Chinese Massacre Cove - Remembering an Atrocity

In October of 1886 a group of Chinese men left Lewiston, Idaho by boat on the Snake River. There were at least thirty-four of them, intent on mining for gold down the river at Deep Creek. Eight months later all were dead.

Anti-Chinese sentiment was high in the West in the late nineteenth century. In 1882 the Chinese Exclusion act was passed. This law made it impossible for Chinese to become US citizens. It was part of a growing movement to exclude Chinese from American life.

From the 1850s on Chinese laborers had been coming to the United States. Massive amounts of labor were required to build the railroads that soon would criss-cross the country. Much of it would be provided by Chinese, who had come to escape poverty and would do the dangerous and grueling work for low wages.

Soon after the railroads were completed the gold rush began and, again, the Chinese provided cheap labor. As with almost every ethnic group that has come to the country in large migrations, though, the Chinese were soon the targets of racial hatred. The Chinese were accused of lowering wages for other groups employed in mining, groups of European origin. There had been a number of attacks on groups of Chinese miners, but none more horrific than what happened on the Snake River in Oregon.

In May of 1887, as the Chinese miners camped on the river, a band of seven thugs surrounded them on the cliffs above and opened fire. Whether thirty-one, or thirty-four Chinese men were slaughtered that night isn't known for sure. But one thing is known. Every man camped at the cove was killed. One, who tried to escape in a boat when the thugs who attacked them ran out of ammunition, was actually chased down and finished off with a rock.

The Chinese had little in the way of weaponry to fight back in the ambush. One man returned fire with a 22 caliber handgun, but only got off six shots before running out of ammunition.

The seven horse thieves that committed the outrage got away with at least 5,000 dollars worth of gold dust, a veritable fortune by 1887 standards. When the killing was over they dragged all of the bodies to the river and threw them in, then burned the tents and tools left behind. Nobody knew about the killings until bodies started showing up downriver over the next few weeks.

The first report of the killings ran in the Lewiston Teller, on June 16 1887. It stated that ten Chinese had been ambushed and murdered. Ten bodies were all that were ever recovered, but it would turn out that there were many more.

The seven killers, the youngest of whom was only fifteen, included: Bruce "Blue" Evans, J. Titus "Tighty" Canfield, Frank Vaughan, Robert McMillan, Hezekiah "Carl" Hughes, Hiram Maynard, and Homer "Omar" LaRue. They were more usually in the business of stealing horses on the Oregon side of the river, then swimming them across to sell them in the Idaho territory.

Given the fact that the then governor of Oregon, a man named Sylvester Pennoyer had, at one point called for the expulsion of the entire population of Portland's Chinatown, it's hardly surprising that the government was slow to act.

An investigation was eventually launched at the behest of the Chinese mens' San Francisco based employer, Sam Yup Company. Frank Vaughan turned state's evidence, giving a thorough account of the killings. Only three of the men, Maynard, McMillan, and Hughs, stood trial for the killings and all three were acquitted in spite of eyewitness testimony.

It wasn't long before the crime was nearly forgotten. There were a few sketchy accounts in old books and newspapers, but it wasn't until 1995, that Wallowa County Clerk Charlotte McIver found a packet containing trial transcripts, indictments and other documents, all either hidden or forgotten in an old safe, that the full story came to light again. The massacre of more than thirty defenseless miners at Deep Creek was dredged from the shadows of history.

In 2005, the cove was renamed Chinese Massacre Cove by the Oregon Geographic Names Board and the story gained greater notoriety