John Day Fossil Beds Historic Resources Study

Chapter Four:
SETTLEMENT (continued)

Settlement East of the Cascades

Migration of newcomers into Oregon reversed itself after 1860, flowing eastward from the Willamette Valley, back across the Cascades Mountains and the Columbia Plateau along the route of the Oregon Trail. Many of the new settlers were the children of first-generation Oregon pioneers. After passage of the Homestead Act in 1862, they filed upon free lands in the public domain. An increasingly generous federal land policy served as a major stimulus. Most significant of all, however, was the discovery of gold in the upper John Day watershed and in the Blue Mountains. The twin allurements of mining and raising cattle attracted thousands to stake their fortunes in central and eastern Oregon in the latter four decades of the nineteenth century.

The gold rush became the primary factor in drawing both Euro-American settlement and a transient Chinese population to the watershed of the John Day River. Almost overnight, towns and villages appeared after 1862. Some survived; a number vanished. Settlers moved in to raise foodstuffs to supply the miners and to take advantage of other resources. These included grasslands suitable for stock-raising, tillable lands where they could plant crops, and timberlands where they could fell trees to cut into lumber. The region, in spite of its isolation, possessed sufficient magnetism to attract and hold a new population. Estimates suggested a population of between 4,000 and 5,000 residents in the upper John Day watershed by the fall of 1862 (Anonymous 1902: 388).

The establishment of stage lines, operation of a mail route, and the death of Chief Paulina, a leader of the Northern Paiute, in 1867 laid the foundation for a more lasting stability in the region. An early historical account noted conditions by 1869:

On the main John Day river eighty claims had been taken, 9,064 acres were fenced, 3,608 acres were under cultivation. The largest claims fenced contained 400 and 250 acres respectively. Freight rates from The Dalles were from six to ten cents per pound" (Anonymous 1902: 392-393, 395).

Into the 1870s, settlers — the majority from the Ohio Valley and the upland south — spread along the bottomlands of the John Day and its tributary streams. These newcomers adapted to ranching and subsistence agriculture, establishing a viable rural economy that outlived the excitement of the gold rush (Mark 1996: 19-20).

Placer deposits, nonetheless, continued to draw miners once depleted of the easy picking of nuggets and gold dust. Among the miners were hundreds of immigrant Chinese laborers, who poured into the area to engage in back breaking toil moving massive amounts of rock and gravel, diverting water through ditches and flumes, and washing the paydirt to extract profits. Federal census schedules for Grant County's John Day Valley in 1870 and 1880 document a remarkable number of Chinese in the region. The Asian population probably peaked in the 1880s when nearly 1,000 Chinese, ninety-nine percent male, resided in the county. Most were engaged in mining, but some worked as laundrymen, cooks, store owners, and herbal doctors (Barlow and Richardson 1979, 1991; Bureau of the Census 1880).

The Chinese population of the John Day country was repeatedly subjected to persecution. Prejudice ran rampant. Illustrative of attitudes were articles in the Grant County News (John Day, OR.):

Three Chinamen were recently killed by an engine at Bonneville, and the railroad company has settled with the executor of their estates by the payment of $1,000, which establishes $333.33 1/3 as the price of a dead Mongol (Anonymous 1885a, February 19).

To every one it is apparent that the Chinese are a curse and a blight to this county, not only financially, but socially and morally . . . . What the Chinaman wears, he brings from China, and what he eats (except rats and lizards), he brings across the ocean, and thus American trade or production reaps no benefit from his presence (Anonymous 1885b, October 15).

Mr. Yong Bo died at his home in Dry Gulch last week, and was buried by his celestial comrades beneath upwards of six inches of mother earth. These heathen ought to be compelled to plant their diseased carrion deeper (Anonymous 1886, February 4).

Fig. 9. Chang and Lung On, Chinese residents of Grant County, ca. 1890 (OrHi 26,471).

The Chinese also wrote of their suffering in the stifling, hostile environment of Grant County. "I'm shocked by the message from Lung On that our friend, Mr. Lin, was shot and killed by a barbaric American. Grief come with that news. What a miserable act!," wrote Kwang-chi to Lung On of John Day on February 4, 18[??]. "We are all suffering from the barbarian's serious robbery; we Chinese suffered at the gold mine during several incidents and indirectly they took between $200 and $300," wrote a spokesman for Ton Yick Chuen Company to Lung On on May 18, 1904 (Applegate and O'Donnell 1994: 214-218).