INJUN JOE, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, was a mean, vindictive, and greedy resident of Hannibal, Missouri. He actually was half white, and half Beringian or Indian. As such he suffered the insults ( half-breed ) of everyone in town, and responded pretty much in kind.That his father died under Doctor Robinson's care, didn't help his mood any. And so he committed one infraction after another. To the point that Judge Douglas actually sentenced him to be horsewhipped in front of the town jail, like any Negro slave, with everyone in the town looking on.Judge Douglas died. Injun Joe swore ever after to avenge himself on the judge's widow, Martha Douglas.But before that could happen, a Judge Thatcher came to town to take over from Judge Douglas. Before Injun Joe could make any further plans along that line, he got a chance to get back at Doctor Robinson. Muff Potter put him wise to a little job the doctor wanted done: dig up the grave of Horse Williams and load it into a wheelbarrow so the doctor could dissect him.Everything went fine until Joe and Potter had lashed the body down. The Potter demanded more payment, and the doctor refused. So Joe then recited to the doctor his grievance against him, from his father dying under the doctor's care. The doctor swung a fist and hit Joe in the face, knocking him down.Potter dropped the knife he'd been carrying and started to wrestle with the doctor. Joe snatched up the knife and circled the two men. Then the doctor grabbed Horse Williams' headboard, swung it round, and knocked Potter out with it. Injun Joe then jumped with the knife and buried it in the doctor's belly, killing him.After that he put the knife in Potter's hand, woke him, and convinced him that he, Potter, had done the killing.Turning him in to the town constable was easy. Giving evidence at trial was just as easy.When the counsel for the defense called a young boy named Tom Sawyer to the stand, Joe at first didn't think anything of it. Not even when he said that on the twenty-fifth of June, about the hour of midnight, Tom Sawyer had been in the graveyard. But when Tom said he and an unnamed companion had hidden themselves behind the oak near Horse Williams' grave, he realized he was in trouble. And when Tom went on to describe the real events, Joe waited no longer. He sprang for a window (one account has him throwing his knife at Tom before he did), tore his way through all opposers, leaped out of the window, and ran away.Eventually he fell in with another cutthroat. The two of them found a cache of gold coins, twenty-four thousand dollars' worth. At Joe's insistence, they took it to his Den Number Two, under a cross-shaped marker he had made in MacDougall's Cave.After that, he tried to attack Martha Douglas. The idea had been to break into her house, steal her valuables--and torture and kill her for the horsewhipping Judge Douglas had sentenced him to. But before they could carry out their plan, a Welsh resident and his two sons, armed with rifles, fired at them and chased them away.Injun Joe broke with his partner then. Accounts differ as to how he died. The canonical account has him going back to Number Two to recover the gold--and never knowing how close he came to finding Tom Sawyer and Judge Thatcher's charming daughter, who had gotten lost in that cave. He stayed long enough for Tom and Becky to get out, and for Judge Thatcher to order the door sealed with boiler iron and triple-locked. He tried to get out through the door (he knew no other adit), and died of starvation, trying to undermine the door with a stone. Other accounts have him meeting his death by Muff Potter's hand or even by Tom Sawyer's own hand.Injun Joe never knew it, but Tom Sawyer made it out of the cave through an adit different from the main door. Later he and Huck Finn re-entered through that adit, found Den Number Two, dug up the gold cache, and took it for themselves. Show less «