Caught Dead to Rights,
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It was the beginning of a new century. Motor cars mixed with horse drawn wagons on the streets. Telephones and flush toilets were becoming common. John Phillip Souza was playing at Riverside’s world famous Mission Inn. It was almost 30 years since the OK corral in 1881 and Geronimo’s capture in 1886. The days of “Cowboys and Indians” were over. Clara True was the superintendent of the Morongo Indian Reservation. Ben was Constable of Banning and had been appointed deputy to the Department of the Interior. Banning was a dry county. Alcohol was prohibited. The Bureau of Indian Affairs had sent out Clara True as the superintendent of four reservations, the Morongo, next to Banning, where mostly Cahuilla and Serrano Indians lived. The Piutes and Chemehuevi tribes made up the Twentynine Palms Reservation. She also supervised the Martinez-Torres, Palm Springs Reservations and Mission Creek. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Francis E. Leupp called True “the very man” for the job. The policy of the day was to assimilate the Indians into the white man’s ways, discouraging their use of language and culture. True, however, was working to make them entirely self-sufficient agriculturally by helping improve farming and irrigation techniques. True argued for the alcohol prohibition for the Indians. She said, “We do not intend to permit the Indian to injure himself with something he does not know the danger of, any more than we would permit a baby to crawl into a pretty fire.” A small band of Chemehuevi had settled near the oasis where there was water for crops and livestock. It is now the location of the 29 Palms Inn. Ben’s family had settled not far from there when they first came to the area from San Francisco in 1871. In the 1890’s the United States created a reservation of 160 for the Chemehuevis at Twentynine Palms, some distance from the oasis and far from any water source. It is believed that the Southern Pacific Railroad desired the oasis and had put pressure on Washington to remove the Chemehuevis. The area is a desert, flat with brush and surrounded by mountains and they refused to leave the oasis. In 1909, True attempted to move the Indians to Morongo or Agua Caliente, but many refused. It was only after she took the children to enroll them in school that most of the elders moved to Banning. Among the Chemehuevi that remained was the Mike and Pine families. Helen Hunt Jackson remarked in her book, A Century of Dishonor, how impressed she was at the Indians adaptability. With their land taken away, they became fruit pickers, ranch hands, etc. Apricots were an important crop to the Native Americans. Because the white farmers lived further west, the apricots would ripen earlier, making it possible for the Native Americans to harvest them for the whites and then harvest their own. William Mike, known as “Old Mike” was a respected leader of the Chemehuevi band at Twentynine Palms along with Jim Pine. (Old Mike is also called Mike Boniface in many articles; however, their last name was Mike.) Willie Boy also lived at Twentynine Palms, when he was not working on a ranch. According to the 1900 Federal Census Records, Willie Boy was a Piute Indian, born in 1881. He was single and his occupation was a farm laborer. His name on the census records is Willie Boy. There have been many reports that his name was actually Billy Boy, but because President Taft was coming to Riverside and was often called Billy Boy, the newspapers changed the name to Willie Boy. Many of the ranchers, who had hired him, thought of him as a good worker, including Joe Toutain. However, according to Clara True, she had been told that Willie Boy had once help kill one of his own band in the same locality for girl stealing. His aunts told her that he had once killed a white man. True was concerned that he might have killed a miner for the coat that Willie Boy wore. Willie Boy excelled at billiards and baseball. His photo taken a few days prior to Old Mike’s murder, shows a young man, dressed in a white shirt with garters on the sleeves, a pock-a-dot tie and wearing a fedora. The photo was later used by Sheriff Wilson on a reward poster. Willie Boy became infatuated with William Mike’s young daughter. She is listed in the 1900 Federal Census records as Nancy, born in 1892 in California. I believe that they may have used a ‘white-man’s’ name, but Clara True in 1909 referred to her as Lolita in her report. Carlota’s sister, a Mrs. Dorothy Rogers told Lawton in 1957 that she wasn’t sure what her sister’s name was. I have seen her name as Nita, Carlota, Ioleta, Isoleta and even Mabel. Lawton called her Lolita in his book, but descendents of the Mike family call her Carlota. According to True, Carlota expressed a desire to go to school and was saving money for pretty clothes. She was a girl of “unusual mentality”, but never had any advantages of civilized life. True was not sure that going to school would make the girl happier. Early in 1909, Willie Boy ran off with Carlota. Chemehuevi elder, Alberta Van Fleet reported that “my mother used to say” that “love is hard.” In other words “love should never have happened. Never. They were too close.” Willie Boy and Carlota were cousins, and Chemehuevis “back then kept track of who were their relatives, who you could and could not marry.” She pointed out that both Willie and Carlota wanted to marry. “They wanted it, but the families couldn’t let it happen.” In the end, “she wanted her way. He wanted his way. There had to be trouble. . . .” I asked Joe Benitez if Carlota had run away with Willie Boy of her own volition and Joe said he did not know anything about the first time. In True’s report, she says that Willie “intercepted her.” Old Mike tracked them down and told Willie Boy that next time he would kill him. Old Mike did not like Willie Boy. He had been in trouble before. He also felt that Carlota was too young. But most importantly, by Indian custom, they were forbidden to marry because they were related and even the most distant relations were not allowed to marry. This was a much honored custom and still is today. Upon her return, Carlota took “refuge” with Jim Pine. True reported that one of Old Mike’s family had stolen a woman from Willie Boy’s family and that Willie Boy stole Carlota in return. He knew that he would be killed in the desert by her family. True believed that Old Mike’s family waited for vengeance on Willie Boy for stealing her the first time. That July, Old Mike brought his family from their home at Twentynine Palms to work on the Gilman ranch near Banning for fruit picking season and to attend the fiesta being held at the reservation. Because Old Mike spoke Chemehuevi, Serrano and Cahuilla, and was a well respected Shaman among his people, Gilman appointed him work foreman. Willie Boy worked at the ranch also and stayed in the bunk house, while Old Mike’s family slept under the trees. However, it appears that Willie Boy did not try to make contact with Carlota. The Gilman ranch is situated up against the northern hills of the pass that run through the San Gorgonio Pass. It is surrounded by cottonwoods and lies along the Bradshaw Trail. Originally part of a network of Indian trails, it was used heavily in the 1860’s and 1870’s as a route from Los Angeles to Arizona. James Marshall Gilman purchased the land in 1869 and married Martha Benoist Smith in 1871. They lived in the adobe built in 1859 by Jose Pope until they built a ranch house in 1879. The house burned down in 1977 and a replica stands in its place. In the living room, is a photograph taken out the front of the house looking south. It was taken prior to the railroad being built. On the evening of September 26, Willie Boy came to where the Mike family was camping on the Gilman ranch, armed with a gun he had stolen from the Gilman ranch. According to Joe Benitez, Willie Boy and Old Mike fought and Willie Boy shot and killed Old Mike. But it was no accident. The gun shot had wakened Maria Mike and she saw Willie Boy standing over her husband’s body. Fearing that he was going to harm her family, she wrestled with the gun, but Willie Boy was able to overpower her. He had come for Carlota and threatened to kill the family, so Maria told Carlota to go with him. There has been some disagreement over whether Carlota wanted to go with Willie. As mentioned, some of the family believes that the two were in love. In a letter to his editor Horace Parker, Lawton wrote, “I also interviewed the Indian sister of Lolita and she told me her mother had approved of Willy Boy and the girl getting married. I’ve often wondered if the girl might not have had some role in the murder.” In the same letter, Lawton writes, “Joe [Toutain] claims there were not signs of struggle between the girl and Willy Boy on the trail until the second day when they were hard pressed.” Joe Benitez’s family was very unhappy with the Lawton book. The younger sister that Lawton interviewed was only a year old at the time of the murder. Joe’s mother was 4 years old and remembered the murder. She told him the story over the years in bits and pieces because it was their custom to not speak of the dead. That custom has changed recently because they want to have their truth told.Early the next morning, Jim Gilman alerted Ben that Old Mike had been killed. Because Old Mike was not killed on reservation land, it was the responsibility of the Riverside Sheriff’s department. Ben went to Joe Toutain’s house and woke him up, then on to Ben’s half-brother John Jost’s Blue Front Livery Stable and asked for a livery rig be prepared at county expense. He then called Indian Agent, Clara True and requested some of her Indian policemen.
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