Dang, can't find a picture of the real Injun Joe anywhere.
While She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed and I were on the tour through the Mark Twain Cave in Hannibal, Missouri, the guide told everyone the real story of the villainous Injun Joe, who in Twain's fiction was accidentally sealed in the cave until he starved to death.
Turns out Injun Joe was based on a real live human being, Joe Douglas. Joe was a half-breed and actually one of the good guys. Unfortunately he was hideous looking from a bad case of small pox, plus he had been scalped and covered it up with a red horse-hair wig.
One day Injun Joe asked Twain why he made him the villain, and Twain admitted Joe used to scare the daylights out of all the kids because of the way he looked.
Joe got his revenge, though -- sort of. He lived to be 102 years old, and the only reason he died is because he keeled over from food poisoning after eating a bad lot of his favorite food -- pickled pig's feet.
Posted by Bob Wallace, who felt really, really ill the first time I saw pickled pig's feet.
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