boat and killed some Quechans operating a rival ferry near Pilot Knob. At dawn on April 23, 1850, a band of Quechans led by Caballo en Pelo killed and scalped most of the Glanton organization to establish the tribe's ferry monopoly. Hearing of the massacre, California officials recruited a militia in the ill-fated Gila Expedition against the Quechan tribe. In popular culture Literature Jeremiah Clemens (1814–1865) includes Glanton as a character in his novel Bernard Lile (1856), one of the earliest fictional works concerning the Texas Revolution. Samuel Chamberlain (1829–1908), who claimed to have been a member of the gang, wrote an account of their activities in his memoir, My Confession. Glanton, under the name Gallantin, is a character in George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman and the Redskins (1982), an installment in the long-running The Flashman Papers series of comic novels. A fictionalized version of Glanton and his gang is featured prominently in Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian (1985), many of the events of which are based on Chamberlain's account. McCarthy developed the mysterious Judge Holden (Glanton's second-in-command according to Samuel Chamberlain's memoirs) as the primary antagonist of his book. Glanton, along with another historical scalp hunter, James Kirker, appears briefly in the opening scenes of Larry McMurtry's novel Dead Man's Walk (1995). The book is the first volume of McMurtry's Lonesome Dove tetralogy. The seven-page story "A Scalp for a Scalp", drawn by Russ Heath and written by John Whalen, also based on Chamberlain's memoir, is included in The Big Book of the Weird Wild West published by Paradox Press in 1998. 's graphic novel Scalp: La Chevauchée funèbre de John Glanton et de ses compagnons de carnage, again based on Chamberlain's book, was published in 2017 by the French publisher . Television A 2005 episode of the History Channel series Wild West Tech featured an account of the Glanton Gang, focusing on Glanton's misdeeds as a scalp hunter. These scenes were filmed at Old Tucson Studios near Tucson, Arizona. References Further reading Ralph A. Smith, "John Joel Glanton, Lord of the Scalp Range," Smoke Signal, Fall 1962. External links "John Glanton's Gang", University of Virginia 1819 births 1850 deaths People from Edgefield County, South Carolina Members of the Texas Ranger Division Yuma War American people of the Indian Wars 1847 murders in the United States American people of the Mexican–American War