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Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon

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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.

"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.

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.

This is an excellent book if you like history. Gregory Nokes has put a great deal of time into researching this story. Unfortunately the people who may know the truth of this terrible slaughter for gold aren't talking. I have wanted to read this book for a long time and was waiting for it to come to the Kindle since that is the main source of my reading. I finally gave up and just bought the book. I am glad I did. The Chinese who came during the Gold Rush days were treated as sub human and terribly abused. But this terrible tragedy was covered up and hidden to protect some families in the area, some of those families still remain in the area, and it is hard to believe something so terrible could happen and no one be held accountable.
Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon is well worth your time to read. Well written and hard to put down.

Sad and disturbing, this book is nonethless an amazing study of the treatment of immigrants in the U.S. (particularly the oriental genre). The base of this story is the gold fever gripping the population, part of the cause (justification) for the massacre. Quick turnaround made the transaction that much better. Thanks!

MASSACRED FOR GOLD is a "local history" -- better executed and with broader appeal than most local histories. At the center of the book is the tale of one of the lesser-known massacres of minorities by whites during the second half of the 19th Century - this one, the massacre of 34 (or 31) Chinese men at the bottom of Hells Canyon along the Snake River on the Oregon/Idaho border on May 25, 1887.

The names of only eleven of the victims are known; the rest are utterly lost to history. All or most of the 34 (or 31 - the precise magnitude of the atrocity also is lost to history) had come to the United States to work on the railroads and then been let loose when their railroad was finished or work was halted due to recession. For six months they had been panning for gold and re-working tailings left by white miners along a sand bar at the mouth of a creek at the bottom of Hells Canyon (which is even deeper, from rim to river, than the Grand Canyon). The crime was discovered in June 1887 after decomposed bodies, some badly mutilated, began floating out of Hells Canyon. The generally accepted theory is that a gang of six ne'er-do-wells and part-time rustlers - all from local ranch families - killed the Chinese for their six-month accumulated horde of gold dust (perhaps $10,000 worth).

The author of MASSACRED FOR GOLD is R. Gregory Nokes, who first came upon the story in his work as a reporter for "The Oregonian". After he left the paper, he continued to research the story for ten years.

Beyond his historical reconstruction of the massacre, Nokes also relates how he went about re-constructing the story: reading (and attempting to reconcile) several other accounts of the story written decades ago; research in the National Archives; visiting the site; and trying to locate official records of a two-day trial that ended up in the acquittal of three of the accused murderers (the others left the area and never were apprehended). This part of the book is instructive on the vicissitudes of historical research. Nokes also discusses at some length the efforts of succeeding generations of whites in the area, including descendants of the families of the accused, to repress or cover-up the massacre. Yet another aspect of the book concerns more generally the role of Chinese laborers in the "settling" (i.e., displacing of Native Americans) of the West and the many instances of odious treatment of them by whites. (For example, in addition to the Hells Canyon massacre, 28 Chinese workers were killed by white coal miners in September 1885 in Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory; in Los Angeles, during the year 1871, nineteen Chinese were murdered, seventeen of them lynched.)

And how many other similar tales of "America the Beautiful" are there?

"In Massacred for Gold, Gregory Nokes has not only brought to light an historical atrocity that needed the light of day, but has done it with skill and scholarship. Nokes' background as a seasoned journalist makes this book accessible to readers in a manner that is usually reserved for a novel. A tremendous read!"

WE bought this book for my brother-in-law for Christmas.
He is an avid follower of history in this part of the
country so this book was doubly meaningful to him.
Thanks for providing this book on your site.

Got this for my son for Christmas and he is really excited about reading it, great price, fast shipping, thank you so much!!

This book gives us a good look at some of the not-to-be-proud of things we as a country have done to new citizens who came to this country.