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Ygnacio Villegas (1840-1914) http://tinyurl.com/YVillegas

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A Thirst for Blood

From Boyhood Days, 1895.

Reader: Kevin Hearle

The discovery of gold in California attracted countless 49ers ready to work hard for a chance at wealth. It also attracted a population of bandits and murderers whose deeds called invited vengeance.

Ygnacio Villegas was born in Monterey with his family in 1848—just in time to witness violence directed against "outcasts from the mining camps."

Some of the most atrocious murders took place . . . between what is now Watsonville and San Juan. The Las Aromas rancho, located near the south side of Pajaro River, saw many men bite the dust. Some were killed for robbery and others for spite. In the hills southwest of Aromas, which are thickly wooded, were many human skeletons and corpses with dismembered limbs, thighs, legs, arms, and heads detached from the bodies, many partly gnawed over by the wild animals. It was a veritable charnel house and a ghastly sight to view the corpses in the secluded spots—especially when one had known some of them and realized that the killing was a thirst for blood.

All the murdered men were Americans. . . . Some believed it was the bandit Murieta's vengeance.

Ygnacio Villegas published Boyhood Days, his memoir of growing up along the Central Coast, in 1895.