Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon

Chapter Fourteen: "Don't Ask ... Don't Tell"

CHAPTER FOURTEEN “Don’t Ask . . . Don’t Tell” BUILT IN 1909, the Wallowa County Courthouse in Enterprise is a squat and, to me at least, architecturally uninteresting building, with walls of thick blocks of grey volcanic tuff. The tuff is a soft but durable rock known locally as Bowlby stone, cut from a nearby quarry. Other buildings around the courthouse square—housing a bookstore, an antique shop, a bar, restaurant, and law offices—are constructed of the same grey stone, giving downtown Enterprise something of the appearance of a military fort. The courthouse is two and one-half stories, topped by a white-washed wooden bell tower. Even without the bell tower, it is the tallest building in town. The events of 9/11 raised no terrorist alarm here: there is no security check at any of the several courthouse entrances, although a security screen is positioned outside the second-floor courtroom. No one challenges, questions, or pays any attention as a stranger walks up the front steps and through the swinging front doors. Inside, I discover that what the courthouse lacks in architectural elegance, it makes up in rustic charm. Floors, stairs, and wall trim are of red fir, worn but well maintained. Among the few concessions to modernity are copying machines, computers, and portable window air conditioners. There’s no elevator, and no room for one. Disabled residents with courtroom business are carried by sheriff’s deputies to the second floor. My business was with Charlotte McIver, whose office shared the cramped first floor with the offices of the sheriff, treasurer, and county assessor. Unlike government officials in Washington, D.C., where I worked for fifteen years as a reporter with The Associated Press, McIver was immediately available and helpful. No appointment needed; no aide rushing forward to inquire of my business, or monitor our conversation. Matronly and soft-spoken, McIver didn’t hesitate to show me the longforgotten trial records. She had found them while cleaning out an old safe, preparing to donate it to the county museum in Joseph. The documents were in brown envelopes, some discolored and brittle. McIver had no idea what they were at first. But leafing through the papers, she discovered many related to an 1888 murder trial, State of Oregon versus Hyram (sic) Chapter Fourteen: “Don’t Ask ... Don’t Tell” 99 Maynard, Hezekiah Hughes indicted under the name of Carl Hughes and Robert McMillan jointly indicted with T. J. [sic] Canfield, Bruce Evans and C. O. Larue (sic). “We didn’t even know these records were missing,” said McIver, who, like nearly everyone else in the county, knew little about the massacre and even less about the trial. The documents should have been in the large walkin vault adjacent to McIver’s office. By the time we talked in 1995, she had returned the documents to their rightful place, in an olive-colored metal box in the left-hand corner on the top shelf, the first box in the vault. “The county’s first murder trial,” she said. Until McIver decided to dispose of the bulky safe, it sat unused for years in full view in a corner of the documents room adjacent to the clerk’s office. Manufactured by the Diebold Safe and Block Company of Canton, Ohio, the safe had an uncertain history. The name of the long-gone Enterprise State Bank was printed in gold leaf on black paint above ponderous eightinch -thick steel doors. The doors weren’t easy to open, perhaps explaining why the safe had gone unused. When last I saw it, the safe was gathering dust in a museum storage room in Joseph. While McIver wasn’t comfortable in speculating that the missing records had been purposely hidden, then-County Judge Ben Boswell, the county’s Charlotte McIver, the Wallowa County clerk who found the missing records of the massacre and trial in an unused county safe in 1995. She said her predecessor, Marjorie Martin, who admitted hiding the records, was trying to “to protect the interests of the county.’’ (Photo by Elane Dickenson, Wallowa County Chieftain) 100 Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon top elected official, had no such qualms. “Somebody didn’t want those records found,” Boswell told me an interview, the first of several. “Somebody intentionally caused people to forget.”1 Boswell’s knowledge of the county ran deep. He was a direct descendant of a...