Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon [Paperback]

R. Gregory Nokes (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0870715704 | ISBN-13: 978-0870715709 | Publication Date: October 1, 2009

In 1887, more than thirty Chinese gold miners were massacred on the Oregon side of Hells Canyon, the deepest canyon in North America. Massacred for Gold, the first authoritative account of the unsolved crime, unearths the evidence that points to an improbable gang of rustlers and schoolboys, one only fifteen, as the killers.

The crime was discovered weeks after it happened, but no charges were brought for nearly a year, when gang member Frank Vaughan, son of a well-known settler family, confessed and turned state’s evidence. Six men and boys, all from northeastern Oregon’s remote Wallowa county, were charged—but three fled, and the others were found innocent by a jury that a witness admitted had little interest in convicting anyone. A cover-up followed, and the crime was all but forgotten for the next one hundred years, until a county clerk in Wallowa County found hidden records in an unused safe.

Massacred for Gold traces the author’s long personal journey to expose details of the massacre and its aftermath and to understand how one of the worst of the many crimes committed by whites against Chinese laborers in the American West was for so long lost to history.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

R. Gregory Nok es travelled the world as a reporter and editor for The Associated Press and The Oregonian, where he first wrote about the murders of the Chinese miners in 1995. His article “A Most Daring Outrage, Murders at Chinese Massacre Cove, 1887” appeared in the Oregon Historical Quarterly in 2006, and his reporting on the subject has resulted in a formal designation of the massacre site as Chinese Massacre Cove. He attended Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow. Greg and his wife, Candise, live in West Linn, Oregon.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Oregon State University Press (October 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0870715704
• ISBN-13: 978-0870715709
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #740,952 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

R. Gregory Nokes is a former reporter and editor for The Associated Press and The Oregonian. With The AP, he served as a foreign correspondent in Latin America and later as a diplomatic correspondent covering presidential and diplomatic trips abroad. His travels as a journalist took him to more than 50 countries, including three trips to China. He retired in 2003 from The Oregonian to begin a second career as an author and lecturer on the experience of immigrant Chinese laborers in the Pacific Northwest during the latter decades of the 19th century. His work in uncovering details of the virtually forgotten 1887 massacre of as many as 34 Chinese gold miners in Hells Canyon resulted in the formal naming of the massacre site as Chinese Massacre Cove by the United States Board on Geographic Names. A native of Portland, Nokes attended Willamette University, earning a BA degree, and later attended Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow. He and his wife, Candise, live in West Linn, Oregon.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Investigating a 122-year old atrocity, October 16, 2009

By 

Robert B. Cullen (Chevy Chase, MD) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon (Paperback)

R. Gregory Nokes has turned over a rock in northeastern Orgeon. Under it, he's found the fascinating story of the massacre of 34 Chinese miners along the Snake River in 1887. The killers were a gang of rustlers and thieves who wanted the gold dust the Chinese had painstakingly accumulated. None of them were ever convicted; nor was the Chinese gold ever recovered. Instead, the local community acquitted the three gang members it managed to bring to trial. Three others were never arrested and never tried. For more than a century thereafter, the community did its best to forget that the massacre ever occurred and to prevent word of it from spreading any further than it had. Records were lost or misplaced. People with information declined to talk about it. Nokes, then a reporter for The Oregonian, heard about the massacre some fourteen years ago, wrote a story, and then stayed on the trail. In this book, he has pieced together what is doubtless the best and most thorough account we will ever have of what happened along the Snake. He's helpfully placed those events in the context of the barbarous American treatment of Chinese immigrant labor in the 19th Century. He's written a landmark account, a great read for anyone interested in American history.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So Good it Reads like Fiction, but It's Not!, December 31, 2009

By 

Rebecca H. "Rebecca H." (Enterprise, OR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon (Paperback)

"Massacred for Gold" has all the earmarks of a great piece of fiction--murder,envy, greed, prejudice,corruption,cover up, bullies, adventure and even the possibility of buried treasure still unfound!

But wait, this ISN'T fiction! Rather, it's a true story based on the massacre of 34 chinamen who came to a remote corner of Northeast Oregon in the 1800's to make a living at gold mining. All they wanted was to be left alone in what they thought was a peaceful, out of the way spot. Little did they know what terrible tragedy awaited them.

An added bonus is that Noke's work is really a story within a story, since the cover up of the massacre continues to this day! The book is well researched and his characters, particularly the modern day ones, are painted accurately. (I know because my husband, as a former D. A. of Wallowa County, knew all of the modern day folks involved in this amazing real life tale about the Old West!) Don't miss a great read about an incredible piece of history and place in the Pacific Northwest.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Memorial for the Massacred, November 14, 2009

By 

Thomas V. Brady - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon (Paperback)

Massacred for Gold is a tale of the Old West that no one wanted to know about. It deals with the slaughter of 34 Chinese immigrants who gathered gold dust on the banks of the Snake River in remote northeastern Oregon. In 1887, a band of six rustlers and school boys - the youngest was 15 -- killed the Chinese and their gold disappeared. Only three of the gang were ever caught and tried; their acquittal came quickly. And almost as quickly a cloud of forgetfulness descended upon Wallowa County where the massacre occurred. Now, 120 years later, R. Gregory Nokes has lifted that cloud with a thorough, persistent, skillful examination of the events of the massacre and its long epilogue of neglect. As he writes, "there has been no manifestation of guilt, no expression of sorrow, no regret, no price paid, no consequences." Thanks to Nokes, at least the 34 massacred Chinese will no longer be forgotten. His book,which deserves wide readership, constitutes a memorial to them.