Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon

Chapter Twenty-Four: Flight

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Flight FINDLEY’S HISTORY, printed in local newspapers, includes a grainy photograph of a family gathering of eight adults and a child on a cabin front porch. The men are seated on the front step; the women are standing behind them. A caption identifies them. A group of pioneer settlers taken at the Frank Vaughan cabin in the Imnaha River valley. From left to right their names are as follows. Top row Mrs. Adams, Mrs. Brumback, Mrs. Minnie Vaughan and Mrs. Betty Smith. Bottom row Newton Brumback, Frank Vaughan, Floyd Vaughan—Frank Vaughan’s boy—A. N. Adams, and Joseph Smith.1 Minnie is Frank’s wife. The Adamses are his in-laws. The Smiths are the same aunt and uncle who had accompanied the Vaughan family on its journey from Nebraska to Oregon years earlier. Frank sits on the lower porch step, closer to the camera than the others, staring boldly ahead under heavy, furrowed brows. He’s thin, even gaunt, with a four-inch goatee and a mustache. He looks to be about forty, but could be younger. Floyd, a boy of four or five, is his son. He stands behind his father’s left shoulder. No one is smiling, making it difficult to see them as a relaxed family group. Frank and Minnie’s two daughters, Nellie and Ione—both older than Floyd—are not pictured. The little that the photo reveals of the Vaughan cabin shows it was built of eighteen-inch unfinished lumber, unpainted, with white caulking, typical construction for the homes of early settlers along the Imnaha River in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A curtained window is visible to the right of the porch. The photograph may illustrate Vaughan’s life following the massacre. Possibly it shows the 1908 “surprise party” for the Vaughan family, mentioned in a publication of the Hurricane Creek Grange.2 No doubt Vaughan had quickly put the trial behind him. Little doubt, too, he’d given up the rustler life. He married Minnie Adams in 1890, raised a family, worked his ranch, and settled into community life. In his history, Findley affectionately referred to the people in the photograph. Chapter Twenty-four: Flight 145 All of the above were good neighbors of ours. The four mothers shown were all special friends of mothers [sic]. Mrs. Adams and Mrs. Smith often went with her to help her care for the sick and ailing and to help usher new babies into the world. Mrs. Smith was deeply religious and lived up to her belief. She served as assistant Sunday school superintendent and most of the time while father was serving as the superintendent. Frank Vaughan and Sam Adams shown in the above picture were my companions on many cattle roundups and grizzly hunting trips on the Grizzly Ridge range.3 Vaughan appeared over the years in at least two photographs in the Wallowa County Chieftain, suggesting he soon regained respectability in the community—if he ever lost it. One photograph, taken in 1898, ten years after the trial, shows him with two dozen other young men and women at a gathering of a social group called the Joseph Bachelors’ Club. Then about age thirty, Vaughan stands unsmiling in the back row. A second undated Frank Vaughan is in the left forefront of this photograph taken at his home in the Imnaha River Valley in the years following the trial. Vaughan holds blacksmith tongs in his left hand while his right arm is around a dog. His son, Floyd, is over his left shoulder. His wife, Minnie, is second from the right in the back row. The occasion may be a 1908 “surprise party” for the Vaughans. (Photo courtesy of the family of Wynona Eleen Brown) 146 Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon photograph shows him with his cousin, Harry, in front of the Wallowa Feed Stable.4 Even though Vaughan had settled into family and ranching life, he could scarcely have forgotten the massacre. He eventually would leave Wallowa County. He sold his ranch along the Imnaha River and moved to Corning in California’s Tehama County with Minnie and two of their children, Ione and Floyd.5 In the 1930 Census, when Vaughan was sixty-four, living in California, he identified himself as a farmer. He may have died soon after as he wasn’t mentioned in the 1940 Census...