Free The Chinese in America by Iris Chang Page A

small pieces to sell along with their gold dust, because many small nuggets would ensure both that each man received his fair share and that the find would not draw unwanted attention to the group. Two Chinese miners who had never earned more than two dollars a day stumbled upon a 240-pound nugget worth more than $30,000, a considerable fortune during that era. Like most gold rushers of the time, the Chinese chased after rumors of new findings, wherever such rumors might take them. In 1856, a few Chinese ventured out of California into the Rocky Mountains and the Boise Basin of Oregon Territory (now southern Idaho), where friendly Shoshone and Bannock Indians led them to placer beds so rich in gold that their deerskins soon bulged with nuggets.
    Other Chinese prospered not just by luck or hard work, both of which were always needed, but by resourceful use of technology. The Chinese introduced the water wheel to American placer mining. This device, modeled after irrigation techniques used by rice paddy farmers back home, allowed them to pump and sluice water from the river, which was then used to wash gravel from gold. The pumping method was not only derived from Chinese agriculture, but from generations of experience from tin miners in Guangdong, who had originally acquired their knowledge from Chinese miners in Malaysia.
    Still other Chinese benefited from the fact that they were willing to work as a group. When a group of Chinese miners working in northern central California realized that a rich vein lay underneath the riverbed, they agreed to work together to build a dam across the Yuba River to expose the gold. In Utah Territory, another group of Chinese dug an irrigation ditch from the Carson River to Gold Canyon, which made mining possible in that desert region and greatly impressed the Mormons living there.
    At night, a lively bachelor culture sprang up in these scattered mining camps. The miners formed bands and played Chinese music with instruments brought over from their homeland. Not everyone enjoyed their performances: in 1851, one writer compared the local Chinese orchestra to the “wailings of a thousand lovelorn cats, the screams, gobblings, braying and barkings of as many peacocks, turkeys, donkeys and dogs.”
    The miners also gambled—gambling being possibly the greatest Chinese vice in the American West. (“About every third Chinaman runs a lottery,” Twain remarked.) In gambling shacks, loud, excited groups of Chinese bet on dice, lots, and tosses of coin. A Montana editor complained about the noise, which began after dark: “We don’t know and don’t care how many years they claim to have been infesting the earth, and only wish they would go to bed like decent people and stop playing their infernal button game of ‘Foo-ti-hoo-ti,’ so a fellow can get a nap.”
    Still, the Chinese mining life was very similar to all life in the American West—rough and lawless. An English-Chinese phrase book, published in San Francisco, reflected their experience through its selection of what a Chinese prospector needed to be able to say in English:
    He assaulted me without provocation.
He claimed my mine...
He tries to extort money from me.
He falsely accused me of stealing his watch.
He was choked to death with a lasso, by a robber.
She is a good-for-nothing huzzy [sic].
    As always, everywhere, absent any effective rule of law, the rule of brute strength prevailed, posing a special threat to those less aggressive or poorly armed. Gangs of thugs roved through the countryside, relieving unwary Chinese prospectors of their gold. One of the most notorious was led by Joaquin Murieta, a young Sonoran whose gang would descend on a Chinese camp, round up the miners, and tie their pigtails together. Slowly, deliberately, he and his men would torture them until someone disclosed where they had hidden their gold dust, at which point Murieta would slit their throats with a bowie knife. In May 1853, the state of California