John Joel Glanton

John Joel Glanton was a member of the U.S. Army during the mid-19th century, who later led the Glanton gang of scalphunters.

Nominally a mercenary operation hired by the Mexican authorities to track down and kill dangerous bands of Apaches, the gang began murdering and scalping non-Apaches and massacring citizens before they were declared outlaws in 1851. After Glanton's men destroyed a Quechan ferry on the Colorado River, a band of Quechans led by Caballo en Pelo killed Glanton and reclaimed the ferry business. [Braatz, Timothy "Surviving Conquest", 2003. p. 76] This led to the ill fated Gila Expedition military operation by the California government against the Quechan tribe.

Much of Glanton's story is known through the autobiographical "My Confession" by Samuel Chamberlain, who claimed to have been a member of the gang. A fictionalized Glanton features prominently in Cormac McCarthy's novel "Blood Meridian", a large portion of which is based on Chamberlain's account. McCarthy used Glanton's second-in-command, the mysterious Judge Holden, as the primary antagonist of his book. A graphic novel concerning the Glanton gang, also based on Chamberlain's account, was published by DC's Paradox Press in 1998.

References

External links

* [http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/HNS/Scalpin/heads.html John Glanton's Gang]