Ghosts of Gold Mountain
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Leading political and business: “The Chinese,” Chicago Tribune, June 14, 1869; “The Chinese,” Daily Alta California, July 13, 1869; and “Letter from Alabama,” Daily Alta California, August 7, 1869. The Alta reprinted articles from papers in New York and elsewhere. And see “The Celestials,” Marysville Daily Appeal, October 6, 1869.
The novel idea: “Koopmanschap, and His Chinese Immigration Plans,” Daily Alta California, August 1, 1869; “The Chinese in South Carolina,” San Francisco Daily Times, August 26, 1869; and Moon-Ho Jung, Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 96–106, 113.
Over the next several years: “Second Despatch,” Daily Alta California, May 8, 1869; and Railroad Gazette, September 10, 1870, 554.
Individual Chinese also: Shelley Fisher Fishkin, “The Chinese as Railroad Builders after Promontory,” in Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental and Other Railroads in North America, ed. Gordon H. Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019); and Shih-shan Henry Tsai, The Chinese Experience in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 18–19.
One of the largest projects was: “Miscellaneous—Arrival of Chinamen at New Orleans,” Daily Alta California, January 9, 1870; “Sambo’s Successor: Arrival of Two Hundred and Fifty Chinamen at New Orleans—Queer Scenes and Incidents,” Daily Alta California, January 30, 1870; Edward J. M. Rhoades, “The Chinese in Texas,” Southern Historical Quarterly 81, no. 1 (1977): 5–10; Robert E. Wynne, “Reaction to the Chinese in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, 1850–1910 (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1964), 84–85; Thomas Chinn, Him Mark Lai, and Philip Choy, A History of the Chinese in California: A Syllabus (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1969), 46–47; Alan Pollack, “1876 Southern Pacific Tunnels Through,” https://scvhistory.com/scvhistory/pollack0710tunnel.html (accessed October 15, 2018); Christopher W. Merritt, The Coming Man from Canton: Chinese Experience in Montana, 1862–1943 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017), 73–85, 157–58; and Robert Weaver to author, email, July 5, 2017. For Utah, see Kenneth P. Cannon et al., The Archaeology of Chinese Railroad Workers in Utah: Results of Surveys in Box Elder and Emery Counties, Final Report to Utah Division of State History (Logan, Utah: USU Archaeological Services, 2016). For an overview, see Fishkin, “Chinese as Railroad Builders after Promontory.”
The Railroad Chinese, and their: Raymond B. Craib, Chinese Immigrants in Porfirian Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1996), 6; Jacques Meniaud, Les pionniers du Soudan (Paris: Société des Publications Modernes, 1931), 99, 100; Watt Stewart, Chinese Bondage in Peru: A History of the Chinese Coolie in Peru, 1849−1874 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1951), 75, 89; Watt Stewart, Henry Meiggs: Yankee Pizarro (Durham: Duke University Press, 1946), 161−63; and Sophia V. Schweitzer and Bennet Hymer, Big Island Journey (Honolulu: Mutual Publishing, 2009), 74.
Even in far-off Britain: The Standard (London), May 18 and November 17, 1869–February 14, 1870; Glasgow Herald, 1866–1870; Leeds Mercury, November and December 1869; Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, August 12, 1869; Manchester Times, December 18, 1869; Gordon H. Chang, “Chinese Railroad Workers and the U.S. Transcontinental Railroad in Global Perspective,” in Chang and Fishkin, Chinese and the Iron Road. Thank you to Teri Hessel for her work in British periodicals.
Chinese who worked: Beth Lew-Williams, “The Remarkable Life of a Sometimes Railroad Workers: Chin Gee Hee, 1844–1929, in Chang and Fishkin, Chinese and the Iron Road; Willard G. Jue, “Chin Gee-Hee, Chinese Pioneer Entrepreneur in Seattle and Toishan,” Annals of the Chinese Historical Society of the Pacific Northwest 1 (1983): 32–34; Ruthanne Lum McCunn, Chinese American Portraits: Personal Histories, 1828–1988 (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1988), 55.
In the 1880s: Zhongping Chen, “The Construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Transpacific Chinese Diaspora, 1880–1885,” in Chang and Fishkin, Chinese and the Iron Road; Zhongping Chen to author, email, July 10, 2018; and Paul Yee, Blood and Iron: Building the Railway (Toronto: Scholastic Canada, 2010), 220–21.
The CPRR’s recruitment: Thomas W. Chinn, H. Mark Lai, and Philip P. Choy, eds., A History of the Chinese in California: A Syllabus (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society, 1969), 18–19; Herman B. Chiu and Andrew Taylor Kirk, “‘Unlimited American Power’: How Four California Newspapers Covered Chinese Labor and the Building of the Transcontinental Railroad, 1865–1869,” American Journalism 31, no. 4 (2014): 507–24.
In New York City alone: “There is a steady growth in the Chinese population of New York and the contiguous cities.” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, October 4, 1879.
With the spread of Chinese: “The Chinese Question,” Sacramento Daily Union, June 2, 1869; and “Letter from Alabama,” Daily Alta California, August 7, 1869.
The Cincinnati Commercial: “The American Chinamen,” Cincinnati Commercial, September 13, 1869.
In August 1869: “The Coming Chinese,” Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review, August 1, 1869, 123.
Some white observers: “A Significant Picture,” Galveston Tri-Weekly News, June 4, 1869.
The appearance of new gendered: The series ran from May 7, 1870, through July 30, 1870.
In May 1870, the influential: “The Coming Man,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated, July 30, 1870, 316; “The Latest Chinese Importation: The Coming Man in Tennessee—His Experience on a Railroad,” Evening Post, July 18, 1870; and see a racist political cartoon that played on the popular notion, “The Coming Man,” San Francisco Wasp, May 20, 1881. Philip P. Choy, Lorraine Dong, and Marlon K. Hom use the series title for the name of their book on Chinese and American popular culture, The Coming Man: Nineteenth-Century Perceptions of the Chinese (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Company, 1994); also see Merritt, The Coming Man from Canton.
Charles Crocker himself: Testimony of Charles Crocker, in Report of the Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration, U.S. Senate, 44th Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1877), 666–75.
Extending the hand: “Chinese Labor,” New York Times, July 18, 1869. On Leland Stanford’s attitude toward Chinese, see Gordon H. Chang, “The Chinese and the Stanfords: Nineteenth-Century America’s Fraught Relationship with the China Men,” in Chang and Fishkin, Chinese and the Iron Road.
Many in the United States: “The American Chinamen”; Liping Zhu, The Road to Chinese Exclusion: The Denver Riot, 1880 Election, and Rise of the West (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2013), 37–43.
A San Franciscan: “The Great Issue,” The Owyhee Avalanche, July 3, 1869; “Chinamen Voters in Louisiana, “ San Francisco Daily Times, August 20, 1869.
In 1870, Congress: “Chinese Citizenship,” The Congregationalist, October 23, 1878; and “Chinese in the United States,” San Francisco Daily Times, August 21, 1869. Also see, Edlie L. Wong, Racial Reconstruction: Black Inclusion, Chinese Exclusion, and the Fictions of Citizenship (New York: New York University Press, 2015); and Elliott Young, Alien Nation: Chinese Migration in the Americas from the Coolie Era Through World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015).
As Americans and Chinese: “The American Chinamen,” Cincinnati Commercial, September 13, 1869.
Chinese who came to: Lucius A. Waterman, Journal, January19–March 23, 1869, Waterman, Lucius A., misc. vol. 467, Museum of America and the Sea, Mystic, Conn.
It is an understatement: Three hundred repatriated remains are reported in “Summary of 1863,” and about the same number for 1864 in “Summary of 1864,” Sacramento Union, January 1, 1864, and January 2, 1865. The City Intelligencer, April 4, 1863, also reported that about three hundred coffins went to China in 1863.
Famed New York jurist: Remarks by Edwards Pierrepont, in Banquet to His Excellency Anson Burlingame and His Associates of the Chinese Embassy by the Citizens of New York, June 23, 1868 (New York: Sun Book and Job Printing House, 18
68), 47; Sacramento Daily Union, April 1, 1864.
The circumstances of daily life: “Latest News from the Yosemite,” Sacramento Daily Union, October 16, 1865.
Not all deaths were: News article quoted in Appendix to the Opening Statement and Brief of B. S. Brooks, on the Chinese Question (San Francisco: Women’s Co-operative Printing Union, 1877), 4.
Killing Chinese could: “News of the Morning,” Sacramento Union, April 16, 1868.
One tale: H. K. Wong, Gum Sahn Yun: Gold Mountain Men (San Francisco: Fong Brothers, 1987), 230–35.
There is little question: “Fact Checker: Is Lake Tahoe Filled with Hundreds of Preserved Bodies?” Reno Gazette Journal, August 22, 2011; and see as a possible source of a rumor that grew over the years “Truckee Matters,” Sacramento Daily Union, July 23, 1869.
Louis M. Clement, one: Testimony of Clement, July 21, 1887, and testimony of Strobridge, July 23, 1887, in Testimony Taken by the Pacific Railway Commission, vol. 5 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1887), 2577, 2580; John R. Gilliss, “Tunnels of the Pacific Railroad,” paper read before the American Society of Civil Engineers, January 5, 1870, reprinted in Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers 1 (1872): 155–72.
No account of the experience: Wong Hau-hon, “Reminiscences of an Old Chinese Railroad Worker,” reprinted in Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present, ed. Judy Yung, Gordon H. Chang, and Him Mark Lai (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 39–42.
During the construction: “Reminiscences of A. P. Partridge,” Lynn D. Farrar Collection, http://cprr.org/Museum/Farrar/pictures/2005-03-09-01-08.html (accessed July 15, 2018).
Wong Geu, who: H. K. Wong, Gum Sahn Yun: Gold Mountain Men (San Francisco: Fong Brothers Printing, 1987), 215.
In April 1866: “Explosion at Colfax—Six Men Killed,” Daily Alta California, April 18, 1866; “Terrible Explosion, Dutch Flat Enquirer, April 21, 1866.
Just before Christmas: Sacramento Union, December 28, 1866. John R. Gilliss may have recalled the same slide but says that fifteen to twenty Chinese lives were lost. Gilliss, “Tunnels of the Pacific Railroad.”
A snowslide: Sacramento Daily Union, March 5, 1867.
In May 1867: “Chinaman Killed,” Daily Alta California, May 5, 1867.
In mid-June 1867: Meadow Lake Sun, June 22, 1867.
In December 1867: Account reprinted in “The Central Pacific,” Leeds Mercury, December 28, 1867.
In January 1868: Brief, Sacramento Daily Union, January 21, 1868.
In February 1868: Brief, Daily Alta California, February 2, 1868.
In 1868, two white: Elko Independent, n.d., cited by Chris Graves, http://discussion.cprr.net/2005/10/how-many-chinese-were-dead-building-rr.html (accessed July 17, 2018).
In the spring of 1868: Edwin L. Sabin, Building the Pacific (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1919), 121.
A June 1868 item: “Pacific Railroad Affairs,” Daily Alta California, June 19, 1868; Daily Alta California, June 22, 1868.
In October 1868: Daily Reveille (Austin, Utah), October 21, 1868.
In December 1868: “Accident to a Freight Train,” Daily Alta California, December 7, 1868.
Death could also: “The Final Connection to Be Made on Monday,” Daily Alta California, May 8, 1869; and San Francisco, May 6, 1869.
As Lewis Clement: Lewis M. Clement testimony, in Testimony Taken by the Pacific Railway Commission, vol. 6 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1887), 3217.
E. B. Crocker made: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, January 31, 1867, Huntington Letters.
The story begins in mid-1869: “The American Chinamen,” Cincinnati Commercial, September 13, 1869. The article is dated mid-August, which is when it was apparently written.
Several months later: Elko Independent, January 5, 1870; “California,” Daily Alta California, January 28, 1870;Humboldt Register, March 12, 1870; also see J. P. Marden, “The History of Winnemucca,” http://cprr.org/Museum/Winnemucca_Marden.pdf (accessed August 7, 2017).
In late June 1870: Sacramento Reporter, June 30, 1870; and “California,” Daily Alta California, June 30, 1870. The accuracy of these two news articles has been questioned because of a third news report on the same day which provided an estimate of about fifty “defunct Chinamen, who died from disease or were killed by accident while working on the line of the Central Pacific Railroad.” Sacramento Daily Union, June 30, 1870. This article reports that the remains were to be interred in “Conboie’s private cemetery,” located in Sacramento, which already held “the bones of about one hundred others similarly deceased.” So was the number twelve hundred or fifty? A close reading of the articles shows there might be no contradiction. The two articles citing the larger number indicate that the remains were being sent back to China. Efforts made in the United States and in Hong Kong, however, have failed to locate any shipping records that could confirm the arrival of remains in 1870. The third article giving the smaller number says that the remains were being transported for local interment. “Conboie” refers to a Joseph Anthony Conboie, who served as Sacramento’s undertaker for many years and Sacramento County coroner. In 1869 he purchased land that became known as the Sunset Hill Cemetery. He apparently operated his own funeral service, which Chinese used; see, for example, “City Intelligence,” Sacramento Daily Union, February 18, 1870. His cemetery may have held the remains of Chinese who had made no prior arrangement for the return of their remains to China; or it may have been a “way station.” Chinese regularly buried the dead and then disinterred them years later, after the flesh had decomposed. The number might therefore be approximately twelve hundred plus the fifty associated with Conboie. The exact number is impossible to establish. All the articles agree that the causes of death included accidents as well as disease. Interment of Chinese and others at Conboie’s cemetery began in September 1869, and by 1873 the total had reached five hundred persons, according to a news report that year. This same article reported that Conboie had entered into an agreement with Chinese associations to receive the “remains of those Chinese whose bodies might be brought here from the mountains and the interior for burial, prior to being shipped back to the Flowery Kingdom.” Sacramento Daily Union, January 18, 1873, quoted in “Masonic Lawn Cemetery Predated by Earlier Established Cemetery,” Valley Community Newspapers, February 13, 2014.
Ambiguities and questions: Elizabeth Sinn, Pacific Crossing: California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013), 265–75. The causes of death for a large number of Railroad Chinese is unknown. News reports, as noted earlier, mention only the known accidents. Company officials many years later recounted that avalanches and snowslides took many workers, but in these instances, it would have been very difficult to calculate numbers. Chinese, however, undoubtedly recorded these events, and teams would have tried later to recover the remains. This would have been a very difficult task, given the rubble, rock, water, and physical deterioration of the bodies. Did smallpox or other epidemics account for the deaths? There is documentation that in early 1869, an outbreak of smallpox took the lives of some white workers, perhaps a dozen. It terrified many, causing white tracklayers to leave work because of it; the company brought in Chinese to replace them, and they reportedly were eager to take on the labor. The outbreak apparently did not last long. C. Crocker to Huntington, January 20, 1869; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, January 23, 28, and March 16, 1869; and Mark Hopkins to Huntington, January 31, 1869, all in Huntington Letters. Microfilming Corporation of America, Sanford, N.C.; and Oakland Daily News, January 19, 1869.
The news articles did not: Sinn, Pacific Crossing, 275. The articles are unclear about the source of the numbers and how the calculations were made. For example, the claim of twenty thousand pounds of remains equating to 1,200 persons raises questions. It is unclear whether the weight of the remains involves entire bodies, partial remains, bones, or fragments. It is also unclear whether the weight includes coffins and shipping boxes. According to the forens
ic archaeologist John Crandall, only about 7 percent of a living individual’s weight becomes “dry bone.” Chinese males at the time weighed on average probably no more than 125 pounds. Crandall to author, August 12, 2017. The same figure of 1,200 sets of Chinese remains returning to China is cited by the Reverend John Todd in The Sunset Land; or, The Great Pacific Slope (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1870), 280; it was Todd who had delivered the invocation at the Promontory Summit ceremony. Though he does not provide the source of his information, he cites the number without qualification.
Another way of looking: Figures for this table are from Sue Fawn Chung, In Pursuit of Gold: Chinese American Miners and Merchants in the American West (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 22–23, which gives the source as the Oregonian, December 6, 1869. If the total number of Chinese who worked on the CPRR was somewhere between twelve thousand and perhaps twenty thousand, taking turnover into account, a death toll of a thousand or more over five years is not unreasonable.
Name of association
Total members
Returned
Died
Remained
Ningyung
46,867
12,262
3,487
27,118
Yanghe
28,207
4,295
2,085
21,820
Siyi
19,111
8,015
1,005
10,061
Sanyi
15,023
3,202
987
10,834
Hehe
25,002
4,407
1,878
18,717
Renhe
4,374
1,112
983
2,281
138,584
10,425
% died: 7.5%
Other reports gave: “Chinese Immigrants,” Railroad Record, January 6, 1870, 466. The figures were repeated in “Chinese Immigrants in California,” Railroad Record, February 10, 1870, 506. The periodical was a highly regarded source of information. Daniel Cleveland derived numbers similar to these and calculated that more than 13 percent of the Chinese who came to California by 1868 died in the state—about 6,000 out of 46,000. Unfortunately, Chinese associations that were involved in repatriation of remains adamantly refuse access to their archives. The Great Fire of 1906 also destroyed many records from this period.