Gregorio Cortez: The Man Hunted For A Mistranslation

On the twelfth of June, 1901, a Texas sheriff asked a farmhand in Karnes County whether he had traded a horse. The man said no, which was true, because he had traded a mare. In Spanish those are two different words, and the deputy interpreting did not know the difference. He told the sheriff the man was lying. Within four minutes the sheriff was dead, three days short of his fortieth birthday, and three hundred men began a manhunt across south Texas.