Customer Reviews

The Poker Bride: The First Chinese in the Wild West

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

The Poker Bride is a somewhat loosely based book on the life and times of Polly Bemis, a Chinese girl who arrived in Idaho during the gold rush years of the mid-19th century and lived there until her death during the first half of the 20th century. What the book really is, however, is a short history of Chinese immigration to the American West during this same period. What most people remember, if anything, about this period is the great contribution of the Chinese to the building of the transcontinental railway. That at least is my case. So far as I was aware, the huge influx of labor from Asia had been the product of the demand for it on the railroad. What I had not known was the potency of the call of the gold fields starting with the Sutter's Mill discovery in 1848.

Although I found the narrative thread of the book a little convoluted and at times a little repetitive, I think Mr. Corbett's book is a remarkable compendium of information. His selection of a quotation from G. K. Chesterton--one of my favorite authors and author of one of my favorite poems--is very apt here, and explains the problem exactly. "I will not say that this story is true: because, as you will soon see, it is all truth and no story. It has no explanation and no conclusion; it is, like most of the other things we encounter in life, a fragment of something else which would be intensely exciting if it were not too large to be seen....(The Secret of the Train)." To a certain extent it is the author's responsibility to pull the story out of the morass of information so it can be viewed critically by the reader; admittedly however, doing so would have pulled it from context and skewed the meaning of the actual events. I applaud the author for not giving in to the "story" but remaining true to the "history." This has to have been difficult for him, since he obviously has a story telling predilection.

There appear to be three--probably more--threads to The Poker Bride. First and foremost there is the story of the Bride herself. While there is no doubt she existed--contemporaries who knew her had been interviewed, photos exist of her, and some paperwork exists for her--there is little beyond the sketchily known events of her later life and what she said of her earlier life that goes beyond her mere existence in history. Essentially she is part reality and part myth, and the reader is allowed to decide what to believe. More than anything it is the author who, by creating an historical backdrop for Polly, gives her simple bare bones existence a significance beyond the simple documentation.

The second thread of The Poker Bride is what actually does this. Mr. Corbett has drawn as much data as possible to the recreation of the Chinese experience in the American West. By gleaning information from Western newspapers, personal accounts, and oral history drawn from those who had participated in the events, the author has given as much of an account of the Chinese immigration to pre-statehood California, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming as is probably possible. As he notes in the context of the work, very few of these immigrants were literate, so records of their adventures are few to absent. Furthermore, few of the literate in this country were interested in recording the unvarnished experiences of these foreigners with the people they encountered here, the notable exceptions being Mark Twain and Bret Harte. Additionally most of the Chinese who came here to work or to mine for gold returned home, if at all possible, taking whatever stories regarding their experiences here with them. Some of these stories appear to have been collected from China either from the returning sojourners themselves for from those who had known them. (It would appear to be a popular topic for MA and PhD dissertations for ethnically Chinese students, which shows the value of checking university libraries for these sources of information!)

The third thread of the book is the female--in this case mostly the Chinese female--experience in the American West. I hold as quite apt the author's description of the environment and the times of the Gold Rush years as "bachelor" societies. The rigor, the risks, and the lifestyle of the Gold Rush years had the tendency to winnow the overall society--that is the rest of the entire world--in favor of the young, healthy male. This incredible state of social imbalance had a very expectable outcome.

If one could imagine putting all males from the age of 15 to 30 in a particular quarter of any large city without any supervision whatsoever, no law other than their own, and one overreaching goal of becoming wealthy, one might get a pretty good idea of what life in the old West during the Gold Rush years was like. The demands and interests of this segment of society, combined with the willingness and ability to pay whatever was necessary to acquire it, will also give one a very clear idea of the types of "black market" activity that would arise to supply it and the great difficulty and cost that would be required to suppress it--let alone the level of graft and corruption that would arise from doing so. In many ways, it is the same system of supply and demand that makes the attempt to suppress drugs, their use and sale, an almost hopeless endeavor.

In any case like this demand creates a market, and suppliers arise. Any attempt to suppress the market also increases the stress of demand, thereby increasing the price of the item in demand. This in turn makes the risks inherent with supplying it that much more worthwhile to undertake, and means an even greater effort to undertake supply will be made. Any attempts to prevent it will increase the violence associated with protecting it--both from those who wish to suppress it and from those who wish to take it over from those already controlling it. This whole scenario--minus the violence, perhaps--can be found in any textbook on economics, which illustrates it with simple graphs called "supply and demand curves."

The lucrative benefits to those in recognized positions of influence for turning a blind eye to the activity will also increase and ensure that at least some will succumb. By virtue of the great fortunes to be made by this avenue with virtually no investment or effort, society's official law enforcement will start to crumble. Those who have become involved in the graft begin to ensure that only those who will cooperate are able to obtain office. Efforts by a jaded society to change this situation will be met with threats and violence against "clean" candidates, making it difficult to change anything.

Meanwhile society, unable to do anything at all to prevent the victimization of individuals hurt by the illicit activity, responds by making the victims the cause of their own dilemma. People begin to label these individuals as "hopeless," "debauched," "morally unfit," "strange outsiders" or simply stupid and therefore amusing. All of which were applied to the Chinese who were victimized by the society of the "Old West."

The fact that the "peculiar institution" in the American South was defended as a social necessity is another case in point. Slaves were considered "better off" being enslaved, since they were seen as incapable of taking care of themselves. To estimate how difficult it would have been to change the lives of the Chinese immigrants in the West, one simply has to remember that it took a war lasting about 4 and a half years and more lives lost than in all other wars in which the US partook thereafter combined to eliminate slavery---not to improve the overall condition, which is an on-going thing--from the country. And there were those--in fact there are still those--who considered the price to have been "too high."

That the situation of the Chinese sex slave in the American West was miserable, hopeless and short is less the point, here, than is the life of women in any society and particularly in third world societies. Would the lives of any of these girls--and they could be anywhere from 2 to 16 for the most part--have been any different had they remained in China? I doubt it. Overpopulation and famine dictated a certain cold heartedness with respect to children, especially young children who could not contribute anything but their appetite to the family's situation. In a land where hard physical labor was the norm, males are usually valued more highly than females. In times of shortage, then, it will usually be the female children that are killed, abandoned or sold to provide extra shares of whatever there is for the rest of the family. Anything more generous and humane would be an irresponsible use of resources; that is the grim reality of these families. Hence, as the author notes in The Poker Bride, the Chinese of the time believed that girls and women had no souls, like animals they were disposable. That, more than anyting, was probably the secret of their quiet acceptance of their fates. If you believe yourself unworthy of anything more, or if you simply expect nothing more, you accept life as it happens to you. It certainly enhances survival. Those that didn't accept it tended to commit suicide, and the author documents a number of cases in point.

I think Mr. Corbett's description of the plight of the poor Chinese in the American West holds a far greater significance than one might believe on the surface of the overall story. The point of the book is that it was surprising to find an elderly Chinese female alive and thriving in late 19th and early 20th century America. The likelihood that she would have survived her teens and 20ies under the circumstances of her arrival in the country made it highly unlikely that she would. More importantly, the First World's attitude toward "human rights" in the Third World needs to be refocused. If one had wanted to change the lives of any of the Chinese girls of the Gold Rush years, one would have had to attend to the social issues of the country from which they were shipped. In fact the treatment of women is key to the problems of most Third World countries. It has become well known that birthrate declines as the education and improvement in lifestyle of women increases. And it is a high birthrate that creates the surplus of labor that leads to sale of females for the benefit of their families during times of famine. Wherever labor is in greater supply than demand, as it so often is in the Third World, wages remain lower than the costs of raising a large family; but if you must have family to look after you in old age, you need to have lots of children so that at least some survive to take care of you. Governments that keep the wealth of a country in the hands of a very few beggar the population, drive higher birth rates, and cause events like the immigrations of the Gold Rush years.

The Poker Bride might well be noted as a cautionary tale to us all. As the world's population continues to rise, as food supplies and transportation costs escalate the modern world could--and in fact actually does--see a similar migration of people from areas of high population density to that of lower density. The potential for an improved level of life brings thousands to this country, creating black market structures that extort money from those who want to move here, bribe officials to look the other way, and enure the resident population to the unremedial plight of the immigrants. There is little different about the situation now than that in the Gold Rush era. The Chinese have managed by a change in their government, in the design of their economy, and in their control over their population growth to keep their own workers home; but countries where changes have not met the needs of the general population, migrations--legal and illegal--are still seen. The situation of these migrants continues to be regarded with the same ambivalence by the native born citizen of the country, and their vulnerability to abuse by those who seek to gain at their expense continues to be a problem.

In short, Mr. Corbett's tale of The Poker Bride is an old one and unfortunately an ongoing one. We need to take heed.

My family has been in the mother lode area of California since the 1800 gold rush when a woman in the family ran a bakery and a brothel. And because Jackson CA in the mother lode has a Chinese graveyard, this books title caught my attention from the get go.

Very well written and researched. Charlie and Polly Bemis are two people I would have loved to know. Reading of their journey from San Francisco up to Idaho and the people and places they encountered reminded me of visiting many of the same places. The author does an excellent job of describing how the Chinese were treated when they arrived in San Francisco and how they were treated in the gold country. Something the many small towns here in the Sierras are honest about when you visit their small town museums.

Reading in the book and especially chapter 10 of Charles Shepp and Peter Klinkhammer who lived near Charlie and Polly, and helped them out, and spent the holiday with them, and would care for Polly after Charlie died, was one of my favorite chapters, as it shows how people here help each other out. Loved reading of how Polly was such a great fisherman, and how she grew a big vegetable garden and orchard which she would harvest and preserve also reminded me of how we live today. Love reading the no nonsense diaries these folks kept, which noted the weather, what they ate, how the bears ate all the berries or the horses got into the orchard, again reminded me of how they lived and the connection to how many live today. The book notes that without the help of Charles and Peter, Polly wouldn't have been able to remain on the ranch after Charlie died. And that the men were not looking for new neighbors, which is why they agreed to care for Polly and get the land after her death. Gotta love these folks.

Loved reading of Polly visiting the outside world for the first time and how when she first heard a radio she wanted to run away because she thought it was a ghost speaking. Although she was overjoyed when the men strung a phone line to her home so they could stay in touch with her, since the river could be harsh and prevent easy access to her place. Or how happy a person she was and how she loved being asked to hold babies, or getting to ride in a car, rain etc. Things many people today simply take for granted.

On page 183, we read that she fell ill in 1933, at the age of eighty-one she was taken on horseback over narrow and winding trails to the War Eagle Mine where they had arranged to have an ambulance waiting for her. And that she showed herself very grateful for all that was done for her. Thus she wrote out of the area on a horse, just as she had ridden in. She would die on November 6, a Monday, with a brief notation that it was a warm and cloudy day and she would be buried at 10 am the next morning. Peter has always planned on getting her a simple headstone. He died in 1970 at the age of eighty-nine and the heirs to his estate carried out his wishes and she has a simple head stone that notes her name and September 11, 1853-November 6, 1933. In 1987 her remains were moved back to the ranch she had shared with Charlie on the banks of the Salmon River.

As a homeschooling family this is a book we will use as part of our school studies. And highly recommend to anyone who wants an honest story about the history of the gold rush and how the Chinese were treated.

One of the things I'm learning during my reading of historical titles is that we tend to forget much of our past. And actually, we *do* end up repeating many of our mistakes and ugly periods. I found some of those forgotten elements when reading The Poker Bride: The First Chinese in the Wild West by Christopher Corbett. While the book would seem to be more about the story of Polly Bemis, a Chinese "working girl" who was won in a poker game, the real story is of how life in the West was lived during the days of the Gold Rush.

In the late 1840's, gold was discovered in the West, and many Americans headed to California in order to make their fortune as miners. At the same time, large numbers of Chinese came over via steamer to do the jobs that nobody else wanted to do (reminiscent of our current migrant and immigration woes). San Francisco was the hub of much of the activity, and it was largely a male-dominated town. The women were often Chinese, and most of them were there as prostitutes and slaves. Life was cheap, and if you were on the lower end of the working girl scale, you were likely to die young and alone from disease or abuse.

One of these girls, "Polly", was brought over and purchased by a rich Chinese merchant. But as legend has it, he gambled her away during a poker game to a miner who lived and worked in Idaho. The miner, Charlie Bemis, took his newly acquired property and headed off to the hills of Idaho, to a small mining down named Warrens. It was there that Polly spent her entire life, eventually becoming Bemis's bride. Her story only became known when she came out of the backwoods in 1923 and visited a city for the first time, seeing things she had never seen before, like cars, trains, and radios. This was a national story at the time, and people were fascinated to learn more about Polly Bemis and what she had experienced during the last 60 years.

The first part of Poker Bride, and perhaps the most consistent theme throughout the book, is focused on mining life during the last half century of the 1800's and the suffering of the Chinese during that period of American history. The internment of Japanese-American citizens during the last part of World War 2 is an often-told story, but the Chinese suffered much of the same type of national backlash after the main gold rush period. They were taking jobs that many thought should belong to Caucasians, and they did work for far less money than others. The racism and bigotry during that time was rampant, and its not surprising that most Chinese wanted to go back to their own country to be buried when they died. Polly's story in the last part of the book seems to be a bit of an add-on to what the majority of the content was focused on. And since there's a number of conflicting stories about exactly who Polly was and how she ended up in Idaho, the author ends up having to give a number of alternative perspectives and let the reader sort it out a bit for themselves. I wouldn't mind so much if the title hadn't pointed to Polly being the main topic of the book, while the content was more in line with a generalization of the subtitle.

Even with the minor "bait and switch" of the title, I still found The Poker Bride quite interesting. Stripping the veneer of romance and legend off the Gold Rush stories is worth reading in order to give you more realistic look at life during that time. Makes me very glad I wasn't born and raised back then...

Disclosure:
Obtained From: Author
Payment: Free

History is vivified when seen through the eyes of an individual, thus it is with Christopher Corbett's story of Polly Bemis, a Chinese concubine sold by her starving parents IN 1872 then smuggled to San Francisco. Next, she was brought by her owner to an Idaho mining camp where he lost her to Charlie Bemis in a poker game.

She lived with Charlie for almost half a century on an isolated ranch in the canyon of the Salmon River, "known as the `River Of No Return." She nursed him back to health after he was almost fatally wounded, and he later did an amazing thing - Charlie married her. There is a picture of Polly in the book wearing her 1894 wedding dress. She's a small woman with her hair pulled back in a neat bun; the hand touching her skirt appears strong.

In 1923 she will come down from the mountain on horseback and be taken by car to Orangeville, the Idaho County seat. This was an amazing journey for Polly as she had never ridden in a car. "She had never heard a radio or seen a train, an airplane, a motion picture, or electric lights. Her arrival was also amazing for the populace, receiving banner newspaper headlines and being likened to Rip Van Winkle.

Polly was one of the more fortunate of the hordes of Chinese who came to California, to what they called "Golden Mountain" to search for gold. As Corbett points out the California Gold Rush was a time of madness, violence, and rabid discrimination against the Chinese. Although they worked for very low wages it was claimed that they took jobs from Americans - there were "Chinese Must Go" campaigns, and frequent brutalities inflicted upon them.

Of course, crossing the Pacific to reach our shores was travail within itself. "Steerage on the China run was damp, dark, poorly ventilated, and filthy." One ship, the Libertad, carried 560 passengers although its limit was 297, and lost 100 men on that voyage. Writers described the passage from China as a "floating hell."

A former editor and reporter with the Associated Press Corbett has researched extensively and enriched THE POKER BRIDE with details describing this little known portion of our history. It is, of course, Polly's story but it is also the immigrants' story - fascinating, often tragic, and true.

Highly recommended.

- Gail Cooke

about the experiences of Chinese immigrants on the West Coast, lured by the California gold rush and later strikes in Idaho, Nevada, and Oregon. The early section is a succinct version of 18th and 19th century life for ALL Californians. Then we switch to those Chinese who ended up in the mountains of Idaho, during the Civil War and beyond. The book ends up saying just about all that's worth saying about one arrival in particular, the poker game bride later known as Polly Bemis, who survived an isolated life until the 1930's. The author notes that Chinese men, as a rule back then, believed that females had no soul, but in the almost exclusively male Chinese mining camps, their bodies had great worth. Therefore, unfortunate teen girls like Polly were sold into concubinage or even general prostitution, transported to America at great expense. My only knowledge of the early Chinese experience with our country prior to reading this came from Bret Harte, Mark Twain and other western writers of the second half of the 1800's, sources that Mr. Corbett quotes extensively. His research and organization of what he learned added tremendously to my understanding of the reasons for the influx, the problems caused by it, and the eventual solutions to those troubles. However, it saddens me to have to criticize a fellow ex-newspaper editor on the grounds of dereliction of duty. His book could have benefitted tremendously by one more scrupulous edit, this time to eliminate unneeded repetition. By the end of the 200 pages of narrative, I was quite annoyed. There are writers of non-fiction who make the mistake of citing a source, say on page 8, and then returning to that source maybe on page 191, and only using the last name. By that time, I have forgotten who that person was and what their contribution was. I don't like it when writers do that, and I'll bet Charles Corbett hates it too. Unfortunately, his cure for that problem was to reintroduce his sources, be they famous dead writers or local historians or neighbors, again and again and again and again and again and again. A judicious edit aimed at a balance between writer error number one and over-correction number two could have trimmed this volume by at least 20 pages, and made his story sing. As non-fiction books go, this is already pretty short, but it becomes a tedious read and it did not have to take that route. This is his second book, but I hope for his third one the publisher assigns an editor who will look for this tendency and help Mr. Corbett avoid it.

I received a review copy of "The Poker Bride" from the publisher, and found myself intrigued by the premise of a Chinese woman won as a bride of sorts in a late 1800s poker game. It's the stuff of legend and fairy tale, yet based in reality. I dove in, expecting an in depth look at this woman's story culled from newspapers, journals, and written interviews from the past.

Yes, the woman existed, known by most as Polly Bemis. Yes, the author does a thorough job of pulling facts and fables together into a cohesive outline of her life. But, the premise itself is a bit of a bluff. The majority of Polly's past is shrouded in mystery, with numerous details never firmly established due to conflicting sources of information. It's a great idea that never gets fleshed out, and it left me wishing that the book was not misrepresented by title and cover.

That said, the subtitle is "The First Chinese in the West," and this is truly what the book describes--and with superb research and heart. I learned many new things about the early years of San Francisco, the Gold Rush era, the immigration of thousands of Chinese, the racial misdeeds, the rampant prostitution, and the miners that preyed upon this age-old occupation. As a study of the American West Coast in the 1800s, and of Chinese influence along those shores, "The Poker Bride" succeeds in every respect. It's a fascinating book, strong on details, except for the thin threads of Polly Bemis's life that are used to hold the narrative together. Despite the gimmick, it's an important addition to our understanding of that time period.

It's the stuff that legends are made of. The year was 1872. A young Chinese girl arrives in San Francisco which at the time was the chief port of entry for those emigrating to this country from China. The girl known as Polly was around 21 years old when she stepped off that boat. Life had certainly not been kind to her. In the midst of a devastating famine in her native land Polly's father was forced to trade her for a mere two bags of seed. Though it sounds unimaginably cruel this was not uncommon in those days. Polly's father did what he had to do to keep the rest of his family alive. From there Polly was sold as a slave girl. When she arrived in San Francisco she was auctioned off for the impressive sum of $2500 to a man named Hong King. King was a Chinese national who evidently arrived in America during the Gold Rush and ran a gambling hall and saloon in the remote mining town of Warrens in northern Idaho. He wanted Polly to be his hostess. Polly was quite lucky in that most of the Chinese girls who came to America during this period wound up as prostitutes. But there would be one more incredible twist that would change Polly's life forever. Gambling was a popular pastime in mining country and her owner Hong King became involved in a high stakes poker game with another local saloon owner named Charles Bemis. They were playing for gold dust and King had lost just about all of it when he decided to up the ante and risk his only remaining possession Polly in a last ditch attempt to recover his losses. Hong King lost the hand and the beautiful young lady was turned over to Bemis. Thus began the legend of "The Poker Bride". In this well-documented and highly entertaining book author Christopher Corbett tells the compelling life story of this fascinating lady who would spend the next five decades living in the remote backcountry of Idaho. It is an unforgettable tale!

There are really two storylines in "The Poker Bride: The First Chinese in the West". In addition to chronicling the remarkable life of the young lady who would one day become Polly Bemis Christopher Corbett spends a considerable amount of time relating the story of those who came to this country from China during the frenzied years of the Gold Rush. Most of the Chinese men who arrived in California looking for gold never really intended to stay. A large percentage of those who struck it rich took their money and returned to China to live a life of leisure. Many others gave up the search for gold and returned home while still others concluded that it just might be more lucrative to provide much needed services for the miners. Thus, many Chinamen wound up running laundries, restaurants and dry goods stores. The Chinamen as they were called were generally welcome when they first arrived in the West but over time most white men would come to despise them. For most of the young Chinese women who arrived on these shores life was not very kind. The overwhelming majority of these women would wind up as prostitutes and "dance hall" girls. They lived and worked in filthy surroundings and a large percentage died at a very young age. This is a part of western folklore I had read very little about. But one would have to conclude that luck was on the side of young Polly. She would wind up living a very different life. Reports vary but it appears to be quite possible that Polly was never forced to work as a prostitute. After Polly was won by Charles Bemis he put her to work helping to manage his business. Shortly thereafter Bemis was shot in the head in an altercation. The prognosis was grave but Polly nursed him back to health using Chinese herbs and medical techniques. Charles Bemis was forever grateful and would one day marry her. When the Gold Rush was over and the mining town of Warrens, Idaho was largely abandoned the couple moved to a remote spot on the Salmon River where they would live out the rest of their days.

The story of Polly Bemis the so-called "poker bride" first drew national attention in 1923 when Polly emerged from the Idaho backcountry after her husband's death to discover a world that she was totally unfamiliar with and unprepared for. Many compared her to Rip Van Winkle and her story was carried in newspapers and magazines across the nation. As Christopher Corbett points out in the Preface of "The Poker Bride" Polly "not only had never ridden in an automobile; she had never seen one. She had never heard a radio or seen a train, an airplane, a motion picture, or electric lights." One can only imagine her reaction to the new world she was discovering all around her!

At the end of the the day I found "The Poker Bride: The First Chinese in the West" to be an extremely well written, painstakingly researched and highly engaging book. I simply could not put this one down. I found that reading "The Poker Bride" dove-tailed quite nicely with another terrific new book that I have read recently entitled "Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built A Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized The Wild West". After reading these two fine books I believe that I now have a much better understanding of how the Western part of our nation was settled. In my opinion "The Poker Bride: The First Chinese in the West" would be a great choice for history buffs and general audiences alike. Indeed, this would be a great book to take with you on vacation or to read at the beach. Outstanding in every respect. Very highly recommended!

Purchased this book after a positive review in the WSJ. Obviously the reviewer skimmed the book but never read it. What should have been an interesting subject was a total bore based on the author repeating the same information over and over again.

I had some doubts when I began to read The Poker Bride. Lately it has seemed to me many popular history books were little more than magazine articles expanded to include a bibliography. The story of Polly Bemis-- a sex worker who got luckier than most-- seemed an excellent candidate for the "not long enough for a book" prize.

To my surprise, Corbett seems to have a book here. And an interesting book at that. We know precious little about Polly Bemis today, and Corbett shares as much of the story as can be told. He also tells us the folklore and the myth that grew up around this unlikely western wife. Best of all (at least for me) Corbett gives us a lot of the context of the early Chinese experience in the US West. It's fascinating stuff. Some of it I knew vaguely from other reading, but I've never had such a clear image of the Chinese migration.

I'd recommend the book for the material alone. Corbett, however, is worth mentioning for his writing. I found it exceptionally good history writing. Books like this are so often obtuse. The prose here is crisp, economical, and always clear. I enjoyed the book itself and not just the subject matter.

Recommended for anyone with an interest in the history of the US West, prostitution, or the Chinese experience in the US.

The discovery of gold in California in 1848 transformed America. Some of the transformations, like the impetus to populate the empty western lands and the increase in individual fortunes, were good, at least for some. The ecological effects were often disastrous. The social effects, besides the population shift, were most significant for the interaction of Chinese immigrants with American citizens, and these were often disastrous as well. In _The Poker Bride: The First Chinese in the West_ (Atlantic Monthly Press), Christopher Corbett has told the story, as much as it can be known, of one Chinese girl who came to California and was indeed won in a poker game. There is not much that can be said about Polly Bemis for certain, but Corbett's book (similar to his previous book _Orphans Preferred_, about the Pony Express) is not only about the specific case but also about the larger picture and the folklore and traditions that were made around it. Polly's story is relatively happy-ever-after; for most of her fellow Chinese, however, the land of the "Golden Mountain" proved to be one of violence and exploitation.

The news about the gold rush came to Hong Kong before it reached Boston and Washington. The result was that tens of thousands of Chinese came to seek their fortunes in the gold fields, and old, battered ships that were good for nothing else were pressed into transporting them. The Chinese came for the express purpose of making money; expecting to return with a relative fortune, the Chinese simply worked hard and kept to themselves without an attempt to learn the culture of the new land. They were easy targets for exploitation, especially the women who came and almost always became prostitutes. It's a grim story, made a little lighter by the specific tale of the main character in Corbett's work. Polly Bemis didn't leave many traces; one of the lessons in this book is that the history of these Chinese in America was always written by others, since the Chinese themselves were almost universally illiterate. Probably (and according to what she supposedly said of her own background) she was one of the girls who was a financial resource to her family when they sold her into concubinage. She arrived by boat in San Francisco and then by horseback up to the mining camp of Warrens, Idaho, in 1872. It was not the cribs for her; she was to be the concubine of a wealthy Chinese master, although she may have traded hands before coming to him. She was indeed won in a poker game, or so the story goes. Her master, an enthusiastic gambler, lost one round of gold dust stakes after another, and finally had only one possession to put up, his 18-year-old Chinese slave girl. The winner was Charlie Bemis, a Connecticut Yankee who was there for the remnants of the gold rush, keeping a saloon and gambling house. He wasn't cut out for the hard work of mining, and was by most accounts an idler, but he could keep a good saloon. One account by a man who knew him said, "He was absolutely square and entirely fearless. While there is no record of his having shot a man, his fearless personality, coupled with his skill at shooting, enabled him to maintain order without getting into trouble." It might not have been remarkable that Polly was won at a gambling table; far more remarkable is that she and Bemis settled into a long-term relationship and that the American married the Chinese. He may have done so to give her legal backing to avoid deportation back to China, but it seems to have been a supportive relationship. Polly was a good cook, gardener, and catcher of fish. When Charlie was shot in the face by a brawler, he was not expected to live, but she nursed him back to some degree of health. They lived together for fifty years. Only after his death did Polly make some visits outside their remote camp on the Salmon River, and she was feted as a Rip Van Winkle figure who was astonished by the metropolis of her county seat, Grangeville, and by automobiles and a picture show.

It's a happy story, one that only serves as a contrast to all the rest of the book. Polly was lucky; she started out as a concubine, and she did not have to descend to the more usual depths or to die of venereal disease and malnutrition. Her story can easily be seen in a romantic light (although it may be that those who wrote about her initially tended to stress the happiness of her particular case). As Corbett tells it, it is still a fine story, but he hasn't let readers forget that as far as the Chinese experience of the time went, Polly Bemis's happy fate was sadly an anomaly.