When gold miners rushed to Idaho in the early 1860s, President Abraham Lincoln created the Idaho Territory to provide political and legal structure. Originally, a territorial law prevented blacks and Chinese from prospecting. When the amount of ore taken from the mines began to dwindle, however, Chinese men were recruited by claim holders, who correctly predicted that their presence would stimulate the economy. These Chinese mine workers were forced to work claims long abandoned by white miners or to work claims thought to be too poor for whites. The Chinese far outnumbered the few blacks and Hispanics working in and around the mines. During this time, over two-thirds of the miners in Boise County were foreign-born, but only the Chinese had to pay the foreign miner’s tax, which required that all “Mongolians,” whether male or female and of any occupation, pay a tax of  about five dollars a month.12

Chinese hydraulic mining /Photo Citation 25

Early Chinese in Idaho

The 1870 Census showed 4,274 Chinese in Idaho.13 Around this time, over a quarter of Idaho’s residents were Chinese, giving the territory one of the highest percentages of Chinese residents of any area of the United States.14 Chinese women generally accounted for less than one percent of the U.S. population. They had often been sold into domestic service or slavery by their poverty-stricken families in China. Upon arrival in the United States, many of the Chinese women immigrants were kidnapped, lured or purchased to work in brothels, while some had been brought to the United States specifically for that purpose.15

Chinese miners /Photo Citation 26

One of Idaho’s most famous women, Polly Bemis, was born in China, where she was sold for bags of seed to bandits, shipped as a slave to the United States, and auctioned off in Portland, Oregon, to a Chinese man who had a business in an Idaho mining camp. She later married Charlie Bemis. Polly Bemis ended up living a long life on Charlie’s old mining claim along the Salmon River.16 A biographical novel and highly romanticized movie, “Thousand Pieces of Gold,” tell Polly’s story.

 

Polly Bemis /Photo Citation 27

Close to 10,000 Chinese helped build railroads across the West, but by 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, whicn would not be repealed for 61 years.17 Students and merchants could continue to immigrate, but not Chinese laborers, who were called “coolies.” Idaho had an Anti-Chinese League, although it was thought to have fewer than 13 members. Idaho’s Governor Edward Stevenson was said to sympathize with the group but publicly said he would punish anyone who dared violence against the Chinese. After a lynching of five Chinese, Governor Stevenson determined that the Chinese had probably committed a murder of a competing white merchant and that the local citizens had taken appropriate action. To prevent further violence, Governor Stevenson issued a proclamation expressing the hope that Congress would deliver Idaho from the presence of Chinese, but he also instructed law officers to prevent all riots.18

Opinions of the Time

During the late 1860s to 1886 the Chinese continued to come into Idaho to work in various enterprises, and many Euro-American/Chinese conflicts arose from a mutual lack of trust. Despite this distrust, there were examples of Irish bands leading Chinese funeral processions and joint celebrations  of the Fourth of July and the Chinese New Year .19

Although as many as 100 Chinese may have been murdered in Idaho, much greater anti-Chinese violence occurred in other areas of the West during this period.20 The Supreme Court of Idaho refused to imitate the anti-Chinese hysteria that swept the Western United States in 1885-1886 and instead provided justice for the Chinese of frontier Idaho. A Chinese-born historian, Ping Zhu, states that “in the end, the Chinese tasted more success than failure in their search for better lives” in theWest.21

  Anti-Chinese poster /  Photo Citation28                                                                   

    Chinese New Years parade /Photo Citation 29

FOOTNOTES: 12- Simon-Smolinski, Carol, Idaho’s Chinese Americans, Idaho’s Ethnic Heritage, Idaho Centennial Commission, United States Department of Internior, 1990, p. 11. 13- Arrington, Vol. II, p. 266. 14- Zhu, Liping, A Chinaman’s Chance, The Chinese on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier, University of Colorado, 1997, p. 56. 15- Yung, Judy, Chinese Women in America, A Pictorial History, University of Washington Press, 1986, p. 14. 16- Wegers, Priscilla, Polly Bemis, a Chinese American Pioneer, 2003, pp. 2-5. 17- Limerick, p. 264. 18- Arrington, p. 374. 19- Zhu, pp. 85-87. 20- Wunder, John, The Courts and the Chinese in Frontier Idaho, Idaho Yesterdays, Spring 1981. 21- Zhu, p. 4.