Historic Pinole: Man Arrested For Axe Murder, Running Off With Victim's Teenage Daughter

This week's Historic Pinole is a not only a drama about murder but a snapshot of race relations — in the 1880s. A man of mixed race was arrested in the murder of a Native American woman who had served time in jail for stabbing "a Mexican."

The crime happened in Fremont and led to a pursuit that ended with an arrest in Pinole.

We present the article with the original spelling and punctuation. We've broken the original spacing into paragraphs for easier reading.The article is from the Jan. 19, 1882 edition of the Livermore Herald newspaper.

Early last week the Sheriff received a letter from an officer at CentreVille, Alameda County, requesting him to look out lor and arrest a half-breed Indian known as Juan Alves, having with him a rather young looking Indian girl, about fifteen years of age.

They were supposed to be somewhere in the section between Martinez and Pinole. Upon this request, a search tor the fugitives was made that resulted in their arrest on Sunday last by Constables Trefrey, of Centrevile, and Gift, of Martinez, at the house of Augustine, in the Franklin Canyon, some three or four miles from Martinez.

The arrest of Alves was made on a charge of murder, based on the following circumstances:

About four weeks ago the body of an Indian woman named Polita was found in the creek, near the Vallejo Mills, her head having apparently been crushed with an axe. The woman had recently been released from a six months' term of confinement in the County Jail of Alameda County for stabbing a Mexican, and on returning home found Alves living with her daughter. She drove him away, and a few days afterward was found killed us stated.

Juan Alves and the young squaw left the neighborhood together a few days after after the murder, the motive of which is supposed lo have been for the possession of the girl. They went to some place near Pinole where they remained a week or more before going to the place where they were arrested on Sunday last.

This article comes from the California Digital Newspaper Collection, Center for Bibliographic Studies and Research, University of California, Riverside https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cdnc. The collection has digitzed more than 400,000 images from newspapers in the 19th and 20th centuries. Images dated between 1846 and 1922 are in the public domain and not subject to copyright.