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Collection: Directories and Documents > Pamphlets
Juanita - The only woman lynched in the Gold Rush days (PH 20-9)(1967) (36 pages)
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Page: of 36
efforts to stop the tragedy may well have resulted in
more violence.
The scaffold was a simple affair, making use of
the overhead beams in the construction. The ends of a
heavy timber were fastened to each side of the bridge,
about four feet high. The timber was lashed to the bridge
with ropes and at a given signal, two men would simultaneously cut the ropes with axes, thus dropping the
timber out from under the victim. It was primitive but
effective.
Ominously the gong sounded for the final time that
day and Josefa was led to the bridge at the lower end
of town. Over two thousand men were lining the river
banks now and Barstow characterized them as “the
hungriest, craziest, wildest mob standing around that
ever I saw anywhere.” The Pacific Star correspondent
wrote the final chapter to the drama as he witnessed it:
“At the time appointed for the execution, the prisoner was taken to the gallows, which she approached
without the least trepidation. She said, while standing
by the gallows, so I was informed, that she had killed
the man Cannon, and expected to suffer for it; that the
only request she had to make was, that after she had
suffered, that her body should be given to her friends,
in order that she might be decently interred.*° This
request was promptly complied with (and ) she extended
her hand to each of the bystanders immediately around
her, and bidding each an ‘adios senor,’ voluntarily
ascended the scaffold, took the rope and adjusted it
around her neck with her own hand, releasing her luxuriant hair from beneath it so that it should flow free.
Her arms were then pinioned, to which she strongly
objected, her clothes tied down, the cap adjusted over
her face, and in a moment more the cords which supported the scaffolding had been cut, and she hung suspended between the heavens and the earth.” As the body
»wly twisted and turned, the crowd quickly dispersed
. filed again into the Downieville saloons, It was a
le after four o’clock in the afternoon and there was
ll time for a few more drinks before supper. In the
(oons that night was launched the story and the legend
the hanging of Josefa—or Juanita—of Downieville.
25