In Pursuit of Gold: Chinese American Miners and Merchants in the American West by Sue Fawn Chung (review)

What happened to Chinese miners when the gold fields of California ran dry in the mid-1850s? Many found alternative work, but others continued their urgent “pursuit of gold,” journeying north to Oregon or east to Nevada. Sue Fawn Chung follows these miners, shifting our focus on Chinese gold mining to a new time and new places. Specifically, she offers a detailed study of three mining communities: John Day, Oregon, Tuscarora, Nevada, and Island Mountain, Nevada. All three are small, remote towns where Chinese miners were among the first residents and, most strikingly, Chinese made up a majority of the population during the communities’ formative years.

Chung argues that during the latter half of the 19th century, when the American West was flooded by anti-Chinese agitation and legislation, these towns were peaceful islands in the ocean of violence. These multi-ethnic and isolated communities managed to stay apart from the anti-Chinese movement, at least temporarily. Chung believes that historians’ overwhelming focus on racial hostility fails to encompass all relations between Chinese and “EuroAmericans.” Some Chinese and EuroAmericans in the West got along and worked together, and in these unique circumstances, Chinese miners prospered.

In Pursuit of Gold is, at its heart, a community study. Chung’s argument is sometimes left aside while she delves into all aspects of these communities, offering rich details that will be of great interest to specialists in the region or in Asian American history. Uncovering such detail was no easy task; Chung mines all available sources, including, most notably, census records, archeological reports, immigration documents, Chinese language texts, and overlooked, sometimes unpublished, secondary sources on the region. Given the scant historical record, her use of these sources is both meticulous and creative.

The book begins by retelling the history of migrants leaving China, arriving in California, and suffering from pervasive racial hostility. Chung offers a careful and thorough synthesis of current scholarship on Chinese immigration, highlighting how the reality of Chinese immigration deviates from both 19th-century and present-day stereotypes. For example, contradicting the image of the imported, cheap Chinese coolie, Chung argues that many miners immigrated with the help of relatives and mutual aid societies, and mined in groups that shared profits.

Chung spends her remaining three chapters on three community case studies, starting with John Day, Oregon. There were a remarkable number of Chinese miners in eastern Oregon: the 1870 census counted 1,516 Chinese miners out of a total of 2,476 miners in eastern Oregon. (57) Oregon’s exclusionary mining laws proved a significant obstacle for these Chinese. In 1857, the territory’s constitution denied the Chinese the ability to own land and this limitation, in various forms, was continued by the state constitution, state legislation, and local ordinances through the end of the 19th century. And Oregon was no stranger to anti-Chinese agitation and violence in the late 19th century; EuroAmericans and Native Americans drove Chinese miners out of southern and western Oregon to the rugged, cold mountains of the east. Three hundred and fifty-seven Chinese (including 298 miners) founded John Day, Oregon, where they outnumbered the 201 EuroAmericans (only one of whom was a miner) according to the 1880 census. (59) In this unusual community, the Chinese found peace, potential for upward mobility, and opportunity to own land (despite the state’s laws). The anti-Chinese movement did not arrive in John Day until 1901 when the proportion of Chinese in town had dropped and the EuroAmericans formed a miner’s union.

Tuscarora, Nevada, followed a similar trajectory, with the Chinese forming a majority of the population during the boom years of mining and suffering from harassment and violence only after their numbers decreased and an economic decline set in. Island Mountain, in contrast, was a planned community. Emanuel Manny Penrod built a community based upon Chinese labour; first he employed Chinese workers to dig irrigation...