Tiburcio Vásquez was one of the best-known outlaws of post – Civil War California. From the mid-1850s until his execution in 1875, he engaged in a series of stagecoach robberies, shoot-outs, and other escapades that made him a household name throughout much of the Golden State and beyond. The dominant image of him as a kind of Mexican Robin Hood driven to a life of crime by the systematic mistreatment of his people by greedy and land-grabbing Americans originated during his lifetime and has persisted to the present. John Boessenecker, who has written extensively on crime and law enforcement in nineteenth-century California, has produced in this volume the first full-scale biography of this important figure. Based upon a close reading of a large number of contemporary newspapers, mainly English-language ones, and later reminiscences of American pioneers, this book offers a complex and nuanced portrait of Vásquez.
Born in Monterey in...
