DOI: 10.25549/chs-m15635
title: Painting of the famous bandit, Joaquin Murrieta, by a young priest at the Mission San Carlos del Carmelo, shortly before Murrieta was killed in 1953

description: Photograph of a painting of the famous bandit, Joaquin Murrieta, by a young priest at the Mission San Carlos del Carmelo, shortly before Murrieta was killed in 1853. Murietta is depicted from the neck up with his shoulders turned to the left. His head is turned to look straight ahead. He has a moustache but is otherwise clean shaven. He has a wide-eyed stare. He is either wearing something on his head or he has long hair which hangs down over his ears to his shoulders.; Accompanying paper reads [part 1 of 2]: "From Major Horace Bell's Book, edited by Lanier Barlett 1930, Page 33: During the Summer of '53 news came to the sheriff at San Jose that Murietta was camped in a canyon down towards the Mission. A posse was at once organized of which Col. S.O. Houghton, formerly a member of Stevenson's Pioneer Regiment and, as I write, a leading member of the Los Angeles bar, was one. They surprised the bandits, captured Murrieta's horse and equipment, including even his hat; but he himself escaped up the mountain side. It was his last escape. In his next encounter with the law he was killed. This time he took refuge at the Mission Carmel and was cared for by the priest there for a time -- just how long is not known; but during this time the young padre painted a portrait of the famous bandito just as he appeared when he sought sanctuary in the ancient edifice of the Franciscans. A red sash is wound turban-like around his head and a manga of the same color does duty as a cloak. The manga, in South America called a poncho, is a mantle with edges embroidered and a hole in the center through which the head is thrust. It makes a comfortable and serviceable horseman's cloak."; Accompanying paper reads [part 2 of 2]: "A year or  two after the death of Joaquin this priest sent the picture to a very Christian old Catholic lady, wife of a wealthy American at Los Angeles, accompanied by a letter explaining the circumstances under which the portrait was painted and giving information he had to the effect that a sister of Joaquin's resided in Los Angeles. He requested that the letter and picture be delivered to her. However, the sister had disappeared from the pueblo, no one knew whither, so the portrait and the epistle remained in the possession of the American woman. Thirty years rolled around and this good old lady died. It became my duty, in a professional capacity, to take out letters of administration on her estate, on behalf of a kinswoman. In rummaging over some of the old boxes and trunks left by the deceased we found, along all sorts of rubbish, the portrait of Joaquin and the letter from the reverend artist who painted it. The edges of the oil painting had been eaten off by mice and it was in bad condition. I took it to an artist in Los Angeles, to have it restored and framed. This man had seen the preserved head of Joaquin Murietta in a Museum in New York and immediately recognized the subject of the portrait I set before him."; The painting [refering to the painting this image was taken from], reputed to be painted from life by a Franciscan friar resident at Carmel, is said to show the face of the notorious bandit Joaquin Murrieta. It is not known, for certain, if there was ever a Joaquin Murrieta who single-handedly terrorized the Forty-Niners. One Captain Harry Love, a slovenly former Texas Ranger, showed up in San Francisco with the head of a Latin man, pickled in brandy, who he claimed was the newly demised outlaw. The head remained on display at a San Francisco "museum" until the Great Earthquake and Fire; when it was looted and passed through the hands of several collectors." -- Joel Gazis-Sax, 1999.; "[Captain Harry] Love knew there would be skeptics. So, after preserving the head in alcohol at Fort Miller, he brought it to Mariposa County where he found a glass jar big enough to hold it for public display. In the next two weeks he held public viewings of the gruesome artifact -- charging each person $1 -- in Mariposa County, Stockton and San Francisco. The purpose was presumably to attract people who had known Murietta and would sign an affidavit saying it was his head. Seventeen people signed, including a priest, all of them claiming to have known Murietta or seen him before, and that he was the same Murietta who was the terror of Calaveras County. But of those who signed, none wrote that they'd actually seen the owner of the head in the jar rob or kill anyone. One person who signed, supposedly the prisoner captured and hanged in Martinez, who had been a member of the gang, might have been able to positively identify the head had he not been hanged. All the others just said they knew it was Murietta without offering any evidence that the individual they called Murietta was actually seen committing a criminal act." -- Tom Pendergast, 2002.