John Joel Glanton

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John Joel Glanton was a member of the U.S. Army during the mid-19th century, who later led the Glanton gang of scalphunters.

Nominally a mercenary operation hired by the Mexican authorities to track down and kill dangerous bands of Apaches, the gang began murdering and scalping non-Apaches and massacring citizens before they were declared outlaws in 1851. They were pursued into the area around the Gila River where they were wiped out by Yuma Indians under Chief Naked Horse. [1]

Much of Glanton's story is known through the autobiographical My Confession by Samuel Chamberlain, who claimed to have been a member of the gang. A fictionalized Glanton features prominently in Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian, a large portion of which is based on Chamberlain's account. McCarthy used Glanton's second-in-command, the mysterious Judge Holden, as the primary antagonist of his book. A comic strip version of the Glanton-gang, also based on Chamberlain's account, was published by Paradox Press in 1998.