Yellow Bird (aka) John Rollins Ridge

The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit, is a unique book in several ways. It was the first novel published in California, and it is also the first novel written by a Native American. Yellow Bird was the son and grandson of Cherokee leaders John Ridge and Major Ridge, who signed a treaty that surrendered Cherokee lands east of the Mississippi River and eventually led to the Trail of Tears.  As a boy, Ridge witnessed his father’s and grandfather’s murders by Cherokees opposed to the treaty. Ridge and his white mother fled to Fayetteville, Arkansas, and later Massachusetts, where he was educated. He later returned to Arkansas to practice law. In 1849, Ridge murdered a man thought to be involved in his father's murder, and then fled to Missouri and California during the Gold Rush.

Both a novelist and poet, Yellow Bird made his living in California as a newspaperman, ending his short life in Grass Valley as the editor of the Grass Valley National newspaper, of which he was a part owner. He was just forty when he died.

While The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta was not wildly successful in its own right, the novel sparked a number of knockoffs and created the enduring myth of Joaquín Murieta. In addition, it was the genesis of the “dime novel” industry of the late nineteenth-century that persists even today as the paperback Westerns found in every bookstore, newsstand, and even supermarket. It was truly a first in that regard.