Willie Boy, the truth, and white man's many outrageous lies
'Quintus Hopper of Nevada' series: The story of two ill-fated Chemehuevi lovers had been told and retold with lie upon lie. Many years later, two Hollywood films brought far more truth to light.
Quintus Hopper of Nevada, published in January 2022, is a historical novel that follows the epic and peculiar life of a frontier newspaper typesetter. As part of my research I made extensive use of newspaper archives and, in this series, I’ll share some of my often surprising findings. Here are history, commentaries and contemporary newspaper articles as they relate to the novel.
This time a look at the story of Willie Boy. It has been told and retold in newspapers, in books – and also by Hollywood. In 1969, Robert Redford starred in the movie Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, with Redford as a sheriff, and with Robert Blake in the role of the Chemehuevi Indian named Willie Boy. In my novel, Willie Boy’s life is saved by Queho, Quintus and Owl Woman.
Just recently, Hollywood’s chosen to tell the story once more, thanks to the interest of Jason Momoa, it was produced as The Last Manhunt (see the two trailers below for comparison). While even the Redford picture tried to tell the story far more truthfully than had contemporary papers, the film was still hampered by Hollywood casting and, well, Robert Redford - they tried to somehow make it his movie. It wasn’t.
In The Last Manhunt, while Momoa gets star billing, it is only done to market the movie. He smartly doesn’t hog the story. This is the tale of ill-fated Chemehuevi lovels Willie Boy and Carlota - and a manhunt that couldn’t have been more prejudiced and twisted to suit white man’s preferred story. As such, The Last Manhunt does a far better job.
The real story: Willie Boy was in love with a girl by the name of Carlota – and she with him – and he killed her father in the heat of the moment. The father had been against the marriage, there was a scuffle, a gun went off. It had been an accident. And so the members of the tribe told Willie Boy and Carlota to run away, to save themselves from the law.
The newspapers went into a frenzy, thrilled to report on a story that seemed to bring back the pioneering years when only a dead Indian had been a good Indian. They ran their articles to fuel the fears they themselves were stoking, they wrote about Willie Boy as a crazed murderer and secret chief who would stir his people into another Indian war. They wrote about other natives, supposedly readying to join Willie Boy, with heavily armed bands heading his way. Whatever anyone said to make the story even more dramatic, the papers snatched it up and spun it into next day’s report.
And since President Howard Taft’s 13’000-mile tour across the United States would bring him to Los Angeles in early October of that year, some journalists even suggested that Willie Boy was actually amassing an army to kill the President during his visit to California. None of what was reported was true, and the little the newspapers could have known, they didn’t bother to ask about. What mattered was the story, not the truth.
When the sheriff assembled a posse, eager men raised their hands. This would be like the stories of old, the stories of the Wild West, the time when savage Indians were hunted by righteous white men. Maybe, they thought, maybe this would be the very last western manhunt. They rode out and reported back to journalists whatever made it sound more gruesome and daring.
When they accidentally shot the hiding Carlota in the wilderness – while Willie Boy was away hunting – they blamed her death on him. Immediately he was decried as a vicious double murderer. No one talked to the members of the tribe who could attest to the death of Carlota’s father as an accident – and no one enquired why the girl had been shot in the back. Willie Boy outwitted his pursuers – and when he ambushed them, they ran in fear and concocted a story that would allow them to return triumphantly.
According to the posse’s story, they had indeed found Willie Boy dead. They took a picture of the corpse, covering the face. The photograph likely showed a member of the posse, alive and well, pretending to be Willie Boy. They didn’t return a corpse, which would have been the traditional thing to do. Dead outlaws were put on display to be jeered at and photographed. Instead they claimed that the body had been in such bad shape that they had been forced to burn it then and there. And so they returned victorious. They had got their man, they said.
An excellent book by Clifford E. Trafzer (published in 2020 and with a foreword by Jason Momoa), Willie Boy & The Last Western Manhunt, lays out a full story of what is known today. The author talked to the members of the Chemehuevi tribe. Their oral history is clear – the death of Carlota’s father had been an accident … and Willie Boy had not been killed by the posse. Instead, his people said, he lived out his life near Pahrump – to be near Mount Charleston, a sacred mountain called Nivaganti by Native Americans.
The following article was printed in the Los Angeles Herald, the paper that had most ardently fanned the flames for the manhunt, and that had most likely been complicit in the concoction of the final story.
October 17, 1909
Los Angeles Herald, Los Angeles
FIND INDIAN DEAD WHERE LAST STAND WAS MADE
SAN BERNARDINO, Oct. 16. – Willie Boy is dead, and with his death is ended the meteoric career of probably the most famous Indian renegade of late years, whose trail was blazed by two of the most cruel murders in the criminal annals of the two counties in which they occurred and by the most thrilling man hunt in the history of the great dreary desert, in the desolate midst of which, huddled in his lonely rock protected garrison, the desperate Piute murderer, broken in spirit by the hardships of the long chase and weak from the exposure and hunger, cheated his pursuers from their ambition of capture by using his last cartridge to end the life sought by a horde of officers whom he thought would, in a few hours, close in on him.
For eight days following the desperate battle between the fugitive and the little party of trailers on the slope of the bleak granite peak, only the lifeless form of the murderer guarded the little fortress. Secreted in the brush and boulders overlooking the seemingly endless stretch of burning desert waste, Willie Boy, by his own hand, had put a terrible end to his bloody career. The solitary shot that rang out in the distance and which fell faintly on the ears of the little group of trailers picking their way down the steep canyon carrying their wounded comrade, ended the life of the fugitive.
Find Dead Body of Indian
Cautiously circling down on the scene of the battle from the higher regions of the peak, Indian Marshal Ben DeCrevecouer with a posse of twelve men, jointly led by Deputy Sheriff George Hewins of this city, Friday morning, a week and a day after the battle, came to the scene of the fugitive’s last stand, and there, his sightless eyes gazing heavenward and his deadly rifle lying across his breast, the body of the murderer was found.
Calling for his men to dismount, DeCrevecouer fired once at what he at first supposed to be the reposing form of the fugitive, and then the officers, as the Indian stirred not, swarmed down into the little garrison where Willie Boy, once a brave desperado, lay where he had fallen after pulling the trigger of his Winchester.
Seated behind a towering boulder, over which he had directed his deadly fire, the Indian, after he had fired all but his last cartridge, which he had treasured to use in ending his own life, finally, as the night wore on, placed his rifle just below his heart, and taking off the shoe of his right foot pressed his big toe against the trigger, sending the fatal leaden bullet through his vital organs. Death was instant, the shot passing through his heart and coming out just below his shoulder. Falling back lifeless, his arms outstretched and his rifle resting across his breast, Willie passed out of this life, stopping the career of the most feared criminal ever sought in this county.
Desert Brush His Funeral Pyre
His funeral pyre a heap of desert brush, the body of Willie Boy was burned to ashes where it was found, the officers surrounding the flaming mass, watching the remains of the man for whom they had hunted through the dreary wastes of two counties as the fiery tongues licked about it until, with the smoldering coals of the brush, it became undiscernible in the glowing heap.
Without waiting for the appearance of Sheriff John Ralphs, who with his posse had evidently become delayed between Big Bear valley and the stated meeting point at Rock Coral, the combined party made up of the Victorville and Banning posses, which included thirty-three men and horses, was divided. A dozen men, including Ben DeCrevecouer and George Hewins, the leaders, together with Sheriff Wilson of Riverside county, who was a member of the Banning posse, struck out for the scene of the battle, a few miles distant, leaving the remainder of the party scattered about the country to run down tracks which had been discovered. Striking a point far above the scene of the encounter a week before, the officers picked their way down the slope of the peak until overlooking the canyon in which the trailers were ambushed, and then coming suddenly from behind an immense crag, DeCrevecouer sighted the form of Willie Boy below, firing once to make certain that he was dead.
Three Weeks Since First Crime
Riding all day and night, the leaders of the party, together with a portion of their posses, a number of men having been left to bring in the wagons and notify Sheriff Ralphs of the discovery of the body, arrived at Victorville shortly before sunrise this morning, coming on to this city by train, bringing the first news of the finding of Willie Boy.
The shells scattered about the floor of his fortress were gathered up by the officers and are now treasured as relics of the hunt. The show which he had taken off, together with the rifle, have joined the famous collection of souvenirs of memorable captures in the sheriff’s office in this city.
Three weeks ago tomorrow Willie Boy, crazed with drink, murdered Mike Bonaface, the father of the girl whom he loved. Creeping on him as he slept in the open on the Gilman ranch, near Banning, in Riverside county, the savage shot the old Indian through the eye, killing him instantly. Taking his 15-year-old daughter, Isileta, the murderer then fled, under the cover of night, directly through the town of Banning. It was not for twelve hours that the hunt was started, due to the fear-stricken Indians failing to make known the murder.
Sheriff Wilson of Riverside county, with a posse of deputies and trailers, followed the murderer and the girl over the rugged regions of the Whitewater, Willie Boy frequently doubling on his trail, and at the end of four days the body of the girl was found, shot through the heart by her abductor when she was unable to further keep up the pace, and, falling exhausted, was murdered by the savage. Her body was found two hours later by the posse, which was pressing close on the fleeing murderer. Frequent evidences along the trail told of his brutal treatment of her. Returning with the body, the chase was temporarily abandoned.
The second murder was committed in San Bernardino county, and immediately Sheriff John Ralphs, one of the most efficient officers in the state, started out from San Bernardino. Friday morning, the day after the killing of the girl, he left this city for Daggett, where, outfitted with a four-horse team and a number of officers and trailers, he struck out across the desert and then, joined by the posse headed by Ben DeCrevecouer from Banning, near the scene of the second murder, took up the trail of the fugitive.
Deputy Severely Wounded
After trailing the murderer for nearly 300 miles through the rugged regions, frequently but a short distance behind the fleeing Indian, while the posse was divided, the trailers finally came on him intrenched in one of the big granite peaks not far from where he killed the girl. In the battle that followed Charles Reche, a deputy sheriff from Banning, was wounded severely and now lies in a grave condition in a local hospital.
Forced by the lack of provisions and horses to give up the chase, the posse returned. Sheriff Ralphs immediately outfitted an expedition including fifty armed men and started again after the murderer, with the result as told, the finding of the body of Willie Boy, a suicide.
PS: Can’t help but add below picture - it was done by an Italian artist for the Italian movie poster of the Redford-starring Willie Boy picture. It’s highly reminiscent of Once upon a time in the West and, again, it has nothing to do with what really happened. Still - that’s some very cool poster art!
