Clark County history: Vancouver and the Chinese riots

Local rowdies beat Moy Ling after he left a Methodist church, reported the Clark County Register in January 1881. This single local incident demonstrates the anti-Chinese feelings festering within the Washington Territory.

In historical records, Ah-Long, a servant to Capt. Rufus Ingalls, appears as the first Chinese living in Vancouver in 1850. Other Chinese came to the territory during the 1860s as placer miners. By the 1880s, 105,000 Chinese people lived in the United States, including 126 in Clark County. Ten were employed as Vancouver Barracks servants, four for enlisted men and six for officers. C.E.S. Wood and his wife, Nanny, employed Moy Dock as a servant. Gen. O.O. Howard’s aide-de-camp, Lt. Joseph Sladen, and his family engaged Joe Sing.

A flaccid Chinese economy drove many Chinese to America’s “Gold Mountain.” Most emigrants imagined returning home wealthy. But after going bust hunting gold, they switched to cooking, laundering or laboring to survive. Railroad construction, mining, ditch digging, logging and agriculture drew many Chinese to the territory. Between 1882 and 1885, the United States suffered a deep recession, and Chinese xenophobia reached a fever pitch.

U.S. workers believed Chinese men were stealing jobs and lowering wages, and in response Congress passed the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. This government-sanctioned racism and economic instability set the social stage for hostility. By the mid-1880s, anti-Chinese prejudice erupted into six months of riots in the territory, chiefly in Tacoma (1885) and Seattle (1886).

On Nov. 3, 1885, Lum May’s Tacoma home was attacked by a white mob that dragged his wife out into the street. According to May’s account, she went “hopelessly insane” and struck at people with a hatchet. The following day, Territorial Gov. Watson Squire ordered police, officials and citizens to respect the law. On Nov. 8, the War Department dispatched 10 companies of the 14th Infantry stationed at Vancouver Barracks to Seattle under the command of Brig. Gen. John Gibbon. Four companies returned to the barracks with prisoners and then rejoined their unit.

After these events, most Chinese left Puget Sound. Seattle remained calm until February 1886, when mobs struck out again, ostensibly to conduct a sanitary inspection in an overcrowded Chinese neighborhood. When Gibbon heard about it, he dispatched eight companies to Seattle. The governor declared martial law.

When the troops arrived on Feb. 10, the general found no need for them, calling the situation “quiet and peaceful,” adding that the city officials were responsible for the bloodshed and executed the deeds with “malice and forethought to violate the law,” inducing others to act. He also blamed Gov. Squire for the riots, stating that a few good policemen could have resolved the problem.

Adj. Gen. Richard Coulter Drum rebuked Gibbon twice for his actions in Seattle. Although the War Department had dispatched the general to Seattle, Drum initially chastised Gibbon for acting on his own without the department’s orders. He also supported the governor’s view that by making arrests, Gibbon had overstepped his bounds, despite his authority to do so.

Gibbon responded that he followed orders to aid and assist in the law, noting policemen had participated in the mob and threatened his militia. In Vancouver, citizens collected aid funds for the Chinese.