Massacred for Gold
The Chinese in Hells Canyon
By R. Gregory Nokes
(Oregon State University Press, Paperback, 9780870715709, 208pp.)
Publication Date: October 2009
Categories: Murder - General, United States - 19th Century, United States - State & Local - Pacific Northwest
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Description
In 1887, more than thirty Chinese gold miners were massacred on the Oregon side of Hells Canyon, the deepest canyon in North America. Massacred for Gold, the first authoritative account of the unsolved crime, unearths the evidence that points to an improbable gang of rustlers and schoolboys, one only fifteen, as the killers.
The crime was discovered weeks after it happened, but no charges were brought for nearly a year, when gang member Frank Vaughan, son of a well-known settler family, confessed and turned stateas evidence. Six men and boys, all from northeastern Oregonas remote Wallowa county, were chargedabut three fled, and the others were found innocent by a jury that a witness admitted had little interest in convicting anyone. A cover-up followed, and the crime was all but forgotten for the next one hundred years, until a county clerk in Wallowa County found hidden records in an unused safe.
Massacred for Gold traces the authoras long personal journey to expose details of the massacre and its aftermath and to understand how one of the worst of the many crimes committed by whites against Chinese laborers in the American West was for so long lost to history.
The crime was discovered weeks after it happened, but no charges were brought for nearly a year, when gang member Frank Vaughan, son of a well-known settler family, confessed and turned stateas evidence. Six men and boys, all from northeastern Oregonas remote Wallowa county, were chargedabut three fled, and the others were found innocent by a jury that a witness admitted had little interest in convicting anyone. A cover-up followed, and the crime was all but forgotten for the next one hundred years, until a county clerk in Wallowa County found hidden records in an unused safe.
Massacred for Gold traces the authoras long personal journey to expose details of the massacre and its aftermath and to understand how one of the worst of the many crimes committed by whites against Chinese laborers in the American West was for so long lost to history.
Reviews from AltWeeklies.com
From Willamette Week, Portland, Oregon
R. Gregory Nokes' investigation of the 1887 mass murder of more than 30 Chinese gold miners is a chronicle within a chronicle, explaining not only how and why the murders occurred but how the author had to sift through scant and often contradictory evidence to make sense of a crime.
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