The Hunt for Willie Boy: Indian-Hating & Popular Culture - Softcover

Sandos, James A.; Burgess, Larry E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0806128437 ISBN 13: 9780806128436

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996

Synopsis

Winner of the Gustavus Myers Center Award for an Outstanding Book on Human Rights

In 1909 a sensational double killing in Southern California led to what has been called the West’s last famous manhunt. According to contemporary (white) newspapers, an Indian named Willie Boy killed his potential father-in-law in a fit of drunken lust, kidnapped his intended, and fled with her on foot across the desert. They were pursued by several posses, and when the girl slowed his flight, Willie Boy heartlessly raped and murdered her, finally killing himself after a shoot-out with a posse. This story was immortalized in the important Robert Redford film, Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969).

In The Hunt for Willie Boy: Indian-Hating and Popular Culture, James A. Sandos and Larry E. Burgess correct the story of Willie Boy, a Paiute-Chemehuevi Indian, by weaving in previously unheard Indian voices to explain his motivations and actions and to present a more balanced retelling.

 

About this title

Review

In the popular imagination, the clash of Native American nations with Europeans is seen as a series of battles and massacres, of large events. History operates on much smaller increments, as Sandos and Burgess demonstrate in their study of an incident in California in 1909. A Chemehuevi Indian, Willie Boy, killed another Chemehuevi and kidnapped his daughter, whom he later also killed. Indian-on-Indian crime did not attract much attention in those days, but white law-enforcement officials decided to make a lesson of Willie Boy, whose "violence exemplified a 'return to savagery' of a supposedly assimilated Indian." Hunted by a huge posse, Willie Boy died by his own hand. But during the manhunt, sheriffs removed dozens of Indian families from their oases "for their own protection." Those families would never return.

About the Author

James A. Sandos is Professor of History at the University of Redlands and the author of Rebellion in the Borderlands: Anarchism and the Plan of San Diego, 1904-1923, also published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

Larry E. Burgess, who holds a Ph.D. in history from Claremont Graduate School, is Library Director in the A.K. Smiley Public Library at Redlands, California.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0806128437
• ISBN 13: 9780806128436
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 204