Harry Wilson Lawton (1927-2005) was a journalist and author known for his nonfiction novel Willie Boy: A Desert Manhunt (Paisano Press, 1960). Lawton wrote for the Riverside Press-Enterprise in the 1950s and later taught in the University of California, Riverside Department of Creative Writing. He helped found the Malki Museum on the Morongo Reservation. The Western film Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (Universal Pictures, 1969) was based on Lawton’s book, written and directed by Abraham Polonsky.

Willie Boy (born 1882) was a Chemehuevi man pursued by a Riverside and San Bernardino County sheriff’s posse in Southern California in September and October 1909. The Riverside County manhunt began after Willie Boy was involved in the death of Chemehuevi leader William Mike in Banning, California. He and Carlota Mike, William Mike’s daughter, fled toward the Mojave Desert. The two intended to marry, but per tribal law were too closely related to do so. Carlota was killed during the manhunt, and in October 1909, the posse claimed to have found Willie Boy’s body.

Lawton’s Willie Boy: A Desert Manhunt reflected the posse’s version of events, culminating in Willie Boy’s death by suicide. The film Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here further reinforced this version of events by depicting Willie Boy shot by a posse member. According to oral testimonies by Nuwuvi (Southern Paiute and Chemehuevi) elders, as well as elders of other Native American peoples of the Southwest, Willie Boy did not die at Ruby Mountain as reported. Rather, he escaped to live with the Nuwuvi community in Pahrump, Nevada, and died years later of tuberculosis.

In 1995, Lawton sued historians James Sandos and Larry Burgess, whose book The Hunt for Willie Boy: Indian-Hating & Popular Culture (University of Oklahoma Press, 1994) was critical of the factual accuracy and racial politics of Lawton’s Willie Boy: A Desert Manhunt. The lawsuit was settled out of court.