User:Asiaticus/sandbox/Claudio Feliz

Claudio Feliz, (183?-1852), an immigrant Sonoran, Forty-Niner, brother-in-law of Joaquin Murrieta that became a bandit in the state during the California Gold Rush between 1849 and 1852.

Claudio Feliz went to the goldfields in 1849, and became a miner. Eventually he turned to theft and then banditry and murder first with the gang of Salomon Pico then with his own gang of varioius bandit companions. They robbed and murdered people in isolated dwellings or lone or small parties of travelers on the roads in the vicinity of the camps of the goldfields during the California Gold Rush or on the roads leading from them, in the Central Valley, or the Bay area near San Jose, and in the Salinas Valley from late 1850 into 1852.

Birth and youth in Sonora
Claudio Feliz was born in Sonora, growing up at his family home on the Rancho Tapizuelas, at a home across the Rio Cuchujaqui, (or Arroyo de Álamos), to the east of El Salado, in the southeast of Sonora, near the Sinaloa border, within what is now the Álamos Municipality.

Cattle and mining were the local means of making a living. Claudio's father was a muletero, carrying on his mules, among other things, the salt produced at El Salado to the silver mining regions of Sonora where it was used in refining the silver ore. Claudio was one of three brothers, the other two being Reyes and Jesus, and they had a sister Rosa, children of their widowed father Ramon? Feliz.

Early Crimes
Once Claudio reached the goldfields of the Mother Lode, he is reported to have joined a party of Americans. Later he was accused of stealing gold from them.