FROM THE DIASPORA TO DOCTOR ING HAY: CHINESE PIONEERS IN THE WESTERN UNITED STATES
by Priscilla Wegars
Between 1405 and 1433, Chinese trading expeditions sailed to Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean (1). From the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, increasing numbers of Chinese even settled abroad, despite imperial edicts forbidding them to do so (2). Beginning in the early 1850s, many of them, primarily men, came to the western United States seeking work opportunities unavailable to them in China (3). Although most became miners, others provided various support services. In northeastern Oregon, for example, Doctor Ing Hay was a respected herbal medicine practitioner. His patients, both Chinese and Caucasian, came from a wide geographical area that encompassed parts of several states.
Disasters at homeLife was not easy in the early 1850s, especially in southern China. The weak and corrupt central government imposed ever-higher taxes, and wars and rebellions killed millions, while floods and droughts added starvation to the woes of the already-suffering peasantry. Today, similar calamities attract worldwide attention and relief efforts, but in the mid-nineteenth century lack of the means of modern communication meant that such international humanitarianism had not yet become a global concern.
Their crops ruined, and with no other work available, southern Chinese farmers were unable to support their families. Desperate for jobs, they listened eagerly to news of labour shortages in distant lands - North and South America, Australia and New Zealand, the West Indies, and elsewhere. In defiance of Chinese laws prohibiting emigration, and heedless of the threatened execution that awaited them if they returned, they wrenched themselves from familiar surroundings and embarked upon an adventure into the unknown. Their apprehension becomes imaginable when we picture ourselves in reversed circumstances: on a ship sailing to China, where no definite job awaits, lacking both money and a return ticket, and unable to speak Chinese.
Bright prospects abroadCalifornia gold discoveries beginning in 1848 created a labour shortage in the placer mines, attracting many Chinese to the United States (4). Overwhelmingly men, most were from Guangdong Province, especially the area around Guangzhou, formerly called Canton (5), where the local term for California was "Gold MountainÓ (6). Hoping to share in the wealth that the name promised, the would-be miners embarked in large numbers during the 1850s and 1860s. At first, only California enticed them, like metal to a magnet. Later, new gold discoveries lured them to places such as Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada and British Columbia.
Although often called "coolies," a term that has come to have the erroneous connotation of "slave labourer" (7), these Chinese workers were actually more like indentured servants (8). In the United States, firms of both Euroamerican and Chinese labour contractors supplied Chinese contract labourers all over the West. When demand was high, they recruited new workers in China, assisted by "recruiting posters" in Chinese. One, dating to 1862, translates as follows:
To the countrymen of Ah Lung. Labourers are wanted in the land of California. Great works to be done there, good houses, plenty of food. You will get $20 a month and good treatment. Passage money required $45. I will lend the money on good security, but I cannot take your wife or child in pay. Come to Hong Kong, and I will care for you until the ship sails. The ship is good. Ah Lung (9).
Since Chinese labourers usually did not have enough money to pay for the voyage, promoters advanced the necessary passage money to them (10). After a long, difficult, and overcrowded journey the men landed in San Francisco and met up with their sponsors, who sent them out to their arranged jobs (11).
Once they were working, the money advanced to them was gradually deducted from their wages (12). Not all the new immigrants went to the mining regions; many worked in large cities or small towns in a wide variety of occupations. Census records, particularly from 1860, 1870 and 1880, show that, besides miners, some were laundrymen, cooks and restaurant owners, merchants and store clerks, doctors, gardeners, labourers, domestic servants, pack train operators and gamblers.
Gold rush mining lawsThroughout the West, a new placer gold discovery invariably caused a "gold rush" to the vicinity. Miners swarmed in, often by the thousands, hoping that this time they would finally get lucky and "strike it rich". Because most new mining areas were in regions without a Euroamerican population base, there was no established government, nor were there any law enforcement officials. Miners knew, from unhappy experience, that some rules were essential to avoid later misunderstandings or potential violence. Instead of waiting for the national government to establish laws regulating mining areas, the miners themselves wrote the ones they needed (13).
First, they needed rules covering claim ownership. Who could stake a claim? What size should claims be to give everyone an equal chance? How would claims be legally recorded, so they could not be "jumped?" Second, placer mining used lots of water, a scarce resource. Laws allowed everyone to have his fair share of the precious liquid. Third, despite the best agreements, disputes often arose. How would conflicts be handled? These points, and more, were incorporated into the "mining codes", as they were called.
The miners who wrestled with such problems also sought to limit accessibility to the easily-available bonanza. Because they resented foreigners, particularly Latin Americans and Chinese, their mining codes began to contain clauses prohibiting those groups from participating (14). As more and more Chinese joined the expectant hordes thronging the gold fields, the exclusionist clauses became commonplace. They also became more specific, singling out "Chinamen" or "Mongolians" (15). For the Chinese, the "Gold Mountain" would be a hard one to climb.
Where they were not allowed to mine for themselves, or even to work the placers as employees of Euroamerican miners, the Chinese still provided numerous useful and necessary support services. Many of them dug the ditches that brought water to new mining areas. Other Chinese washed clothes, ran restaurants and grew vegetables, occupations that benefited entire communities.
The Chinese gain entryOnce the placers began to "play out," many of the Euroamerican placer mine owners and employees moved on to other areas, creating a labour shortage. Those who were left often then voted to admit Chinese miners. This served two main purposes. First, the claim owners could hire Chinese as lower-paid labourers for placer mines that were still producing. Second, owners of unprofitable, "worthless", claims could sell or lease them; the Chinese were satisfied with lower yields. Euroamericans considered a claim worthless if it did not pay "white men's wages" of at least $4 to $5 per day (16), while as late as 1892 Chinese were still willing to placer mine for a return of 50¢ to $1 a day (17). Although Chinese persons were not permitted to prospect for new claims and register them in their own names, they could, and did, purchase or lease claims that eligible miners had already located and recorded (18).
Unlike many Euroamerican miners, whose pursuit of easy, transitory riches took them, lemming-like, to a succession of gold rushes throughout the West, most Chinese contentedly accepted a reduced return from a known resource for a longer period of time. Only when a placer mine was completely exhausted would they move on. Recognising that thoroughness, present-day miners generally avoid areas where the Chinese are known to have worked.
The Chinese miners' legacyDespite the discrimination the Chinese faced in the West, it was the placer mining decline of the late 1880s and early 1890s that compelled them to leave the mining regions. A few remained in local towns, mostly running restaurants, stores, or laundries. By the early 1910s and 1920s newspaper stories about the few Chinese who still lived in some communities described them as being "respected citizens" and "accepted" (19).
Today, many traces of the West's Chinese pioneers still remain. Documentary accounts, particularly marriage records, deeds to property, early newspaper stories and city maps showing "China Town"; archaeological remains, including mining ditches, dugout-type dwellings, hand-stacked rock tailings and scattered Chinese artefacts; and cultural manifestations, such as Chinese restaurants, cemeteries, stores and temples, attest to their importance and influence. Present-day Chinese Americans surnamed "Eng," "Fong," "Lee" and "Wong," some of whom are lineal descendants of the West's earliest Chinese residents, remind us that Chinese names were in the census records from 1850 on, along with the Morans, Staintons, Vollmers and Weisgerbers.
Doctor Ing Hay (20)One of the West's most spectacular Chinese American success stories took place in the small community of John Day in northeastern Oregon. In 1887 Ing Hay, a traditional Chinese herbalist, and his business partner, Lung On, purchased the Kam Wah Chung and Company building (21). Originally their trade was with the area's many Chinese miners, but those men gradually left as the placer mining districts ceased to be sufficiently productive. Despite the dwindling numbers of Chinese in the area, Ing Hay's practice continued to flourish. Because his skills, involving pulse diagnosis, complex herbal prescriptions and no surgery, were so well-known and widely respected (22), many Caucasians trusted in the "China Doctor's" singular reputation for effecting cures in cases where western medicine had failed.
Women comprised at least one-third of "Doc Hay's" patients. He treated them for "congestion of the pelvic organs", "'women's complaints,' [and] complications resulting from childbirth or menstrual problems" (23). Former patients corroborate how, through pulse diagnosis, he could tell if a woman were pregnant, as well as the sex of the fetus (24).
Doc Hay's pharmacopoeia included a number of herbal medicines useful in treating diseases peculiar to women (25). Prescriptions for "congestion of the pelvic organs" often contained rhubarb (26). He used the root of Ta-chi (Euphorbia pekinensis) "to quiet the uterus during pregnancy" and to relieve "persistent nausea and vomiting in pregnancy," and the starchy corms of Chuan-pei-mu (Fritillaria roylei) "for deficiency of milk, threatened mammary abscesses, and lingering labour" (27). Doc Hay prescribed Ti-fu-tzu (Kochia scoparia) seeds to treat "incontinence of urine in pregnant women," and Lien fang (Nelumbium speciosum) "to promote the expulsion of the placenta" (28). Various "diseases of pregnancy" or "puerperal difficulties" called for leaves and stems of Tze-lan (Arethusa japonica) and roots of Shu-ti-huang (Rehman[n]ia glutinosa), while Tan-shen (Salvia miltiorrhiza) was efficacious in treating "haemorrhages, menstrual disorders and miscarriages" (29).
Doc Hay's practice covered wide areas of Oregon, Idaho, Washington and Nevada, and, occasionally, even more distant places. Although he saw many patients in person, either through office visits or house calls, people often wrote to him describing their symptoms. He would diagnose the illness, mail the patient a herbal prescription, and then continue the correspondence until he achieved a cure (30).
When Lung On died in 1940, Doc Hay was in his late seventies and nearly blind. With the assistance of a nephew, also an herbal practitioner, Doc Hay continued his medical practice until a broken hip in 1948 forced him into a nursing home. He died there four years later, and is buried in John Day. Following Doc Hay's death, friends and relatives cleaning out his old room in the Kam Wah Chung building found over $23,000 in uncashed cheques in his bed (31). He hadn't cashed them because he didn't need the money.
Today the Kam Wah Chung and Company building, built in the 1860s, is a museum housing thousands of artefacts commemorating Ing Hay, Lung On and other northeastern Oregon Chinese pioneers. This unique resource helps heighten visitor awareness of the significant contributions made by Chinese and Chinese American people to both the economic development and the cultural heritage of the West for well over 100 years (32).
Priscilla Wegars received an MA in Scientific Methods in Archaeology from the University of Bradford, Yorkshire, England, and a PhD in history from the University of Idaho. She has worked on, or directed, archaeological excavations in Belize, England, New Zealand and the United States, and edited Hidden Heritage: Historical Archaeology of the Overseas Chinese, Amityville, NY, Baywood, 1993.
NOTES AND REFERENCES1. I have changed the American spelling of words in the main article to English spelling where the two differ. The article has detailed references covering several pages of print. I have retained only two, one describing placer mining and "32" at the request of the author. All the reference numbers have been retained. Anyone wanting the full list of references should contact Dr Wegars. Her Addresses are as follows:
Asian American Comparative Collection,
Laboratory of Anthropology,
University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, USA
83844-1111,208-885-7075 e-mail, pwegars@uidaho.edu.
Ed.2. In placer mining [mining of "free" or surface gold], miners prospected using a gold pan to see if an area would "pan out," that is, produce a sufficient return in gold to justify the labor involved in obtaining it. Having located a sufficiently productive area, they then worked it using more efficient means than a gold pan. One device was a type of box on rockers, called a "rocker" or "cradle." The miner shoveled gold-bearing dirt or gravel in one end and poured water over it. By means of a rocking motion, and more water, he washed the material through the rocker. A series of bars, "riffles," at the other end trapped the heavier gold as it sank, while the waste water, dirt, and gravel washed out. A "sluice" or "long Tom" utilized the same principle, but required more laborers. Hydraulic mining was large-scale placer mining, involving a company of perhaps 10 to 15 men who washed away entire hillsides using enormous hoses, giant nozzles, and tremendous water pressure. All types of placer mining were very labor- and water-intensive, so mine owners often hired Chinese workers to dig the ditches, sometimes several miles long, that brought water to the "diggings." Lode mining, also called quartz, deep, or hard-rock mining, involved digging tunnels to recover veins of gold imbedded in quartz and then crushing the resulting ore in stamp mills in order to free the gold from its matrix. Lode mining required vast amounts of capital, and the Chinese were only rarely involved in it, as employees, rather than owners.
32. Repositories, such as the University of Idaho's Asian American Comparative Collection (AACC), ensure that the Chinese American legacy is curated and celebrated for future generations to enjoy and appreciate. The AACC is a repository of artifacts and bibliographical materials relevant to the study of the history and archaeology of the overseas Chinese and other Asian groups. You may visit the AACC on the World-Wide Web at <http://www.uidaho.edu/LS/AACC/>.
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