The Girls of Good Fortune

The first Chinese miners came to the San Francisco area in 1849 to take part in the gold rush, and many stayed to continue working in other mines and at other jobs after the rush was over. Immigration increased as more jobs became available, and over 12,000 Chinese laborers were employed to build the transcontinental railroad. When the railroad was completed in 1869, the men who had worked to build it began looking for other employment in the region. The Chinese railroad workers gained a reputation for being reliable and tough; they were also willing to accept less pay than their white counterparts because the wages were still several times what they might earn in China, where many immigrants’ families depended upon their earnings. The laborers who emigrated from China typically lived together in residential areas that came to be called Chinatown.

Resentment built among white workers who believed that the Chinese workers were outcompeting them for jobs and keeping the standard of pay low. Demonstrations began in San Francisco in 1870. In October 1871, in response to a fight that reportedly began between Chinese gangs, white men murdered 23 Chinese people. No charges were brought for the killings, and disputes like these were not limited to California; such violence was reported in many areas throughout the American West, including in Arizona and Nevada.

Hoping to quell the rising tensions, authorities resorted to immigration quotas, extra taxes on Chinese workers, and legislation like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which theoretically barred Chinese immigrants from entering the country. However, when mining companies were faced with strikes from workers who were protesting pay and other issues, they began hiring immigrants instead. Union Pacific, which ran both the railroad and the coal mines that supplied the railroad’s fuel, brought Chinese laborers in to work the mines around Rock Springs, Wyoming after a strike in 1875. By 1885, there were twice as many Chinese workers as white workers, and the latter were mainly immigrants from Scandinavia, Ireland, England, and Wales. As white workers joined growing union movements like the Knights of Labor, the continued willingness of Chinese workers to accept lower wages (and thus keep pay lower for their white coworkers) bred rising resentment that spilled into acts of violence.

On September 2, 1885, after a fight between a white worker and a Chinese worker broke out at one of the mines, a mob of white men and women convened in Rock Springs and attacked the Chinatown settlement. The white people assaulted and shot Chinese workers, looted their homes, and set the buildings on fire. Altogether, 28 Chinese miners were killed, 15 were injured, and nearly 80 homes and buildings were destroyed. Federal troops were called in to keep further violence from erupting.

While several men were arrested and charged for the riot, there was no evidence to convict them because no witnesses came forward. The Union Pacific rejected requests to pay and remove the Chinese workers and instead coerced the miners into returning to their jobs. The Rock Springs Massacre, as it is now known, was not an isolated incident. The Snake River Massacre, which took place within the area known as Hells Canyon, resulted in the deaths of 34 Chinese gold miners when a gang of white horse thieves attacked several mining camps. After murdering the miners, the thieves mutilated the bodies and threw them into the river.

Frank Vaughan (who appears as a character in the novel) was part of the real-life gang of attackers and confessed to the crime in 1888. Three of the men brought up on charges blamed the other three absent men as the instigators and so were acquitted. One of the mine sites has since been renamed Chinese Massacre Cove as a reminder of what remains the deadliest incident of racist violence against Chinese people in the United States.