A Massacre Remembered
by Hells Canyon dramaturg kt shorb and Mu programs manager Morgen Chang
Keiko Green’s Hells Canyon invites a sense of time travel. A contemporary piece with contemporary characters, concerns, and horror, the whole story rests on a little-known incident in Asian American History—the Snake River Massacre of 1887, also known as the Hells Canyon Massacre.
The Snake River Massacre was one of several acts of violence committed by white settlers against Chinese laborers in the 19th century. Arriving in the US in waves between 1815 and 1882, Chinese laborers were actively recruited to fill labor shortages first created by westward expansion and then abolition. Across the country, they participated in the gold rush, built the transcontinental railroad, worked Southern plantations after the Civil War, and established agriculture, fisheries, and business.
As their numbers grew, so did the “Yellow Peril,” an idea espoused by white Americans and Europeans that Asians were inscrutable, amoral, and cunning.
On the West Coast, additional factors contributed to intense racial hatred. The 1870s saw an economic depression in California. Because Chinese laborers were paid less than their white counterparts, they were seen as taking jobs meant for whites. In addition, white Americans saw Chinese immigrants as unwilling to assimilate. Chinese laborers often stayed in Chinatowns, did not change their appearance, and did not generally mix with white society. Part of this was that the laborers did not plan to immigrate permanently. Meanwhile, American policy did not incentivize assimilation. Many politicians saw Chinese immigration as a threat to all things American: Manifest Destiny, the American Dream, and progress. Labor organizers, racial purists, Christians, and patriots all tended to agree on one thing: The Chinese were the enemy, and they needed to disappear.
The Massacre
In October of 1886, two boats began an expedition from Lewiston, Idaho, up the Snake River. Led by Chea Po and Lee She, the boats came from the Sam Yup Company, one of the six Chinese benevolent societies (or Six Companies) headquartered in San Francisco. Snake River was known to the Six Companies, and multiple Chinese expeditions had prospected there for gold since the 1860s. As the boats traveled upstream, they made their way to Hells Canyon—the deepest river gorge in the United States. It was difficult to navigate, and the men would have pulled the boats upriver from the shore when possible, or portaged around falls and rapids. Before arriving at Hells Canyon, the party encountered white gold prospectors. Unwilling to share their claim, the white prospectors drove them out of the area. Eventually, they arrived at Deep Creek, where Chea’s party decided to stay while Lee’s party continued another 20 miles further south.
There are few and varied accounts of the massacre that took place on May 25-26, 1887. One account says that a member of a gang of schoolboys and rustlers tried to recruit at the local school, claiming that ridding the region of Chinese would be a patriotic act, and the gold they stole would be their reward. Another account claims that the main reason this massacre happened was because the gang needed to take stolen horses to the Idaho side of the river. After several horses drowned, they asked the miners to borrow their boat. When the miners refused, the gang decided to kill them for the boat and for the gold they would likely have possessed. Whether it was planned ahead or as a response to another problem in the course of executing the crime, the racism of their actions was clear.
All accounts show that at least three members of the party ambushed the miners at Deep Creek, shooting 12 from close range with pistols or from across the canyon using rifles. They threw the bodies into the river. The next morning, they waited at the camp for eight more miners who had taken the boat to another claim to return. They ambushed these miners and again threw their bodies into the river. After killing the second group, the gang members took the boat and traveled to the next encampment where the rest of Chea Po’s party was prospecting and killed them all.
Aftermath
In early June 1887, Lee’s party returned to Deep Creek to rendezvous with Chea’s party where they found three bodies. They fled to Lewiston, where they reported the murders. On June 16, 1887, more bodies began washing ashore. The owner of a nearby cabin found multiple skeletons a year later. Sam Yup Company sent a company member to investigate the massacre. He then hired a local white justice of the peace, and both worked to piece together the information. Only 11 deaths were reported in newspapers. The Oregon governor at the time was publicly anti-Chinese, so the state did little to seriously investigate the massacre.
Nine months later, after gathering many reports, a Chinese diplomat wrote to the secretary of state requesting a more serious investigation. The secretary of state essentially dismissed this plea.
In March 1888, Frank Vaughan, a schoolboy, confessed to knowledge of the massacre and gave evidence, which led to an indictment of seven men. Four men fled and were never caught. Among them was the presumed leader, Bruce “Blue” Evans. Evans had been arrested for horse thieving a week after the massacre but managed to escape and flee the county, leaving his wife and children. Some reports located him in Montana. His name appears on a memorial arch in Empire, Oregon, commemorating early pioneers of the region.
Three other men were declared innocent by a jury on Sept 1, 1888, following a two-day trial in Enterprise, Oregon. No detailed notes from the trial exist. In statements, the prosecutor avoided asking all questions about the location of the gold, which, depending on the accounts, was valued at between $4,000 and $50,000 ($125,000 to $1.5 million in today’s dollars).
Local papers did not report on the trial. No one was punished for the crime. The trial records went missing shortly after the acquittal, and they were not found until 1995, in an old safe that was being emptied in order to donate to a local museum.
The Miners
Little is known about the Chinese miners who were slaughtered in Hells Canyon. Other than the names of less than half of the victims, no other archival records exist to fill out their biographies. They were among the tens of thousands of Chinese laborers who crossed the Pacific, many from their home province of Guangdong. Depending on different accounts, it is likely that between 31 to 34 Chinese miners were killed. Most burial locations of the victims are unknown.
Based on correspondence with the Chinese Consulate, the following are the names that have been identified:
Chea Po
Chea Sun
Chea Yow
Chea Shun
Chea Cheong
Chea Ling
Chea Chow
Chea Lin-chung
Kong Mun-kow
Kong Nhan
Ah Yow
In 2005, the US Board on Geographic Names officially renamed the site at Deep Creek “Chinese Massacre Cove,” the first official recognition of the crime. In June of 2012, a memorial was installed overlooking the river to honor the slain miners. The memorial was financed entirely with private contributions and is inscribed in three languages: English, Chinese, and Nez Perce. It reads, "Chinese Massacre Cove — Site of the 1887 massacre of as many as 34 Chinese gold miners — No one was held accountable."