San Franciso Chronicle: Vasquez Captured at Last, 5-15-1874.

San Francisco Chronicle

FRIDAY....................MAY 15, 1874.

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The Capture of Vasquez. The full telegraphic dispatches in another column give particulars of the capture of the bandit VASQUEZ after a more general and active chase than any other robber in California has ever rendered necessary. At intervals, for six months past, he has been the object of vigorous hunts, and has had the ingenuity, endurance and boldness to not only foil his pursuers, but perpetrate the most audacious robberies and murders in unexpected places, and in so doing demoralize and confuse the officers of the law by the rapidity and daring of his movements. He has been greatly aided by the sympathy of the Mexican people in the district which has been the field of his operations. Many of them have looked upon him as a hero, the representative of whatever their nature contains of bravery and generalship, and have deemed his lawless deeds rather a noble warfare against the Americans than criminalities deserving the highest penalties of the law. He was of their blood, sympathized with them, and is reputed to have always spared them in his raids. In addition to this he long carried with him the prestige of success, which always makes friends and followers. He controlled the majority of the Mexicans through their fears, for themselves or the female members of their families. But in time his atrocities became so great as to awaken against him the determination of the people of the entire State that he should be punished. Rewards were offered for his capture, dead or alive, and parties of fearless huntsmen chased him from place to place, over mountains, across plains, through canons, from one to another of his haunts, until his followers were dissipated and he was made to feel that he was in good sooth no hero, but a mere criminal fugitive, in hourly danger and with almost the certainty of ultimate capture before him. Four expeditions in pursuit of VASQUEZ have started at different times from various portions of the State, and with each one of these was a CHRONICLE special correspondent. In fact, the amount of money expended by the CHRONICLE in this way is considerably larger than has ever been taken by VASQUEZ from any one of his victims, the sum total amounting to about $1,000. No effort has been spared to insure our readers having the best and only authentic account of his capture, and at length our enterprise is rewarded.
The capture of VASQUEZ will be a very great relief to the minds of the people of Southern California.

Newspaper images: 9600 dpi jpeg of 300 dpi jpg of original newspaper from the collection of Alan Pollack