Digging to China: Unearthing a Frontier Chinatown

by Patti Sherry-Crews

Go to any Chinatown found in cities around the world, and you get the feeling of you've been transported to the Orient without even leaving the country. I'm sure many of us have enjoyed dining and shopping in these neighborhoods with their distinctive looking, colorful buildings. But less familiar to us would be the vanished Gold Rush Chinatowns that cropped up alongside mining camps.

These places aren't as well documented as the boom-towns they grew up within, but in recent times there's been interest in these communities within a community. An archaeological dig in Deadwood, South Dakota revealed some clues of the life of the Chinese immigrants in the 19th century in this section of town, known then as Hoptown.

The Boom Town of Deadwood, S.D., 1876 (wiki-commons)

What induces a person to travel so far to a land half a world away where everything from the language to the culture would be an unknown? In this case gold was the enticement. When word of the discovery of gold reached China, it set off a steady stream of migration. Chinese, mainly from the Guangdong Province, an area hit by the Opium Wars with Britain, revolution, famine, and crop failure, headed to America--note these immigrants would primarily be men venturing out alone, leaving their families behind.

Unfortunately, making a fortune in the gold mines didn't always go as planned. Coming into competition with white miners, the Chinese soon found themselves given limited mining rights or restricted to mines that were thought to be depleted. In the face of that, the immigrants found employment building the railroad. But once the rail-line was complete, they had to find new occupations.

They sought out ways that didn't compete with or threaten their white neighbors. Seeing opportunity in the mining camps, where there were few women in proportion to men, the Chinese set up businesses that catered to the miners: laundries, restaurants, housework, and restaurants for examples (water from washing miners clothes were screened for gold dust).

In the 1870's, gold was found in the Black Hills and the town of Deadwood was born. If you've ever been to Deadwood, you know it's built in a narrow gulch nestled in the mountains with little room to expand beyond its central streets. It's a crowded, bustling town, which I imagine was much the same back in its early days. It was at the south end of Main Street that the Chinese settled. We don't know how large the Chinese population was but it seemed to have ranged from over 200 to up to 500 residents.

If you're a fan of the series Deadwood (and I am), you may be familiar with Chinatown pigpens being a convenient place to dispose of bodies. Fiction. That never happened, so let's start with putting that notion to rest. Likewise, don't imagine the Chinatowns you may be familiar with the characteristic oriental features. Deadwood Chinatown seemed to have looked like the rest of the town. Nothing of it remains today. Buildings and people are all gone.

In 2001 a team of archaeologists from the South Dakota State Archaeological Research Center began a four year project. Using old fire insurance maps, they were able to locate the area that was once Chinatown.

Imported Porcelain and Pottery found during excavation (City of Deadwood)

A spot where a boarding house had burned down hid a treasure trove of artifacts, because the building collapsed on the contents of the house. Among the things found were gaming pieces, pottery, tableware, everyday personal hygiene aids, hair ornaments, Chinese coins, opium paraphernalia, and more.

As unpleasant as it might seem, another place archaeologists get excited digging around in are the privies. Much of the trash of the day would be thrown into them. In addition to man-made objects, animal bones and botanical refuse, such as seeds, give clues to the diet of the people who lived there. Keeping in mind they didn't have a garbage collection like we do, the privy was a popular place to dispose of garbage like bottles or objects that had lost their usefulness.

In all, after excavation over 600 boxes of artifacts were recovered and stored.

The picture painted by the findings is one of a community that exported their lifestyle almost whole from China. From the pottery to the medicine bottles to opium, all were brought to America. There was a remarkable oriental-flavored homogeneity to the items unearthed. Even the animal bones tell us the Chinese preferred pork over the beef favored by their neighbors.

Though the Chinese did coexist with the white community while holding onto their ways, cultural exchanges could not be avoided. In the artifacts found, mahjong tiles lay alongside gaming dice. American beer bottles mingled with bottles that once held traditional Chinese medicine.

What did the Chinese bring to their non-Chinese neighbors? Of the eleven restaurants in Deadwood, seven of them were Chinese establishments, who not only served frontier fare but also introduced Asian food. Immigrant Fee lee Wong opened the Wing Tsue Emporium, a large store selling imported silk, medicines, porcelain, and other goods to Chinese and non-Chinese alike. Not to be bragged about, but we can't ignore one thing the Chinese brought to Deadwood: opium. The Chinese got the westerners hooked on opium just as the British had gotten the Chinese hooked on the drug. In the early days, opium dens were legal and were treated like saloons, in that to open one all you had to do was apply for a license. Later opium would be outlawed.

Wing Tsue Emporium (image: Adams Museum, Deadwood, S.D.)

Though living cheek to jowl with the other residents of Deadwood, the Chinese maintained their own community. For obvious reasons, they weren't going to blend in the way an European immigrant could, and often being targets for discrimination and even violence, banding together was a means for security and support. Chinatown even had their own fire and police brigades. All that said, the relationship between the Chinese and general population of Deadwood seems to have been relatively harmonious when compared to some of the other settlements of the day. The residents of Deadwood enjoyed Chinese parades and holiday celebrations which might include fireworks.

"The Champion Chinese Hose Team, who won the great Hub-and-Hub race at Deadwood," 1880 (Wiki-commons)

As important and vital as the Chinese community was in the late 19th and early 20th century, it no longer exists. What happened and where did they go?

Remember, this was a wave of migration that typically didn't include women and families. Of course there was a small group of females and children in Deadwood's Chinatown as represented by women's hair ornaments and such and children's toys found in the dig, but the population was heavily weighted on the male side. The typical Chinese male immigrant was sending money back to his family in China. He may have even been under contract, and when he'd fulfilled his obligation, he left America.

To give the Chinese even less incentive to settle, the Exclusion Act in 1882, halted the flow of immigration from China, denying citizenship to even those born here. Men could not send for their families or brides. So when the gold dried up, there was little reason to stay in Deadwood. Just as the town was limited in growth by its geography, Chinese growth was limited by the society of the time. The Chinese moved on to larger communities like you'd find in San Francisco, or they went back to the East.

But while they were there, the Chinese immigrants played an important part in society.

Reconstructed Altar and Burner, Mount Moriah Cemetery (Wiki-Commons)

In the Mount Moriah Cemetery situated on a beautiful pine tree dotted hill you can see the final resting places of such iconic figures like Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok. You can also visit the Chinese altar and ceremonial burner. In 1908, the leaders of the Chinese community were given permission to build the altar and burner to honor their dead in their own way. In later years, decades after the last of the Chinese left, the altar and burner fell into disrepair.

Then in the early part of the 21st century, long after all other traces of the Chinese presence were gone, the city of Deadwood reconstructed the altar and burner, using bricks saved from the demolished Wing Tsue Emporium, to construct it.

To me this unimposing structure tells the tale of the Chinese in Deadwood, South Dakota: their emergence, acceptance, decline, and finally getting a place of honor in the frontier town they helped create.

In the words of Fee Lee Wong's great granddaughter, Edith Wong, who came from California for the dedication of the new altar and burner.

"The addition of this restored burner, just as the integration of the Chinese in a largely white pioneer community, signals acceptance of a different culture and a different way of life," Wong said. "What tangible evidence of the Chinese still exists in Deadwood? Really, not very much. Instead of solely an interpretive sign, this burner will be a physical reminder that the Chinese culture and traditions were definitely an integral part of Deadwood's history."

THE CHINESE LAUNDRY: A nearly forgotten piece of San Francisco History By Gail L. Jenner

As a writer, it's always interesting to pursue those often overlooked details involving, for example, the more intimate details of life. I recently found some fascinating history on the mundane subject of laundry -- or, more precisely, the infamous and stereotyped Chinese launderer. There were hundreds of Chinese laundries and washermen throughout the West; even on my husband's family's five-generational ranch, there was a hired Chinese launderer. He never married, but was counted in the family census and lived with the family for many years. I believe he passed away in the mid-1930s.

For anyone in the early days of the West, clean clothes were almost a luxury! We've all seen the old pictures of women using scrub boards or banging clothes on rocks over a stream, and certainly that was the way pioneer women laundered their clothes before the first wringer machines were invented.

Because cleanliness was difficult to maintain on the plains, on the trail or in mining camps, or around the farm or ranch, it's easy to understand why women wore large aprons, hoping to preserve some semblance of respectability, ie: cleanliness. It also explains why Sunday clothes were reserved just for Sunday go-to-meetings or other special occasions. Even wedding dresses were often altered or dyed and used again. "Better" dresses or suits were maintained by heavy brushing and being hung out in the sunshine to reduce odors. For obvious reasons they were not cleaned often.

I recognized how limited early women's wardrobes were when we moved into my husband's great grandparents' farmhouse. There were no clothes closets in any of the rooms (in fact, the last time the upstairs had been painted or updated was 1898!). There was a single "wardrobe" or armoire in each room, and only 3 or 4 hooks inside each of them. Certainly that's not much space for the kinds of clothes that now line our contemporary closets.

Within the pages of the historic material I've begun to collect, it was fascinating to read about San Francisco's burgeoning laundry market, an economic endeavor that attracted many Chinese immigrants; clearly it was one venture where they were not as persecuted by Caucasians and even achieved financial success. Of course, many left after the implementation of the Exclusion Act, although throughout the gold fields there were a number of successful Chinese stores, pack trains, mining companies, and the like.


Before the rush to the gold hills of California, laundry was done by Spanish-American or Indian women who worked along the edge of a small fresh-water lake
located about two miles west of San Francisco (Yerba Buena), at a place also known as "Washerwoman's Lagoon."  As noted in one source, "the water was soft, and the shore was covered with thorny scrub brush which answered admirably for drying." But as the new city grew, so did its need for laundry services. Many resisted paying the going rate of $8 per dozen shirts charged by French laundries, and some began sending their laundry off to China or Honolulu! Amazing to realize that laundry was shipped to these exotic locations, but ships arriving from China or the Sandwich Islands brought back hundreds of bundles of clean clothes.

Then things began to change:  even the Daily Alta California, San Francisco's leading newspaper, reported in 1850: "Much excitement was caused in the city last week by the reduction of washing prices from eight dollars to five dollars a dozen. There is now no excuse for citizens to wear soiled or colored shirts. The effect of the reduction is already manifest -- tobacco-juice bespattered bosoms are no longer the fashion."

Reportedly, it was an immigrant named Wah Lee who displayed the first laundry sign in San Francisco, announcing, "Wash'ng and Iron'ng" over the door of his business on Washington Street.  By 1876, there were approximately 300 Chinese laundries in the city, each one employing at least 5 men. The laundries were not confined to the area known as Chinatown, but were located throughout the city.

As a result of the number of immigrants entering the profession, the price for clean shirts dropped to $2 a dozen and business boomed. Even at Wah Lee's establishment, there were more than twenty washermen employed, and they cleaned clothes for individuals from as far away as Monterey or Sacramento. Eventually, the less numerous French laundries, as well as most of the Native American or Spanish-American washerwomen lost their hold on the flourishing laundry business in San Francisco.

It became a familiar sight to see a Chinese launderer with a pole across his shoulders from which hung two baskets, one on each end. Clean clothes were stacked in each basket and covered over with a cloth to keep them clean. Eventually San Francisco passed a law prohibiting these Chinese couriers from carrying their baskets in the streets. A few launderers who became much more prominent chose to drive small, black, covered buggies (or "vans"), the tops of which were covered with tin "to ward off the rocks thrown by ruffians."

Even though this was not the era of unions, within a short period of time, a protective Chinese society was established. It became a powerful organization that regulated the establishment of wash houses in San Francisco, even regulating how many "doors" must separate them; still, small stations and wash houses continue to spread through the city. This Chinese society -- or company, as it was called -- also settled disputes, collected dues, and managed the washermen's activities. Admission to the company cost an individual $10 and all workers had to attend meetings or pay a fine. Unfortunately, this society ran the washermen with an iron fist, even employing secret thugs to help keep the peace.

The Chinese laundry of old has now faded into history, seen only in westerns or old films. It's hard to contemplate their role in the lives of early San Francisco residents, but it was an important role in actuality. Interestingly enough, it was a simple "Chinese laundry mark" that led to the capture, arrest and conviction of Charles Boles, aka Black Bart; it was found on the handkerchief he dropped after his 29th holdup of a Wells Fargo stage coach in Copperopolis, California. So even such a mundane detail as a laundry mark became a significant historical detail!


Gail L. Jenner is the author of two historical novels, including BLACK BART: THE POET BANDIT, the story of California's most successful stage bandit who used a plugged shotgun, only targeted Wells Fargo stage coaches, and left poetry at the site of two of his 28 holdups. The enigmatic outlaw was well-liked and was eventually captured by James Hume, the Wells Fargo detective. He served 4 1/2 years in San Quentin then disappeared from history.

For more about Gail, visit:  www.gailjenner.com or http://prairierosepublications.yolasite.com/gail-l-jenner.php