Wong Sing: Exception in the Days of Exclusion

This article is an investigation into the attitudes and treatment of Asian workers in the West, including Rock Springs, Wyoming, and Fort Duchesne, Utah, during the late nineteenth century. Amidst the instances of hatred and exclusion directed toward Chinese immigrants in the West is one unique story of a Chinese entrepreneur who defied the odds in an odd place. As a young man wearing traditional Cantonese clothing and a queue hairstyle, Wong Sing arrived at Fort Duchesne in 1889, established a primitive laundry on the banks of a small river, and began his humble business for soldiers stationed at the fort near the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation. Early newspaper sources in the area clearly expressed bias toward Chinese immigrants in the city of Vernal, just thirty miles east of the fort, and a few examples occurred at the fort as well. But, over time, Wong Sing not only made a business for himself but also expanded with a mercantile and restaurant—all with the support of whites, Blacks, and Native American residents of the fort and other neighboring communities. He left a long-lasting business legacy after his death. The language used in the newspaper articles softened toward Wong Sing and perhaps Chinese in general through the decades, and by the end of his life the newspapers clearly showed a strong community fondness for their honorable Chinese friend. This story of Wong Sing offers important insights. Local accounts of Chinese exclusion have left out many important details. His story in the Uinta Basin stands out because of his experiences at the fort and on the reservation, particularly his close interactions with government officials stationed at the fort and his encounters with the buffalo soldiers of the 9th Regiment. For its time, the fort's diverse population created a dynamic community. Before the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in January 1848, near Sacramento, California, relatively few people from China lived in the United States. In addition to the financial crisis caused by the Opium War of 1839 to 1842 and its own collapsing empire, China was ravaged by a series of floods and droughts. An exploding population and high taxes forced many poor farmers and their sons to seek options for work in foreign nations. Most of these people were unskilled and illiterate but willing to work where opportunity would take them. Reports of the discovery of gold in the American West began appearing throughout Asia, and young men eager to escape the economic and political crisis occurring in many parts of China began to board ships bound for San Francisco. Excitement and hope for striking it rich on Gam Saan, or the “gold mountain, ” appealed to Chinese miners just as it did to American miners. Once in California, Chinese immigrants stayed together in small communities for cultural purposes and for safety. Some set up markets, restaurants, or other useful businesses catering to Chinese customers. Many made their way to mining areas and took up abandoned mining claims left by others who had already given up and moved on. By 1850 there were approximately only four thousand Chinese workers in the United States, but when another devastating drought hit China in 1852, over twenty thousand Chinese immigrants were recorded in the San Francisco customs house. Chinese miners in California accounted for a significant proportion of all miners, and by 1860 there were over thirty-five thousand Chinese people living in the United States. 1 Many of them were recruited by other Chinese based in San Francisco, who paid their passage in return for interest or fees with repayment. This system was like indentured servitude, especially when favors were called for by the lenders of money, who had power and leverage over those who borrowed money. Many of the workers who came to work in the West considered their circumstances temporary and hoped to return to their homeland one day. Women were discouraged from coming partly due to Chinese expectations of women to care for the home and children rather than work out of the home. Occasionally a few Chinese women migrated to the United States and later learned that their options for work were very limited by Americans, as well as by the Chinese men in their communities. Many Chinese women found themselves targets for abuse and discrimination and usually ended up working in brothels as prostitutes. Some Chinese women were accused of being prostitutes and treated accordingly simply because they were Chinese. With difficulties such as this for most Chinese women, they were usually left behind by their husbands, fathers, or brothers. With the financial obligations to the lenders and their families back home, male Chinese workers often earned money by taking menial jobs and sharing sleeping quarters and other necessities to save money. 2Chinese miners worked side by side with other immigrant and native-born miners during the early days of the gold rush. The mining was labor intensive and used primitive tools and production methods and could usually be started with very little capital investment. Long hours of difficult physical labor suited Chinese workers who had performed such demands in China. Gold-rich California became a state in 1850, and soon after, American attitudes began to change as more Chinese immigrants arrived and competition for mining land and supplies became obstacles. Competition and frustration intensified across several California counties, prompting the newly formed state government to pass a series of laws requiring foreign-born miners to pay twenty dollars per month for gold mining licenses. Over the next few years, additional taxes expanded California's treasury and discouraged foreigners from competing in the search for mining wealth. 3 The Foreign Miners laws of 1850 and 1852 were particularly aimed at experienced miners from the Andes and had less impact on Chinese miners, who were not coming in large numbers yet. Still, these laws established a business and political climate in California averse to all immigrants who competed with Anglo-American miners. As Chinese workers found themselves financially squeezed out of private mining opportunities, they began to accept other options for employment only to find discrimination and violence against them increased there as well. News reports across the West were often about Chinese laborers getting assaulted or murdered and eventually excluded from testifying in court so they could not defend themselves or their friends in a court of law. The first transcontinental railroad project opened in California in 1863 and created thousands of jobs for Chinese laborers, who were often preferred over Anglo-American workers. Charles Crocker, in his 1876 testimony to Congress, reported that he found Chinese railroad workers to be temperate, sober, nonviolent, and less expensive than their native-born Anglo counterparts. 4 While these qualities made them favorable to construction foremen and owners, it made them targets for other workers, who felt the jobs should be given to native-born Americans. As the need for jobs grew among Chinese immigrants, more options for nonskilled labor with little or no investment were needed. In 1851 the first Chinese hand laundry opened. Laundering for miners required long days of boiling water, scrubbing, and ironing. In a few weeks, the first business had expanded to twenty launderers rotating through three shifts per day. Soon, Chinese laundry businesses opened in California and other places in the United States. By 1880 San Francisco had 320 laundry businesses; most were in wooden buildings, which created fire hazards. The city passed an ordinance requiring expensive permits for wooden laundries, and with growing prejudice and pressure from non-Asian launderers, no Chinese business was given a permit, while only one non-Asian laundry was denied a permit. Propaganda and anti-Chinese attitudes had spread across the United States in a variety of industries where workers felt pressure to compete with cheap Asian labor. Anti-Chinese laborers in California increasingly carried out violent attacks against Chinese laborers, frequently targeting and vandalizing Chinese washhouses. 5Organized labor unions aimed at Chinese laundries increased in many parts of the United States. The Pioneer Laundry Workers Assembly, in association with the Knights of Labor in Washington, DC, dispersed pamphlets with a twelve-page warning about the dangers of a Chinese workforce taking all laundry jobs away from Americans and losing this industry altogether if the “Chinese problem” was not solved. The opening page reads: To the Public: Men from China come here to do laundry work. The Chinese Empire contains 600, 000, 000 (six hundred millions) inhabitants. The supply of these men is inexhaustible. Every one doing this takes bread from the mouths of our women. 6The growing hostility toward Chinese workers culminated in 1882 with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited Chinese immigration to the United States for ten years. This legislation became the first origin restriction designed to deny opportunities and citizenship to people from a particular region of the world. The act was renewed in 1892 and was not repealed until 1943. Few writings exist today from early Chinese immigrants due to other restrictions on education preventing them from learning the English language in a formal setting. One of the few public Chinese voices of the time, a launderer in California, stated: There are no Chinese tramps or drunkards. Many Chinese here have become sincere Christians, in spite of the persecutions which they have to endure from their heathen countrymen. More than half the Chinese in this country would become citizens if allowed to do so and would be patriotic Americans. But how can they make this country their home as matters are now? They are not allowed to bring wives here from China, and if they marry American women there is a great outcry. 7Frustration among Chinese in the United States was justified, as restrictions prevented family members from joining them. While some Chinese immigrants entered the United States during this time by crossing the borders with Canada or Mexico, immigration from Asia was severely restricted, and Chinese population growth in the United States between 1880 and 1890 only increased from 105, 000 to 107, 000. Attacks on the Chinese continued to occur throughout the West. One notable episode happened in Rock Springs, Wyoming, on September 2, 1885. In coal mines owned by the Union Pacific Railroad, Chinese and European immigrants worked side by side with American miners. The white miners tried to unionize for the sake of better wages and conditions but had little power against the Union Pacific. The Union Pacific had used Chinese workers as strikebreakers in the past, and the Chinese were willing to work for lower wages, which fueled resentment toward them. Then, on the morning of September 2, a fight broke out over whether white or Chinese miners could work in a rich part of the mine. The whites struck one of the Chinese workers in the head with a pickax, killing him, and beat another nearly to death in one of the mines. As word got around, the white miners gathered weapons of all sorts and marched on Rock Spring's Chinatown, where they set it on fire and indiscriminately killed Chinese men and boys. Chinese workers were chased into the hills and into train cars, where they escaped in all directions. In the end, twenty-eight Chinese were killed and fifteen wounded, and seventy-nine buildings were looted and burned. A week later a train filled with six hundred Chinese arrived in the dark of night to an unknown destination. Many of them had left Rock Springs on trains and were promised to be taken to San Francisco, but when the rail doors opened and they smelled the charred air, they realized they had been tricked into returning to Rock Springs. The company forced the Chinese workers to gather up and bury the dead bodies and clean up the mess of Chinatown. 8 Some of the Chinese men who escaped gave sworn testimony to the Chinese consul in New York of the events of the day in gruesome detail. 9 Despite the anti-Chinese sentiment that pervaded America at the time, newspaper headlines around the country reported the incident with shock at the violence in the West. 10In the end, sixteen white miners were arrested for the murders, but because the Chinese were not allowed by law to testify against whites, and no other white person would identify any of the participants, no convictions were made. Under pressure from President Grover Cleveland, Congress paid 150, 000 to the families back in China for the lost miners and their possessions. The government built Camp Pilot Butte between Rock Springs and the newly rebuilt Chinatown, and troops were stationed there to keep the peace for the following thirteen years. A few Chinese miners and merchants were working in Vernal and the surrounding areas shortly after; perhaps some of them came from the Rock Springs mining camp. A year after the Rock Springs riot and 130 miles to the south, Fort Duchesne was organized as a new military fort to keep the peace between the Utes living on the Uintah and Ouray reservations and to keep people from both areas from leaving. Both reservations were in the Uinta Basin near rivers that flowed out of the Uinta Mountains. The federal government had forcibly relocated the White River Utes from Colorado to the Uintah Reservation in 1881. Then in 1882, the Uncompahgre Utes were moved to the Ouray Reservation just south of the Uintah Reservation. The Uintah, Uncompahgre, and White River bands did not get along with each other or the local white settlers in the Uinta Basin. There were about 2, 000 white settlers and 1, 087 Uncompahgre, and Uintah and White River bands combined were about 1, 056. 11 In 1887 President Cleveland signed the order to create a military fort between the reservations, as it was meant to prevent conflict and assist the reservation agents. Soon after, units moved to the area from Wyoming and Nebraska, passing through or near Rock Springs. Located on the Uinta River, Fort Duchesne was six square miles and was built by the troops and assisted by local settlers who were hired to construction of the new units to were and some of which had in the in Colorado and were by the The soldiers were both by the and with to their and the called the troops the soldiers a and many other buildings, all by a white and to the white and soldiers and some of their The of the military fort was a to the as it established a new for local like and which were to the fort, as well as a to and with A large at the to the Fort Duchesne Uintah and Ouray Indian is government those of are all others 1889, a Chinese man Wong Sing arrived at the fort from San Francisco. He had from China, with his when he was and very little some he came to the fort with one of the military He began business as a launderer with and on the banks of the Uinta River, to the who was a local Wong Sing doing laundry one day as and family passed by in a a small with a was He had a small and a long queue of to his He was over a doing laundry for the soldiers at the He lived in a very small called it a a through the at the fort were by some of the wives of the so it was important for Wong Sing to find additional to money. While he was for the people of the fort, soldiers to with and he often because he One man soldiers used to to his but he could four and an A of the became with the of With his the Chinese began to his business by such as China and that he from a little at the way he made money was by dollars to soldiers who to the fort to as they had to pay back with ten Soon he began to around to other communities with the and make new He became friends with the he preferred their language over English and became in as well as in other and Wong Sing showed a sincere interest and for Indian a local this for the Utes in an The would like it the way they He could it He could from the worked there was some of the come and about them. He Indian on that reservation, their and better than any man lived out Wong Sing was to a and a small at the fort, which became very and his competition and some white merchants for his businesses to be from government The who were at the treatment of their took matters into their own and several of those other businesses Wong Sing the from doing so he set up a mercantile business on The close to the fort, was a of land out of the reservation in order to private that to a found there was no to the other than crossing through reservation and were who had it became a area filled with people for prostitutes or both of which were at the the of the the military members of Fort Duchesne were eventually to other The buffalo soldiers to San Francisco and to the and by the left for and the fort was The buildings were over to the Indian which between the this time of Wong Sing his long and began wearing clothing like the residents of the He expanded his little to a and area behind the with a and to families as they A of local by the his in community that an area one east of the fort had up through the of Wong a of business Wong Sing continued to until in the his mercantile a and most by the people of the communities With the fort and more parts of the reservation into for white the and became more of a Wong Sing had a business with and white people because he to their and treated their families with Sing was by many people as and was a young at the time but that with him, and the he a of in they home. was he came to the and a in the Wong Sing also for his and The were designed with a Native American that and are a that his could be found in the of Native Americans throughout the a newspaper in Utah, a on the railroad that the Uinta Basin with the of Utah, an article about Wong Sing getting arrested and tried for and in Wong friends were and the spread throughout the Uinta Basin and was in the Vernal A week later the story was with a sincere for Wong Sing of Fort The Wong Sing who was arrested in was not the to the of all who him, especially his who it was The Wong Sing on Opium as The article on to business and Wong Sing business in the of his business and his is hoped no to his among his business or of friends Wong Sing was and at the given by the Sing was also as a to many in the surrounding communities. his was in local newspapers for money to with such as a for a War or for on the He gave children or and any that stayed on the long was usually given away to poor By the of the Wong Sing was one of the most merchants in the with and on hand in his mercantile about a morning in Wong Sing was to up and a for in when the he was in left the and near Wong Sing was killed and the one of his was Wong Wong who had in the mercantile in Fort Duchesne, up his and took it to for In with Chinese there was no so many of Wong friends paid by his to men in the Indian at Fort Duchesne to the of their lost his it was that he left a of to a to a local that was in the business was carried on by his Wong who later expanded it into a in Wong from a in his the business until it and moved in the of Wong and a Chinese mercantile in the Uinta legacy of Asian bias and in many in the United States, began in large numbers for the first time in the century. As late as of Asian Americans felt and had an in violence against against Chinese in 1882 with the Chinese Exclusion Act, as it severely limited immigration for new laborers to the United States. As with and Native Americans in the West, the Chinese were and during that In the following the Rock Springs of the examples of attacks against Chinese young Chinese man arrived at an military fort in to do laundry for soldiers in a between Indian reservations in not organized into a This of created a for business for the of Wong Sing of with miners, and not by many other in the This of people was often denied citizenship in the United States, but they found their peace together as they lived and learned from each Wong legacy and most residents of the Uinta Basin have of the Cantonese who lived at Fort Duchesne a