The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta

The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta is an 1854 novel by John Rollin Ridge, writing under the name Yellow Bird. It presents a fictionalized biography of the legendary bandit Joaquín Murrieta, described as once a respected citizen of Mexico who turns to crime after traveling to California during the gold rush. The novel is regarded as one of the first novels written in California and the first published by a Native American author, and while many contemporary readers took it as fact, it became widely popular and was translated into French and Spanish, though extensive plagiarism of the text meant Ridge saw little financial reward from its success. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/