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daumari's review against another edition
5.0
A piece of history that deserves to be known- I always thought the Rock Springs massacre in Wyoming was the biggest attack on Chinese in America re: casualties, but the one in Hells Canyon on the Oregon side of the border potentially surpasses that (~34 vs ~25, but it varies depending on which account you read). I picked this up from Book Bin in Corvallis last March, and started reading it this past week in anticipation of a roadtrip from the mid-Willamette Valley to my hometown in eastern Idaho, during which we pass relatively close to the exit for Hells Canyon in Wallowa County, OR via I-84.
What I found most fascinating was Nokes' investigative tack, as he first heard of this in the 1990s and was shocked that there could be a century-long cover up by a small town community. As a fourth generation Chinese American, I'm not as surprised by the blatant racism and/or disregard of personhood towards my ancestors. I've also found it an incredibly curious thing that at one point the west (including the currently-very-homogenous intermountain states of Idaho and Wyoming) had sizable populations of Chinese living and working, but between legal barriers and active campaigns by their white neighbors to drive them out, many either returned to China or were killed. A review of the treatment of Chinese laborers in America from 1880s is worth a review by people of today as there are extensive parallels to 1) the way we discuss migrant labor and continue to Otherize people who do jobs for cheap that most citizens won't and 2) attempts by the current administration to create immigration bans based on nationality for populist concerns instead of actual, verifiable evidence.
I deeply appreciate the dogged effort Nokes went into to find all the information he could on this incident, and to probe into why knowledge was buried (or intentionally forgotten) for so long. The western United States is full of ghosts of people who look like me; let us strive to remember their presence and not repeat the past.
edit because I just remembered: my only quibble is that there are a few typos (maybe a dozen in all), with one towards the end being the death date of a resident (he says the wife of one of the murderers died in 1963 in the text, but the photograph above it shows a death year of 1953, page 148). The overall content is extensively cited though, with end notes.
What I found most fascinating was Nokes' investigative tack, as he first heard of this in the 1990s and was shocked that there could be a century-long cover up by a small town community. As a fourth generation Chinese American, I'm not as surprised by the blatant racism and/or disregard of personhood towards my ancestors. I've also found it an incredibly curious thing that at one point the west (including the currently-very-homogenous intermountain states of Idaho and Wyoming) had sizable populations of Chinese living and working, but between legal barriers and active campaigns by their white neighbors to drive them out, many either returned to China or were killed. A review of the treatment of Chinese laborers in America from 1880s is worth a review by people of today as there are extensive parallels to 1) the way we discuss migrant labor and continue to Otherize people who do jobs for cheap that most citizens won't and 2) attempts by the current administration to create immigration bans based on nationality for populist concerns instead of actual, verifiable evidence.
I deeply appreciate the dogged effort Nokes went into to find all the information he could on this incident, and to probe into why knowledge was buried (or intentionally forgotten) for so long. The western United States is full of ghosts of people who look like me; let us strive to remember their presence and not repeat the past.
edit because I just remembered: my only quibble is that there are a few typos (maybe a dozen in all), with one towards the end being the death date of a resident (he says the wife of one of the murderers died in 1963 in the text, but the photograph above it shows a death year of 1953, page 148). The overall content is extensively cited though, with end notes.
kathleenitpdx's review
4.0
This is a story that needed to be researched and written. Up to 34 Chinese miners were murdered in Hell's Canyon Oregon in 1887. Three local men, who were probably involved were tried and found not guilty. Three others fled and were never searched for. A complete investigation was never done. At this point we only know the names of eleven of the victims.
Nokes has done a fairly good job of writing an engaging book. It wavered between a book about the author's research into the massacre and what is known about what happened. I found it difficult to keep the members of the gang involved straight in my mind as their stories were spread out too far in the book.
All of us from the Northwest should read this book. It is an important piece of our history.
Nokes has done a fairly good job of writing an engaging book. It wavered between a book about the author's research into the massacre and what is known about what happened. I found it difficult to keep the members of the gang involved straight in my mind as their stories were spread out too far in the book.
All of us from the Northwest should read this book. It is an important piece of our history.
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