According to an article written by Kami Horton for Oregon Public Broadcasting, “On May 27, 1887, a gang of horse thieves gunned down more than 30 Chinese gold miners on the Snake River in Hells Canyon.” While one person ultimately confessed to the brutal murders, no one was ever found guilty. The article quotes R. Gregory Nokes, author of Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon, as calling the Hells Canyon Massacre “the worst massacre of Chinese people by whites in the United States, ‘It was really an act of savage racial hatred. The main motive (of the killers) was to go and kill these Chinese’.”
Following the discovery of gold in California and the subsequent gold rush in 1849, Chinese laborers came to the West Coast to search for gold, work on the railroads, and raise their families. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese laborers from entering the country, making it difficult for Chinese residents to gain citizenship or legal rights.
Kami Horton writes in Massacre at Hells Canyon,
Throughout the 1880s, Chinese immigrants watched their communities be burned, attacked and sometimes destroyed by racists mobs. In some places, Chinese were lynched or shot, while others were run out of town. They had almost no legal rights to defend themselves.
A memorial plaque to those massacred on May 27, 1887. Source: Public domain
In 2005, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names officially renamed the area where the massacre happened as Chinese Massacre Cove.
Watch Massacre at Hells Canyon, a 2017 video by Oregon Public Broadcasting below. A Mandarin language version of the program is available, too.
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