head
of someone named Joaquin,

who is to say that the person
you apprehend

is actually the person
you say he is?

Just three weeks
before his contract expires,

Love gets a lead.

Harry Love and his Rangers
apparently find the brother-in-law

of Joaquin,
and they make a deal with him.

"We won't arrest you or kill you
if you tell us where Joaquin is."

He says they're in what is today
Fresno County.

So Harry Love and the Rangers
go there.

Love and his men come upon a group
of Mexican-looking peoples

in an area called Arroyo de Cantua.

Love and the California Rangers
have identified this encampment

where Mexicans
have a number of horses,

and determine
that some of the horses are stolen.

So in their minds,
this is Joaquin and his bandits.

So it doesn't take much
in that encounter, in that exchange,

to get heated and the guns drawn.

- Stop!
- Hey, whoa!

Drop your weapons!

There's a shootout,
and some of the bandits scatter.

And Joaquin almost makes his escape.

He's wounded.

And as they come to him
in his dying moments,

he said, "Don't shoot me.
I'm already dead."

But killing
this Mexican bandit

is no guarantee
that Love will get his bounty.

So Harry Love
believes he has Joaquin,

but he has a problem, which is,
there's no real way to prove this.

That could have been a Mexican
that maybe was named Joaquin,

maybe not.

But Harry Love
was gonna collect that money.

On July 25, 1853,

Harry Love
and the California Rangers

succeed in their mission,

finding and killing the bandit
Joaquin Murrieta.

Determined to claim his reward,
Love removes the outlaw's head

and preserves it
in a barrel of alcohol.

There's a lot of question,

particularly
in the Mexican community,

about whether Harry Love
ever got Joaquin

or whether this is just
some poor hapless Mexican.

There's no way to prove
that it's Joaquin,

but fortunately for Love,

state officials are dying
to have this problem go away.

So when he presents
the severed head, they say,

"Job well done."
The banditry is done with.

Harry Love
collects the $1,000 bounty

for killing Joaquin Murrieta,
and splits it with his Rangers.

The grateful California government
later rewards him

an additional 5,000,
which he keeps for himself.

And with his newfound fame,

he sees yet another way to profit
off the dead Mexican bandit.

Right here!

- Joaquin Murrieta!
- Harry Love realises

there's still value
in this severed head, and so

he puts it on display and charges
admission. This is shocking

and barbaric by our standards,
but it's part of a long tradition.

For hundreds of years, people
that have run afoul of the state,

of the king, have had their heads
severed, put on a pike

as a warning to anybody
who would think about

defying the state's power.

To Americans
in California, Harry Love is a hero.

By killing a feared Mexican outlaw,

he's made the new state
a safer place to live.

But the legend of Joaquin
will not die.

So after Harry Love and his men
decapitated Joaquin Murrieta,

the newspapers
started circulating rumours

that they had gotten the wrong man.

Some newspapers claimed
that Joaquin Murrieta had escaped

into Mexico. Other newspapers
claimed that he continues to exist

in California.

Because if Joaquin's not dead,
or at least we can claim he's not,

we can continue to publish stories
of his exploits, of his deeds,

and sell newspapers.

A young Cherokee journalist
is paying close attention.

John Rollin Ridge
finds his way to California

like so many other people in 1850,
to strike it rich.

After failing as a miner,
Ridge turns to journalism,

and sees a chance to hit paydirt
by spinning the Joaquin story

out of the headlines
and into a popular novel.

But he also has an axe to grind.

John Rollin Ridge grew up
in Cherokee Nation

and watched as his homeland
was stolen by settlers.

Two decades earlier,

President Andrew Jackson
signed the Indian Removal Act,

which forced Native Americans
in the East off their homelands

and onto unfamiliar territory
in the West.

The Jackson administration
is determined

to remove Native Americans
from the Southeast,

from Georgia and that wider region,
because that's rich, fertile land

that is perfect for growing cotton.
Beginning in 1830,

Native nations in the Southeast
are expelled from their land.

But the Cherokee resisted removal

under the leadership
of Chief John Ross. But for some,

it seemed inevitable.
- John Rollin Ridge

was part of a family which became
known as the Ridge Party,

believed that their best chance
of sustaining Cherokee society

was ceding their lands
east of the Mississippi

and taking up lands in the West.
Against the tribe's wishes,

Ridge's father, grandfather
and uncle

all signed a treaty
with the U.S. government,

giving up seven million acres
of Cherokee land in the East.

The federal government
organises deportation campaigns

that bring the Cherokee
and other Southern Indians

to what we now call Oklahoma,
which was at the time

known as Indian territory.

The Trail of Tears
saw an estimated

100,000 Native Americans
removed from their homelands.

Along their journey west,
15,000 would die from disease,

hunger, heat and cold,
including 4,000 Cherokee.

As a 12-year-old, Ridge witnessed
his father stabbed to death

for his role in the removal.

For Ridge, a Cherokee rider
still seething at his enemies,

Joaquin Murrieta represents
the underdog who fights back.

What Ridge does, he takes
all these stories about Joaquin

and he formulates them
into a really compelling narrative,

as he wants to create
a sympathetic character.

Ridge's character
is still a young Mexican

who goes to California
in search of gold,

but then he adds a twist,
with a dramatic new backstory.

Joaquin
meets the face of American racism,

and as the story goes,

these American miners
come to his claim...

...there's violence that ensues.
They rape his wife in front of him.

He's beat to a pulp
and left to die...

...and that sets him off
in this path of banditry.

Seeking revenge...
against the gringo.

In Ridge's novel, there are also
moments where we see

Joaquin Murrieta
protecting the people

who he sees as suffering
in an unjust society.

So on the one hand
he could be

a valiant protector of his people...

...and on the other hand,
the bandit,

the murderer, the cutthroat.

So the story
told by John Rollin Ridge,

those 12 miners, he finds them
and kills them all.

It's the first novel

ever published by a Native American,
and he hopes

people will see in its pages
the true history of California.

But it's a flop.

Ridge never met
the financial success

he felt was his due, and ended up
dying in his 40s of a brain disease.

But tall tales
of the Wild West

are now getting popular
across America.

In 1859, portions of Ridge's novel
are plagiarised

by the California Police Gazette.

But this version of the story
makes several changes:

Joaquin is portrayed as a villain,
a robber who killed for money,

and the posse that hunts him down
are the heroes.

The story gets retold and retold,
dime novels of the 19th century,

and then
into the early 20th century.

It's translated into French,
into Spanish, into other languages.

It's republished in Chile
and Argentina.

Over time,
the story of Joaquin the outlaw

is overtaken by the narrative
of an avenging hero.

A popular Spanish folk ballad
depicts him defending his people

in an unjust society.

And Joaquin becomes known
as the 'Robin Hood of El Dorado.'

Ridge's narrative of Joaquin
as this sympathetic vigilante,

the underdog
seeking righteous justice,

creates this wider web of stories
and legends

about this Joaquin character.
- He was fighting

against the invading American,
the Yankee, the gringo,

so he's elevated to a folkloric hero
in lots of ways.

In the decades
after Joaquin's death,

California will transform
from a lawless mining hub

into a booming and diverse economy.

People realise
there's money to be made,

not simply from gathering the gold,
but from attracting people

to California.
- Once people got there,

they realised there was gold
in every direction.

There were fertile valleys

like the Central Valley,
which now produces

one-fifth of all the food
in America.

Families start to come,

and instead of living
in shanty towns,

they built communities.
Vigilantism is replaced

by actual police forces, and courts,
and judicial systems.

And so California ceases to be
a frontier place,

and becomes a place
of permanent American settlement.

Even as California changes,

the legend of Joaquin lives on.

As a kid growing up in Los Angeles
in the 1950s,

you couldn't help but know
about Joaquin Murrieta.

I heard it from my father,
and then saw it on television.

Joaquin Murrieta has come
to embody the sense of possibility

that one could reinvent oneself,
whether as a miner or as a bandit,

and seek something different.

So the story of Joaquin
is really of a piece

with other stories
about larger than life figures

in the American West.
Great outlaws of the West,

Jesse James, and the kind of people

who emerge in Western literature.
- Myth and reality often,

as in so much about the West,
get conflated with one another,

get entangled with one another,
gets hard to distinguish

one from the other, and ultimately
sometimes what matters most

is what people believe to be true.
If people believe in Murrieta,

then maybe that's ultimately
what matters most.

The severed head
displayed by Captain Harry Love

is eventually destroyed
in a San Francisco earthquake

in 1906. Nobody will ever know

if it truly belonged
to Joaquin Murrieta.

But the Murrieta legend
reveals the turmoil

of the California gold rush,
transforming a Mexican outlaw

into a folk hero
fighting for the oppressed.

Over the following years,
as settlers continue to flock West,

another legendary figure
will emerge,

this time in the Kansas Plains:

John Brown will leave violence
in his way

and his actions will help
push the nation towards civil war.