Uinta County WY Archives History - Books .....Chapter Thirteen Chinatown 1924
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Book Title: Uinta County, Its Place In History

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Chinatown

    To the north of the railroad tracks lay "Chinatown," a huddled group of
shanties built on railroad land. All kinds of material were used in the
construction and the houses resembled the work of half-grown boys more than that
of men. When lumber gave out, packing boxes and building paper were substituted,
and many of the roofs were made of tin oil cans flattened out Here lived a few
merchants, half a dozen laundry men, and vegetable peddlers who cultivated truck
gardens near the river. They irrigated them by means of water wheels patterned
after those of their native land. On the end of each of the rough wooden spokes
an open tin can was nailed, which was filled by the flowing tide. The weight of
the water made the wheel revolve, and on reaching a certain angle the contents
were emptied into a wooden trough that led to the irrigating ditches running
between the orderly rows of hardy vegetables. At a time when white men were too
doubtful of the short summer to attempt gardening or farming, these thrifty
people raised a crop that supplied the town. From a pole across his shoulder
from which hung two baskets so heavily loaded that few white men could lift
them, John Chinaman trotted through the streets with his delicious "lettucie,
cabbage and ladishee", and such peas as grow only in these high altitudes. Root
vegetables were in his stock, too, and his potatoes were justly famous.

    During the daytime most of the houses seemed deserted, but when the whistles
of the Almy coal mines blew, Chinese miners to the number of four hundred or
more came traveling into town, some walking, some riding in lumber wagons. In
1880 there were less than twenty white miners in the Almy mines, but from that
time on the number gradually increased, the recruits coming mainly from England,
Scotland and Wales. There were Chinamen, too, working in the railroad section
gangs, and they, too, made Evanston their headquarters. All crowded into the
shanties, many of which were opium dens and gambling houses, and among them were
to be seen many sickly and yellow faces, but there was much laughter and
friendliness. All wore their queues in that day, and all worshipped at the Joss
House. This and the Masonic Temple were the most imposing buildings in
Chinatown. There was a two-story porch in front of the Joss House, and a flag
pole on the roof. The door was flanked with carved panels and within hung many
banners and richly embroidered draperies. Behind the gates of carved teakwood
was an elaborate altar, on which fragrant Joss sticks burned before their idol,
whose placid face looked out from between deeply carved wooden panels covered
with gilt.

    For many years this Joss House was one of three in the United States, and
during the '70s and early '80s thousands of Chinamen came to worship here on
"China New Year". The date was about the tenth of February. The popping of
hundreds of firecrackers would announce the coming of each trainload, and the
early arrivals were stowed away in some inexplainable way until "China Big Day"
arrived. Schools were dismissed—most wisely, for all the inhabitants of Evanston
attended the celebration, and were courteously received. There was a parade led
by the great dragon, a curiously constructed monster about two hundred feet
long. It was made of gaudy embroidery, which hung down to within two feet of the
ground on both sides, and revealed only the legs of the fifty or sixty men who
carried the writhing reptile through the streets with its massive head swaying
from side to side.

    Games followed in the great open space before the Joss House, and the chief
excitement centered around the explosion of a large rocket which sent up a
wooden ball. All of the Celestials watched breathlessly its course, for the
lucky man who caught the ball as it fell was to be keeper of the Joss House the
coming year. So intent were they upon gaining this honor that a struggle was
inevitable, and at one time several were killed in the melee. After this, town
officers were on the ground and things went more tamely.

    With the passing of the mass of Chinamen from Evanston and the change of the
ideas of the latter generations, the Joss House lost much of its meaning. On
January 26, 19.22, it was burned to the ground, and its destruction was lamented
only as the loss of a historic relic.

    Ah Say was for many years the Chinese contractor of coolie labor. He was a
well-educated Chinaman and a citizen of the United States, though he never gave
up his queue. There is a story that he was the original of Bret Hart's "Heathen
Chinee", and whether true or false, his character possessed much of the
shrewdness of that famous Celestial. He was the one Chinaman who brought his
wife here, a dainty, small-footed woman seldom seen outside his home. There were
five children born here, and they were often seen on the street attended by a
throng of admiring coolies, at least one to a child. They made a pretty picture
in their bright robes, each head surmounted by a red and green cap with a hole
in the top, showing the shiny stiff hair of blue-black. Ah Say was most
hospitable, and a dinner at his house was an event long to be remembered. The
table was set in the room entered from the street. At one end stood an altar
with smoking censors, before which the host prostrated himself with libations of
steaming tea before sitting down to eat. The furnishings of the room were a
strange mixture of elegance and shabbiness—wonderful embroideries and carvings
against a background of grimy walls and rough furniture. Dinner favors were in
vogue and sandlewood fans, embroidered shawls, silk handkerchiefs, boxes of
choice tea and cigars were among the gifts.

    Two large mercantile establishments of Evanston had Chinese clerks, men of
ability and undoubted honesty. Sisson, Wallace & Company employed Ah Young, and
he gave lectures to his countrymen on subjects dealing with their daily living.
Ah You was in the employ of Blyth and Pixley. He was a fine-looking, intelligent
man, and the big words rolled glibly from his tongue—"superior quality",
"excellent material", etc. Like all Chinamen, he was capable of strong
friendship, and he still keeps up a correspondence with Mr. Blyth. In 1917 Mr.
Blyth and his daughter, Mrs. Keith, were his guests at a magnificent banquet in
Hong Kong, where he occupied a position of prominence. It was an all-night
entertainment, eating being interspersed with music, dancing and theatrical
numbers.

    One of the prominent Chinamen on the western division of the Union Pacific
was Sam Sling, whose life, as written by his son for the Union Pacific Magazine
of July, 1922, is a veritable romance. Well born but poor in this world's goods,
frail in body but of fine mental capacity, he began work on the section under a
foreman known as Tim Riley. His promotions, first to the position of office boy,
and later to that of stock clerk and general assistant to the superintendent,
are a tribute to the far-sightedness and kindness of W. B. Doddridge as well as
to the ability and faithfulness of the youth. When the O. S. L. was built he
became storekeeper and stationery clerk for that line, and was one of the most
valued employes. At the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago he was manager
of the Chinese exhibits, but at the end of two years returned to the Union
Pacific as passenger agent, with headquarters first at Chicago and later at Hong
Kong, where he is one of the most progressive citizens.

    On the hillside east of town lay the graveyard, where yellow men were buried
near their white neighbors. A Chinese funeral was the occasion for a great
procession, a mass of fluttering red papers to keep the evil spirits away, and
roasted pigs and chickens to put on the graves for the use of the departed. But
the bones of the Chinamen did not rest long in foreign soil, and a few years
later all were dug up and sent across the Pacific.

    In 1877 a Welchman by the name of David Jones came to Evanston to work and
to teach among the Chinese, and to learn the language preparatory to entering
the "Inland Mission", a religious movement in China. He was a Presbyterian and
was assisted by that denomination in his services, though he made no demands of
a financial nature and supported himself as a miner. A schoolroom was fitted up,
and it was usually crowded to its full capacity, especially on the nights when
singers from the various churches met with them to teach the gospel hymns, in
which the Chinamen joined with fervor. Mr. Jones remained a year or more, and
doubtless reached many by means of his self-sacrificing life and sincere
message. He never reached China, for shortly after his departure from Evanston
word was received that he had laid down his life in New Orleans, where he had
gone as a volunteer nurse during an epidemic of cholera.

    Occasionally a dozen or more Chinamen would march in a body into the church,
and it is to be hoped that some received a more just impression of the meaning
of the service than the one who gave his description to Mrs. Charles Strong, by
whom he was employed as cook on the work train. He told of their entrance into
the sacred edifice where Mr. Arnold was "big boss", how the people gathered
round the stoves near the door and shook hands with each other and with them,
and then seated themselves and joined in singing, "everybody velly happy". He
considered the prayer as a break in the joyful occasion, saying that the pastor
swore, and the ladies bowed their heads and wept. He thought this moved the
leader to regret, for again they sang, Mr. Arnold "talk velly kind", and after
more singing they went happily to their homes.

    But these picturesque scenes were soon to end, for there came a day in the
fall of 1885, when Chinamen huddled together in frightened groups and white men
listened with horror to the story of the Rock Springs massacre. A few agitators
of the Molly McQuire type, then common in the coal fields of Pennsylvania, had
attacked the miners at that place, and the scenes rivaled those of the Coeur
d'Alene riots. Defenceless Chinamen were driven from their homes and hunted to
death in the hills, and some were burned in their huts. The survivors were
brought to Evanston and troops from Fort Bridger under Captain Green and
Lieutenant Carr, were sent here for their protection. Barracks were constructed
near the freight house and for a time the town had a military air. Finally, a
delegation of six miners was sent to confer with Governor Warren, who had come
to look into the situation. They were Leban Heward, John Haldane, John Shaw,
William Reese, Samuel Young and Hezekiah Turner, men who owned their own homes,
and so thoroughly did they impress the governor with their loyalty to their
adopted land and their law-abiding spirit that the original plan was changed.
The Chinese miners were moved to Rock Springs and Almy became a white man's camp.

    In the ensuing trial at Washington it came to light that not one of the
leaders in this horrible tragedy, the foulest blot on the fair name of Wyoming,
was an American citizen, either by birth or naturalization, and some had not
even taken out their first papers.

    Gradually race prejudice, that cruel offspring of the selfish and narrow
mind, has been conquered by a more just and wider understanding, and we see
today our Chinese inhabitants in their true light. Honesty is one of their
outstanding virtues, and is found in the vegetable peddler, who is still a
welcome visitor at our back doors, as well as in hotel and restaurant proprietors.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

UINTA COUNTY ITS PLACE IN HISTORY
ELIZABETH ARNOLD STONE
GLENDALE, CALIFORNIA, U. S. A. 
THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY

A History of the Original Uinta County, Wyoming, and its Subdivisions

To the dear memory of my father,
Rev. F. L. Arnold


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