Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon

Chapter Six: The Judge and "The Chinaman"

CHAPTER SIX The Judge and “The Chinaman” AMONG THE FIRST to examine the bodies floating out of the mouth of Hells Canyon in June of 1887 was Judge Joseph K. Vincent, who held the dual positions in Lewiston of justice of the peace for Nez Perce County and U.S. commissioner.1 Letters written by Vincent to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco described the mutilated condition of the slain Chinese. Of the first body, found at Lime Kiln, Vincent wrote: Description, about 5 feet 6 inches high, 4 very large teeth, 2 above standing out, 2 below standing out and down. He had on clothes, a leather belt around his waist, shot in the back just below right shoulder blade, 2 cuts in back of head, one on each side done with an axe. Found about June 16th. The second body, recovered at Penewawa Bar, was naked. “No clothes— shot in the breast, just below the heart, head very much cut and chopped.” The third body, pulled from the river at Log Cabin Bar, was in the worst shape of all. About 5 feet 7 or 8 inches tall, had on clothes and boots. 2 shot wounds in small of back near back bone, head off as though chopped, left arm off between elbow and shoulder, both arm and head in coat which was fastened to his body, held there by belt around his waist; he was lodged in a large drift pile when found. Some recognized him as Ah Yow. There is no further mention in any of the correspondence or documents of Ah Yow, the first victim identified. While it is conceivable the river itself had torn apart the bodies, Vincent was convinced the wounds resulted from a savage attack, inflicted by killers driven by intense hatred: “It was the most cold-blooded cowardly treachery, I have ever heard tell of on this coast. And I am a 49er. Every one was shot, cut up and stripped and thrown in the river.”2 Other bodies were discovered that fall deep in the canyon. The Oregon rancher George Craig and his son, Frazier, found skeletons lodged in rocks and washed up on gravel bars. “The coyotes or buzzards had cleaned most 46 Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon of the flesh off of them, so we did not know they were Chinamen,” Craig recalled in a newspaper interview years later. “We couldn’t imagine how so many men had been killed without our hearing about it.”3 Shortly before Vincent wrote to the consulate, an investigator for the Sam Yup Company, Lee Loi, arrived in Lewiston and reportedly offered Vincent one thousand dollars to find the killers.4 Officials at the San Franciscobased company had read newspaper accounts of the massacre and turned to Vincent for help, probably because of his title as a U.S. commissioner. However, Vincent may not have been an ideal choice. He was sixty-five, well past the age at which most men would undertake such an arduous and potentially dangerous mission. MORE IS KNOWN about Vincent than anyone else involved with the massacre. He had already led a life filled with more adventure, and misadventure, than any ten men his age. He also had established himself as something of an opportunist, even a hustler, interested in making a fast buck without a great deal of effort. Vincent was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on June 26, 1822. He left home in his teens to become a sailor, following in the footsteps of his seaman father, also named Joseph, said to have been murdered either in the West Indies or the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). After crewing on ships in the Pacific for a dozen years, Vincent left the sea in 1851 to join the California gold rush, presumably jumping ship in San Francisco, as did hundreds of other seamen. He tried mining along the Feather River, apparently without a great deal of success, as he next turned up as a gold miner in southern Oregon’s Rogue River country.5 The 1860 Census had him living in Josephine County. In Oregon, Vincent volunteered to fight in a brutal war against the Rogue River Indians that erupted in 1854, ignited by conflict between the miners and the tribe. One account, written in 1903 while Vincent was still alive, said the tribe held him captive for five days, during which he suffered serious frostbite to his feet and legs before being rescued.6 The...