By Ken Robison
This continues the series of frontier historical sketches by historians at the Joel F. Overholser Historical Research Center in Fort Benton.
Published in 28 July and 4 August 2010 Fort Benton River Press
In one of the few positive articles on the Chinese ever to appear in the Great Falls Tribune, the January 4, 1893 edition carried this editorial:
“The Chinese have a beautiful custom which they religiously observe on New Year day--that of paying promptly every cent they owe. Perhaps the custom would be quite as beautiful for Caucasians as Chinese and a few days after New Year better than never.”
Meanwhile, the Great Northern Depot in Great Falls bore a sign that read, “Chinaman don’t let the sun set on you here.” On occasion the racist Great Falls Tribune even tried to stir up trouble for Chinese in Fort Benton. In March 1902 the Tribune was not only urging exclusion of Chinese from Great Falls but also headlining, “Chinks Must Go. Citizens of Fort Benton Will Establish a Steam Laundry and Force Them Out . . . A movement is on foot here to put in a steam laundry at an early date. Investigations which have been made by a number of business men who are heading the movement show that the Chinese laundries here take in about $1,000 per month, if anything a little over that sum. This is sufficient to make a steam laundry pay from the start, if its work is good and the charges reasonable . . . Chas. H. Green has been placed in charge of the canvas of the town, and hopes to be able to report definite results in 10 days.”
The local Fort Benton “exclusion” operation drew a headline in the River Press “To Banish The Chinese” adding that the two Chinese laundries in Benton employed 15 to 18 men at different times of the year and urged “the manifest benefit to the town from having white labor employed in place of Chinese is patent to everyone.” Apparently nothing came of this scheme for the press quietly dropped the matter, and the Chinese laundries of Fort Benton continued for many more years.
Despite the growing anti-Chinese mood in the county, life for Chinese in Choteau County went on. The first Chinese marriage to occur in the county was solemnized at Havre when Mr. Y. P. Yup, a resident of Havre, and Miss Low Dey Gum, of Portland, Oregon were married April 7, 1902, by Reverend Stringfellow in the Presbyterian Church.
Benton law enforcement and courts played a relatively even hand with the Chinese in town during this period. Cornelius Manning assaulted a waiter in a Chinese restaurant and was arrested. Judge Sullivan ordered Manning held to await the outcome of the Chinese man’s injuries since it appeared possible that Manning had fractured the man’s skull by a blow with a pitcher. In early May 1902, Marshal Sneath reacted to an altercation between the Chinese manager of Lee Hing restaurant and a white customer over the price of a meal. The customer drew a six-shooter, “giving him the best of the argument until the marshal appeared. Judge Sullivan imposed a fine of $25. Later that same day Marshal Sneath was attracted to a shack next to the Sam Lee laundry “by weird and awesome howls which indicated murder, at the least. But after forcing the door he was greeted with the bland assurance: ‘Dat all right. China boy got bellerake.’”
Ah Fong, resident of Fort Benton for almost 25 years, died in May 1902 with the River Press covering his funeral. “The funeral of Ah Fong took place this afternoon, interment being in Riverside cemetery for the present. Deceased has been a resident of this city most of the time for nearly a quarter of a century, but at one time had a restaurant at Havre. He was able to read and write English and was quite well off some years ago, owning some real estate here but during his sickness for two years past has been supported by his countrymen.”
After the turn of the century and perhaps in reaction to the increased anti-Chinese sentiment in the community, news coverage about Fort Benton’s small Chinatown and Chinese decreased in the River Press. Except for occasional arrests for registration lapses and rare incidents with the law, the Chinese became almost invisible in Fort Benton society. Even Chinese New Years passed with scant mention in the press.
In early February 1903, the River Press reported simply that Chinese New Year was being celebrated with “considerable enthusiasm by the Mongolian race. Besides witnessing their display of fireworks, all who pass their places of business are invited to partake of Chinese nuts, candy, and a cigar.”
Ung Wing, the cook at the Overland hotel was arraigned before Judge Sullivan during the afternoon of February 10, 1903, on a charge of assault with intent to kill. The case was set for 2 o’clock but J. E. Stranahan, attorney for the defendant, asked for a postponement of 24 hours to prepare the case, which was granted on the receipt of a $50 cash bond. The River Press reported, “It appears that orders (at the Overland) got mixed, which is done occasionally at the best regulated hotels, and as raw eggs and coffee cups accompanied by plates seemed to be the principal articles of the order that was mixed this morning, the cook and waiter made targets of each other with the order. The cook served the first of the order, this being a raw egg followed closely by a coffee cup, and the waiter returned a volley of cups and dishes, after which the cook took to the alley and left the order as it was. Judge Sullivan will rehash the served order tomorrow.” The feuding parties came to court the next day. Ung Wing, the defendant charged with assault, was fined $20. Luther Bain, who took the “poke” at the Chinaman, was fined $7.
Fire was a constant threat in frontier towns. Fort Benton had wisely positioned water wells along Front Street (marked now by brick circles) and consequently had few fires there. Main Street and other parts of town were not so fortunate. In March 1903, the Chinese laundry building near the sawmill at Fort Assinniboine burned down and about $1,000 worth of soldier’s laundry was destroyed.
Chinese New Year in Fort Benton in 1904 was celebrated February 17 with the usual festivities. In China the “years” number from the beginning of the reign of each emperor, and the present monarch, Quong Sue, was crowned about thirty years ago. One week later, in Havre an unidentified man was arrested for making a murderous assault upon a Chinaman. The man had been eating at a Chinese restaurant, and when asked to pay up he drew a knife and inflicted a wound on the Chinaman’s head that required surgical attention.
Lee Sing was taken into custody in late February 1904, because he could not produce his residence permit. He was taken to Helena March 2 by a deputy United States marshal to have a hearing before the federal authorities. In April eight Chinese were arrested at Fort Assinniboine because they could not produce the necessary residence papers. They were to have hearings before U. S. Commissioner McIntyre, and probably were deported.
James Soo, a Chinese patient, died of consumption in mid August 1904, at St. Clare hospital. Soo was formerly a resident of Harlem. In September 1905, fire destroyed a Chinese log cabin on the corner of St. John and Main Streets.
In a sobering report in the Great Falls Tribune in November 1905 under the headline, “Back to China to Die. ‘Many people have a mistaken idea about Chinamen,’ said Deputy United States Marshal Young, who passed through Great Falls last night, en route from Helena to Port Townsend, Wash., where he will deport one of the yellow race.
‘’The impression generally prevails that the average Chink has plenty of money, or, at least, is seldom ‘broke.’ That is a mistake. It has fallen to me to arrest scores of Chinamen, principally upon the charge of living in this country without the proper credentials, in violation of the exclusion act. I have found, in a majority of cases, that they were short of money and frequently in destitute circumstances.’
“In company with Emil Schmidt, a Helena saloonkeeper, Deputy Marshal Young was on his way to Havre, where a Chinaman named Wah Lee was arrested several days ago, charged with not having papers in his possession to show that he was entitled to remain in Uncle Sam’s domain.
“Wah Lee was on his way to the coast from Minot, N. D. Upon reaching Havre, a federal inspector ordered the almond-eyed traveler detained until such time as the case could be investigated. Lee appeared to be sick, and has since been able to sit up only at intervals.
“It is believed that Lee was taken ill at Minot and decided to return to his old home in the Flowery kingdom, probably to die. Deputy Marshal Young thinks that the Chinaman will be fortunate if he crosses the Pacific Ocean alive.”
On May 29, 1907, Jim Charlie, proprietor of the O. K. restaurant in Havre, was assaulted in his kitchen early Sunday morning by Charles Woods, a Black American, and badly beaten up. The Chinaman was rendered unconscious and Woods then rifled a trunk, stealing about $35, and made his getaway. There were two assailants, one from whom watched the dining room while the other went back into the kitchen. Woods was captured a short time later by Chief Bickle. No money could be found on him.
Lee Sing had escaped deportation in 1904, and was now a gardener, when he was arrested and required to pay a small fine for selling the ever present opium in 1907.
Across the Medicine Line in Canada, riots occurred in Lethbridge against the Chinese in December 1907. A dispatch from Lethbridge reported: “Because they believed that a prominent citizen had been murdered in a Chinese restaurant, 1,500 men raided the Oriental quarter late Christmas night and left a wreck behind.
“Restaurants and laundries were smashed; doors and windows and entire fronts of buildings were reduced to splinters.
“The regular police of the town were powerless and a brigade of mounted police had to be called out to quell the riot.
“It was just after 9 o’clock that the mob began to form.
“The story had got abroad that Harry Smith, one of the best known ranchers of the cattle district of which the city is the center, had been fatally wounded in a restaurant.
“Curiously enough, neither Smith nor anyone else had been hurt, but even the police were misled by the tale, and two Orientals were placed under arrest and charged with his murder.
“An indignant mob gathered opposite the eating house and there was talk of lynching.
“Suddenly some one threw a rock that smashed a front window. In a moment the crowd was beyond control.
“Bricks and stones were hurled and when the doors had been broken the tables and chairs and dishes inside were smashed.
“The Columbia and Alberta restaurants were literally wrecked. What could not be conveniently smashed by the few who could get inside was passed out to the street to the howling mob in waiting and there demolished.
“At 10 o’clock a detachment of the mounted police appeared and the crowd scattered. Hundreds of the rioters merely shifted the scene of the pillage. Three blocks away, opposite the Arlington hotel, they cleaned out another Chinese restaurant and mishandled two Orientals who were captured within.
“Mayor Galbraith and Magistrate Townsend both addressed the mob and urged it to disperse, and as all possible damage had been done, it obeyed.”
In late 1908 the Enterprise Restaurant was still operating under a succession of proprietors, Lee Gee in October, Lee Shone & Brother in November, and Lee Hong & Company in December.
In late January 1909, the River Press barely mention Chinese New Year saying only, “The Chinese residents of this locality are celebrating their New Year today, the festivities being of the usual kind.”
Later that year the Press reported, “ A Chinese cook, who was known by the name Charlie Kong and who has been employed by various residents of this vicinity, was found dead in his room this morning by one of his fellow countrymen. The deceased had been on the sick list the past three weeks, and death is supposed to have resulted from pneumonia.”
The old time Chinese were dying off. In December 1909, Ah Que, the Chinese who has made his home in Armington for so many years, died Tuesday night, December 7th. He was an old timer in this part of the country having lived in Fort Benton, Neihart and Armington for the last 30 years. The remains were taken to Helena by John Gray where burial will be made.
By 1910 the Chinese presence in Chouteau County had decreased to 40 with just 12 in Fort Benton, 18 in Havre, 2 in Chinook, 6 at Harlem, 1 on the lower Teton, and 1 on Eagle Creek. Dick Lee, a 49 year-old single man born in China and in the U.S. since 1876 served as cook on a ranch near Eagle Creek, probably the McMillan Ranch. Lewis Luna, a 63 year-old man born in China and in the U.S. since 1865 worked as cook on the sheep ranch where Charles Schwandt was manager.
In September 1910, the River Press headlined, “Attempted to Commit Murder. A man who gives his name as John Smith, and who has been employed in the Grand Union hotel kitchen as dishwasher, was arrested by the city marshal Sunday morning on a charge of attempting to commit murder. The prisoner is alleged to have assaulted a Chinese cook, generally known by the name of Toy, apparently without provocation. “The victim of the assault was struck several times with a cleaver, one of the blows fracturing the skull and causing a wound that may have serious results. He is under the care of a physician, and in the event of death the prisoner will face a charge of murder.”
In mid November, the jury term of the district court opened, with the first criminal case of the term being that of John Smith, the defendant charged with assault with intent to kill. The alleged assault took place in this city in September, the victim being a Chinese cook named Lee Chung.”
The trial progressed as reported in the Press, “The trial of John Smith, accused of a murderous assault upon a Chinese cook employed at the Grand Union hotel was in progress in the district court today, William Toy, of Helena, acting as interpreter during part of the testimony. The latter was to the effect that there had been no trouble between the men, and that the assault was without provocation. The defendant, in testifying on his own behalf, declared he had no knowledge of striking the Chinaman with a cleaver, his mind being a complete blank as to the incident. The case was given to the jury at a late hour this afternoon.” The jury in the case of John Smith returned a verdict of guilty, and sentence was pronounced: “John Smith, convicted of assault in the first degree, was given a sentence of eight years.” Despite the trend toward increased violent against the Chinese, they continued to receive even-handed justice in Chouteau County courts.
Chinese New Year January 1911 was ushered in at midnight by the usual firing of firecrackers, and for two days the Celestials kept open house, entertaining their friends with various kinds of Chinese delicacies.
For the first time since the passage of the bankruptcy law in 1910, a Montana Chinese took advantage of its provisions. In December 1911, Charlie Wang Luk, proprietor of the Chicago cafe at Havre, filed a petition for bankruptcy in the federal court at Helena. The Chinaman gives his liabilities at $589.50 and his assets at $1,280, the greater part of which, however, are of doubtful value.
The local Chinese residents celebrated their New Year February 1912 in the usual quaint style Saturday, this celebration probably being the last of a series that dates back hundreds of years. It has been the custom in China to regulate their calendar by the changes of the moon, making 360 days in the year, but under the new form of government recently adopted it is believed this will be changed to the Julian calendar.”
Lee Kim, a Chinaman against whom the county attorney had filed a charge of assault in the first degree, and who has been held in jail about six months, was allowed to plead guilty to assault in the third degree. In view of his long confinement in jail the court fined the defendant $150, which was paid.
In 1917 the River Press carried advertisements for The Enterprise Restaurant, which was still in business on Front Street with Quan Shol, Proprietor. Jack Lepley remembers hearing that as a boy George Veilleux and other boys “explored” the basement of this building to find a series of upper and lower bunks arranged for opium smokers in this very old opium den. Today, this is today’s the Liquor Store portion of R J’s Toggery.
In January 1919, the Great Falls Tribune reported, “Noted Bar Goes to Chinese Firm. Old Havre Saloon’s taxidermy specimens to Be Retained; Cafe Changes Hands.
“The Mint saloon building, owned by C. W. Young, has been leased until February 15, 1924, by Wong Kim, Wong Sam and William W. Lee, a firm of Chinese residents of Havre who now operate the California cafe, and they will take possession on or about February 15. It is their intention to remodel entirely the interior, but retain the present fancy decorations and famous specimens of taxidermy of which Mr. Young was always very proud. In Havre’s palmy days the Mint was considered the finest bar in the city and the new proprietors are to pay a monthly rental of $225 for the building.”
Even the new town of Geraldine had a Chinese resident. Lou Wong came to Geraldine from Lewistown to open a laundry. In November 1919, Lou Wong died in his laundry in Geraldine. His body was taken back to Lewistown where a funeral was held. His short obituary reported that Wong was an old man who was well known in both Montana and Utah.
Montana attitudes toward the Chinese ranged from total exclusion in Great Falls to toleration in Helena, Butte, and Fort Benton. The prevailing feeling in Fort Benton seemed most influenced by economic conditions and by 1920 Chouteau County homesteads was suffering hard times. By then the Chinese population in Fort Benton had declined to six, although they were still in demand as cooks. In that year young 27-year-old China-born Owen G. Fat owned and operated a restaurant on Front Street with Lew Shu as cook. This restaurant was located in the Culbertson House block, between Black American Peter Burnett’s shoe repair shop and Japanese-American Tommy Matsumoto’s restaurant. Matsumoto, born in Japan in 1874, had come to the U. S. in 1900, and operated the Club Café on Front Street for about twenty years before moving to Great Falls to open the popular Club Cafeteria on Central Avenue.
Two other Chinese residents in Fort Benton in 1920 were Chow Heery, who operated a restaurant on Front Street and elderly 75-year-old Tom Mun, who served as cook at Jere Sullivan’s popular Choteau House hotel. The final two Chinese resident in Fort Benton were young American-born Chinese, Wong G. Ham and Young Yen, who were the cooks at Charles Lepley’s Grand Union Hotel.
In January 1922, a fire that was caused by hot ashes dumped near a wooden fence would have developed into serious proportions had it not been for prompt action by Henry Hagen about 3:00 o’clock Tuesday morning. The blaze was discovered by one of the tenants of the Hagen block who gave the alarm, and when Mr. Hagen reached the scene of trouble in the rear of the Chinese restaurant, the flames were creeping toward a block of frame buildings that it would have been difficult to save.
The last Chinese in Fort Benton operated the Quan Café until February 1923, when cook Wong Ming hung himself. As reported in the River Press:
“Wong Ming Hangs Self. Wong Ming, cook at the Quan Café hung himself sometime during Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning. Upon opening up Wednesday morning, the proprietor, Tom Mum, noted Wong’s absence from his accustomed job and went upstairs to call him and upon opening the door found him, hanging from the door casing. Wong had driven a nail into the casing and used a small rope to carry out his purpose. No cause is known to exist for his act, more than that he was of a morose disposition and was given to times of despondency. He came here from Butte about two years ago and was 23 years of age. The body will be taken to Butte Thursday for burial, relatives of the Chinaboy living there.
“Tom Mum, who has conducted the Quan Café during the past few years, came here about eight years ago. He has decided to close the restaurant for the present at least and will go to Butte where he will secure employment. Mr. Mum is well liked and will be greatly missed by his patrons.”
Another perspective on this incident came from the Great Falls Tribune under the headline, “Cook Scolds Helper For Absence From Tasks But He Only Shivers In Answer; He Talks to Dead Man.
“Wong Ming, cook’s helper at the Quam restaurant here, was not on hand to help prepare breakfast Wednesday morning. The cook stormed around a while, did some of the odd jobs Wong was supposed to do, then went to Wong’s room fully determined to give the late sleeper a large fragment of his mind.
“Wong was standing just inside his room when the cook opened the door. He appeared to be shivering violently, a fact which the cook credited to the cold weather. All the cook said may not be translated here, but in substance his remarks were to the effect that Wong could warm himself by getting down into the kitchen and rustling about a fit.
“Wong made no reply, but kept on shivering. Thoroughly exasperated, the cook attempted to grab him by the arm. With the touch, Wong floated away from him a little ways and seemed to sort of stay suspended in the air. The cook was conscious of a prickling feeling along his spine, but he needed help in the kitchen. With a silent appeal to his ancestors, he tip-toed closer to Wong and this time took a grip on Wong’s arm that no shiver could break.
“Wong tumbled in a heap at the cook’s feet. Sometime during the night he had mounted a chair, driven a nail into the casing above the door, attached one end of a small rope to the nail and the other to his neck, kicked the chair away. He had been suspended, his feet just off the floor, when the cook opened the door and set the body to “shivering.” The cook did not notice the rope until the body fell.
“Employes of the restaurant say that Wong was in a cheerful mood when he finished up his work the night before and retired. His father and brother live in Butte, and it is expected that the body will be taken there for burial.”
Speculation at the time indicated that Wong Ming was hanged to scare-off the remaining Chinese in the town. Although never proven, the incident led Manager Tom Mun and staff to close the café the same day and leave for Butte. This sadly ended the era of the Celestial Kingdom in Fort Benton.
Despite the ending of the Chinese presence in Fort Benton in 1923, that was not the last word. The real ending appears to be the return of a Chinese man to the town about four years later, in 1927. Wally Morger, who was four years old at that time and the only son of the Fort Benton Town Marshal Earl Morger, remembers that a Chinese man named Chow Hoy approached Marshal Morger and asked if he would be interested in buying his home. The house had been built in 1912 in the Delatraz addition, and Chow Hoy had bought it in 1917. Chow Hoy wanted $500 for the house and four 35 ft. by 120 ft. lots. He indicated that the ethnic situation in town directed against the Chinese had fomented threats against him, a sentiment not unique to Fort Benton.
Marshal Morger approached his two uncles, Ed and Henry Davis, merchants in town, and managed to secure the money to seal the deal. Although the house was a small one bedroom, one bath home, it was well built and remains in the family today. Randy Morger purchased the home, at 1810 Franklin Street, three years ago. Wally concluded his story by saying, “The home holds many special memories for the Morger family.” To which we might add, the early Chinese on the Upper Missouri left many memorable stories we can all enjoy.
[Sources for all four parts: U.S. Census; Great Falls Yesterday, p. 12; Benton Record Weekly 20 Sep 1978; BRW 13 February 1880; BRW 27 February 1880; BRW 19 March 1880; BRW 2 Jun 1881;BRW 16 Jun 1881; BRW 18 August 1881; BRW 23 February 1882; BRW 16 March 1882; BRW 23 March 1882; BRW 17 August – 14 September 1882; BRW 5 October 1882; BRW 12 October 1882; BRW 2 June 1883; BRW 25 August 1883; Fort Benton River Press Weekly 2 April 1884; FBRPW 3 September 1884; FBRPW 4 February 1885; Great Falls Tribune Weekly 26 Dec 1885; FBRPW 20 Jan 1886; FBRPW 24 Feb 1886; FBRPW 15 January 1887; FBRPW 16 Nov 1887; FBRPW 8 April 1890; FBRPW 8 April 1891; FBRPW 24 Jun 1891; Great Falls Leader Daily 6 August 1891; FBRPW 10 Feb 1892; FBRPW 20 Jul 1892; FBRPW 12 August 1891; FBRPW 26 August 1891; FBRPW 29 June 1892; GFTD 4 Jan 1893; FBRPW 21 Feb 1894; FBRPW 6 March 1894; FBRPW 3 April 1895; FBRPW 28 August 1895; FBRPW 4 Feb 1900; FBRPW 27 Feb 1900; FBRPW 20 Mar 1901; FBRPW 2 Oct 1901; FBRPW 16 Oct 1901; Great Falls Leader Daily 24 Oct 1901; FBRPW 29 Jan 1902; FBRPW 5 Feb 1902; FBRPW 26 Feb 1902; GFTD 29 March 1902; FBRPW 2 Apr 1902; GFTD 7 Apr 1902; FBRPW 9 Apr 1902; FBRPW 30 Apr 1902; FBRPW 7 May 1902; FBRPW 14 May 1902; FBRPW 4 Feb 1903; FBRPW 11 Feb 1903; FBRPW 25 Mar 1903; FBRPW 17 Feb 1904; FBRPW 24 Feb 1904; FBRPW 2 Mar 1904; FBRPW 13 Apr 1904; FBRPW 17 Aug 1904; GFTD 3 Nov 1905; GFLD 4 Nov 1905; GFTD 30 May 1906; GFTD 30 Dec 1907; GFLD 11 Dec 1909; FBRPW 14 Sep 1910; FBRPW 16 Nov 1910; FBRPW 23 Nov 1910; FBRPW 24 Feb 1912; FBRPW 31 Jul 1912; GFTD 20 Jan 1919, p. 7; GFTD 13 Nov 1919; FBRPW 4 Jan 1922; GFTD 15 Feb 1923; FBRPW 21 Feb 1923; Ltr Sing Lee to C. E. Conrad 28 Oct 1898, Small Collection 185 Mansfield Library, U of M]
Showing posts with label Chinese. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chinese. Show all posts
03 August 2010
09 November 2009
"Aliens Alive and Aliens Dead": The Celestial Kingdom on the Upper Missouri Part II
“Aliens Alive and Aliens Dead”: The Celestial Kingdom on the Upper Missouri: Part II
By Ken Robison
This continues the series of frontier historical sketches by historians at the Joel F. Overholser Historical Research Center in Fort Benton.
This continues the story of the Chinese in historic Choteau County and Fort Benton. Despite the derision of “Chinamen,” “Mongolians,” and “Heathen Chinese,” the Benton Chinese were tolerated, owned businesses, gave testimony in courts, and maintained their distinct cultural identify within the community—often to the delight, and sometimes to the disgust, of other Bentonites. In March 1881 Ah Sing operated the Benton Wash House at Main and St. John, where the Hagen block is today. Two years later, the Record reported on another laundry, “The house used by Mr. Culbertson as a dining hall during the time he was building his new hotel--and which is on St. John street on the opposite side of the street from the Pacific Hotel, has been rented by a Chinaman said to be Quong Lee, for a laundry, and he is making a sewer on the edge of the sidewalk from his laundry to the Missouri river, running along the sidewalk past Miller’s saloon, which he expects to have completed to-day or to-morrow.”
Chinese Laundryman on the Streets of Fort Benton
In August and September 1882 advertisements appeared in the Benton Record for the “Oriental Saloon Bakery and Restaurant with Choice Wines and Liquors Constantly on Hand Open Day and Night, Hop Lee, Proprietor.” In February 1883 Chung Kee opened another Saloon Bakery and Restaurant. The Benton Record noted in April 1883 “Chinamen seem to be the best, or at least the most successful vegetable gardeners in this vicinity. One of those industrious pig-tails is already hawking young onions and spinach, and had a good stock of celery as late as the first of February. They are not very modest in charging for their produce, however.”
In June 1883 five Chinese arrived in Benton by the Helena stagecoach intending to start a Chinese store in William Foster’s old Phoenix Exchange saloon building on Main Street—Foster, himself, was well remembered for skipping town and leaving lots of unpaid bills. The Benton Record reported their arrival and playfully added, “They are reported to be plentifully supplied with the condign, and will probably carry a good stock. This has long been a great want in Benton. No place can hope to flourish unless it contains a store where you can purchase fans painted with hump-backed Chinamen and impossible swans, or blue vases with green lizards crawling over them, and other things to suggest the horrible possibility that you’ve got ‘em again.”
The Chinese in Montana in the 1880s were a mobile population ranging out from the larger Chinese centers in Helena and Butte to outlying areas such as Fort Benton, Sun River, and Fort Assinaboine. In addition, the Montana Chinese traveled to and from San Francisco and even to and from China with surprising frequency. Perhaps the best insight into this mobility comes from a report in October 1882 in the Benton Record, headlined “A Celestial Returning to the Flowery Kingdom:
“Ah Too leaves to-morrow morning for China. He and Char Lee in partnership carry on the laundry opposite Murphy, Neel & Co. on Front Street [today’s site of the Grand Union]. Ah Too has been a resident of this country for a little over eighteen years, more than two years of which he has lived in Benton, and the remainder of the time in San Francisco.
“During the time he has sojourned in this country he has returned to China four times and he is now going back for the fifth, and is uncertain whether he will ever return again to this country or not, but will be governed by circumstances in that respect after he returns from China. He expects to go direct from Benton to San Francisco, and there take one of the ocean steamers to Hong Kong and from thence to Canton, and there he will embark on one of the boats peculiar to that country and go up the Canton river about 500 miles to his native place, Wam Boo, a town of about 3,000 inhabitants, immediately upon the river, and in the Province of Canton, and where he expects to arrive about the tenth of next November.”
Chinese Temple in Virginia City, Montana
The next week, October 12, 1882, Sim Sing, who had just arrived in Benton a few weeks previously to form a partnership with Hop Lee at the Oriental Saloon, presented the editor of the Benton Record with “a newspaper printed in the
celestial kingdom, at Canton, as a token of acknowledgment of the obligations which he is under to us for noticing the departure this morning for China of his friend Ah Too. He assured us that the paper contained news of the highest importance and interest, and everyone connected with the establishment examined it until they almost become cross-eyed, and attempts at deciphering it will have to be suspended until a more fitting opportunity.”
The Benton Chinese followed events closely in other communities in Montana. In March 1882 the Record reported from Fort Assinaboine that “Ah Wan, a Chinaman who has been working for one of the officers of this post was found this morning in a cellar of the house hanging dead from a beam, having committed suicide. The cause of the act was that John could not rest easy knowing that his father had killed another Chinaman. The Chinamen at the post say the Devil came after him . . . The body of Ah Wan, the Chinaman who committed suicide by hanging at Assinaboine the other day, has been sent to Helena for burial.”
The Benton Record, always fascinated by the Chinese, became more harshly racist in its later years, writing in 1883 “The Chinese must go. Ah Hay, or Gee Whiz, or some other euphoniously titled Celestial, left by the Helena stage this morning to make his home hereafter among his Mongolian brethren at the Capital.” In June 1883, the Record reported with horror and alarm on “The public sale to a Chinaman of a squaw in our very midst, for the trifling compensation of two sacks of flour. Does slavery exist amongst us in this year of universal enlightenment? Are human beings to be bought and sold upon our public streets, and at so small a price as that mentioned? Are Chinamen not only to pauperize our working classes, but enslave the original owners of this splendid continent. Why, where will they stop? If they would buy a squaw for two sacks of flour soon they will not hesitate to buy a white woman for four sacks, and so on until they will have us all in a condition of servitude.”
Most Chinese in Fort Benton were unmarried, and few Chinese women lived there. In April 1884 the more tolerant Fort Benton River Press reported on the marriage of Ah Son, of Benton, and his bride Ah Hou, of Bozeman in Helena at the Mount Helena House. The couple was married “melican fashion” by Judge Sterling. The Press continued, “Mr. Ah Son and wife, formerly the handsome and charming Miss Ah Hou, of Bozeman, who were recently married at Helena, arrived in the city on yesterday’s coach, and have now quietly settled down to the enjoyment of domestic affairs.”
A party of hungry travelers on Montana’s Benton Road arrived at the 28-Mile Springs stage stop late one evening in September 1884. Asking proprietor Colonel Andrew Jackson Vance if they could get anything to eat, he replied, “I don’t know; it depends on the Chinaman. If you can get him up, all right.” The travelers went to the Chinese man’s room, awakened him, and were informed they could get nothing at that time of night. The group reported back to Vance, but he kept deferring to the party to find a means to get the cook up. Finally, a traveler told Vance, “Well, you are the boss.” Vance replied, “You bet I am,” and proceeded to the room, roused the sleeping Chinaman, and raised him by the hair. “Throw him out of the window,” shouted the travelers. So “John” was thrown out into the night. The unhappy Chinese cook went into the kitchen, and the guests had a good supper. But, “the Chinaman got even by giving them in the morning the most execrable breakfast they ever sat down to.”
At 28-Mile Springs Proprietor Vance raised his “Chinaman” by his hair. Sketch in 1901 Anaconda Standard.
In February 1885 the River Press reported that an unusual event occurred at McDevitt & William’s saloon when a prize fight was arranged in the morning and the fight occurred in the afternoon between “Nosey, the Kid” and “Chung Lung, a Chinaman, under the rules of the London prize ring.” Later that month the Chinese residents of Fort Benton “commenced celebrating their New Year to-day in good style with the firing of immense fire crackers and other harmless but noisy amusements. The crackers made as much noise as a mountain howitzer, and caused many of our citizens to think the reservation bill had passed.” The next week on a typically wild evening in Benton “a shooting scrape took place in the Chinese saloon on Main street, during which John Lloyd, who is well known here, was shot through the hand and in the leg, shattering that member above the knee, by a Chinaman, known as Arthur.” Meanwhile, in January 1886 Lee Gee opened the Enterprise House in the new Cummings Building.
By the mid 1880s attitudes toward Chinese in some communities in Montana were hardening. From its founding in 1884, workingmen in Great Falls, with support of town leaders, had established a “don’t let the sun set on you in our town” Chinese exclusion policy. That harsh policy prevailed in Great Falls prohibiting settlement of any Chinese in the city until the mid-1930s.
Some years later Worden P. Wren, the agent for Murphy-Maclay & Company in the village of Great Falls, recalled the incident with the first Chinese in Great Falls:
“Chinese were good laundrymen, but did collars and cuffs so poorly that Mr. Wren sent his to Troy, New York to be laundered while he was in Fort Benton and even after he came into the Falls. In 1884 and 1885 other laundry was sent from the Falls to Fort Benton or Sun River, but early in 1885 an intrepid young Chinaman came from Sun River to start a laundry. Soon after he hung his shingle, several boys with a strong antipathy for the yellow race tried to persuade him to leave town. Pat Hughes led the crowd. He refused to comply with their request. They told him they were going to hang him with a long rope they had with them. He was led to the river, placed in a skiff with two men at the oars, and started for the opposite shore. The crowd on the bank yelled ‘Hang him’ ‘Hang him!’ It was getting dark; the Chinaman was so frightened he jumped overboard in the middle of the stream. The men at the oars and on the bank feared he had been drowned and the next morning they were not to be found. The streets were deserted. The Chinaman however, reached shore, went to the Townsite office, knocked on the door, and was admitted by Jim Matkin who gave him dry clothes to wear until his had dried sufficiently to put on again. The next day he left secretly for Sun River. The news was well circulated around the country, and Great Falls was visited by no more Chinese. Whenever one came to town, he carefully avoided the hotel, and spent the night locked in Murphy-Maclay’s store until Mr.Wren let him out the next morning. This was the first labor trouble in Great Falls.”
In January 1886 the River Press brought news to the Benton Chinese that “the Chinamen at Maiden received notice to quit the camp and not having complied with the same were last week escorted out of town by a band of masked men and instructed to keep right on going. They went.”
Anti-Chinese sentiment throughout the United States was building with the first Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. In February 1886 the River Press reported that Howell Harris had returned from Oregon with news that “there is great excitement over the Chinese question and the recent troubles in Seattle. There is a general feeling against the Chinese, who are controlled by the companies in San Francisco, although Mr. Harris is of the opinion that the habits of the Celestials in that section has probably more to do with the determination to rid the country of them than anything else. The citizens have tried every peaceable means to rid themselves of Chinese, but without avail, and it has been the general belief that agitation or legislation would bring no relief, and the people took summary measures to compel them to go, feeling sure that this would be the only means of calling public attention to the evil. That something must be done, and that speedily, is evident.”
One year later, in 1887, a Chinese man was held up and robbed in Benton. Zack Larsen and Rube Houser were arrested on the strength of damaging circumstantial evidence. The two were examined before Judge Crane and bound over to await action by the grand jury. More White-Chinese violence, almost unheard of in earlier years in Montana, occurred later that year when the River Press reported, “Chinaman Hong, who assaulted a man the other day with deadly weapons, two beer bottles and a tack hammer, was bound over by Judge Luke in the sum of $500 to appear before the grand jury. Hong is congratulating himself over the fact that in his excitement he did not make the fatal mistake of hitting his man with two bottles of Benton China whiskey. If this had occurred he is satisfied he would have gone to jail without benefit of bail, on a charge of murder in the first degree. As it is Hong furnished bail and is holding just as good hands as ever in the great American game of poker.”
In 1905 The Great Falls Leader carried a humorous story about the “Resignation of Chinese Cook” in 1887. The Leader wrote, “As one of the souvenirs of the old army post at Fort Shaw, which was abandoned by the war department for such purposes a number of years ago, Mr. F. Geo. Heldt, who during the days of that post was situated there as a member of the J. H. McKnight company and was in charge of its business at that place, retains a letter which was written by a Chinese cook employed by the company in its restaurant at the post. The latter complains of the methods by which the man in charge of the restaurant, Mr. Ferg, conducted the place. The cook was able to read and write in English, but the letter which he addressed to Mr. McKnight was so peculiarly constructed that it is evident the writer made use of a dictionary and employed words far beyond his grasp to express himself. The letter [which may drive you batty] follows:
‘November 10th, 1887, Fort Shaw, Montana.
Messrs. McKnight.
Dear Sir
I am very gratefully to you and every gentlemen and ladies, so kindness, and so nice place to work for. I am very glad to have it, but Mr. Ferg so grudge and manifest at frequently make me very hard to stay, the only trouble he is, but I tend to the place never had any not well of it and did to try how I possible, to do all boarders satisfy and rejoice. just work at every things take what they want whole day I never say a word and continually the meals in time and the morning he get up at 7 o’clock or half past 7 and take his breakfast then he way out and I wait on the table, some day in afternoon he went out to supper time nor come back and I wait on also, never speak a word to him. I suppose probably was a dutition, and some times may be I feel not well, he will say I get made and since in last Sunday morning make some cocoa for breakfast to boil over sat on the stove keep warm, then he take a cup put some cool milk on it and put little cocoa to it mix up and he say what is so cold, and I say the cool milk make so if put some ice on it more cold too and he just so fierce and he say G___ d____ wish to hold a log wood to lick me, so bottom and speak so many nonsence. I could not stay with and so for I refuse my place in 15th this month. If he was a good man I will stay a long time and when I go will send a good man to take my place before I way, but he was such circumstances I prefer not to stay. I am very sorry to say. I use to explication what do I be, and he was so highton and so lazy. on to do any work then. So and so I let to know
Yours respectfully servant
AH WAI’
At the bottom of the letter was the notation of Mr. McKnght, made before sending the letter back to Mr. Heldt at Fort Shaw, which read as follows: “What is the matter with the Chinaman?—if Ferg is not attending to his business better stir him up.”
Worden P. Wren recalled another incident involving Chinese burial bones in early Great Falls, and his story was written in Great Falls Yesterday.
“Murphy-Maclay and Co. were agents for the stage line to Lewistown and had a quantity of bedding and other things in the basement awaiting shipment elsewhere. Some of it got wet, so Mr. Wren had the store porter take a coal oil lamp to the cellar, sort out the packages, and throw in the river any that were badly damaged. The porter asked what should be done with one box he found. Mr. Wren told him to open it up and see if it was of any value. In the box were Chinese papers, incense, Chinese candies, paper covered with Chinese writing, and at the bottom, a skull. The articles were returned to the box, and Joe McKnight of Fort Shaw brought a Chinaman to the store to interpret the writing. A Chinese had been murdered at Lewistown--knocked in the head with an axe--and the remains were to go to China via San Francisco, for burial. Mr. Wren wrote Chinese headquarters in San Francisco telling them a box was held here awaiting money for express from Lewistown to China, but no reply was ever received to the letter so the box was taken to the warehouse and put on the crossbeams where it stayed for five years. Some boys found it, took it down, and no one knows what eventually became of the poor Chinaman’s remains.”
Chinese Section of Fort Benton in 1888 with two Chinese restaurants on Front Street and a Chinese Laundry near today's Hagen Building. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map 1888.
The absence of the 1890 U. S. Census [long ago destroyed by fire] precludes detailed analysis of the Chinese in Choteau County at that time. Some insight into the Chinese community in Fort Benton in the late 1880s comes from licenses paid and issued by the Choteau County treasurer during 1889. Wun Ling held both gaming and saloon licenses, while Hop Ling and Chin Hin held gaming licenses. King Faun held licenses to operate both saloon and gaming. Wah Soo operated a laundry, and Wah Sing held both saloon and gaming licenses. Sing Lee owned both a laundry and a restaurant. Wong Quot bought the Enterprise Restaurant from Sing Lee, while Sam Lun ran the White Elephant on Front Street.
The River Press made clear the sentiment of much of the Benton community in April 1891, editorializing “We understand that a Chinese resurrection will take place here next Saturday. The remains of a Chinaman, who died here several years ago, will be exhumed, his bones carefully secured and polished up--even to the smallest bone in the body--when they will be carefully packed, in the smallest square box that will hold them, and sent back to China. These people--the Chinese-- will not allow even their bones to rest in American soil. They are aliens alive and aliens dead, and have nothing in common with our people. It would be better for them and better for our people if every one of them could be sent back within the next twelve months to their own land.”
By Ken Robison
This continues the series of frontier historical sketches by historians at the Joel F. Overholser Historical Research Center in Fort Benton.
This continues the story of the Chinese in historic Choteau County and Fort Benton. Despite the derision of “Chinamen,” “Mongolians,” and “Heathen Chinese,” the Benton Chinese were tolerated, owned businesses, gave testimony in courts, and maintained their distinct cultural identify within the community—often to the delight, and sometimes to the disgust, of other Bentonites. In March 1881 Ah Sing operated the Benton Wash House at Main and St. John, where the Hagen block is today. Two years later, the Record reported on another laundry, “The house used by Mr. Culbertson as a dining hall during the time he was building his new hotel--and which is on St. John street on the opposite side of the street from the Pacific Hotel, has been rented by a Chinaman said to be Quong Lee, for a laundry, and he is making a sewer on the edge of the sidewalk from his laundry to the Missouri river, running along the sidewalk past Miller’s saloon, which he expects to have completed to-day or to-morrow.”
Chinese Laundryman on the Streets of Fort Benton
In August and September 1882 advertisements appeared in the Benton Record for the “Oriental Saloon Bakery and Restaurant with Choice Wines and Liquors Constantly on Hand Open Day and Night, Hop Lee, Proprietor.” In February 1883 Chung Kee opened another Saloon Bakery and Restaurant. The Benton Record noted in April 1883 “Chinamen seem to be the best, or at least the most successful vegetable gardeners in this vicinity. One of those industrious pig-tails is already hawking young onions and spinach, and had a good stock of celery as late as the first of February. They are not very modest in charging for their produce, however.”
In June 1883 five Chinese arrived in Benton by the Helena stagecoach intending to start a Chinese store in William Foster’s old Phoenix Exchange saloon building on Main Street—Foster, himself, was well remembered for skipping town and leaving lots of unpaid bills. The Benton Record reported their arrival and playfully added, “They are reported to be plentifully supplied with the condign, and will probably carry a good stock. This has long been a great want in Benton. No place can hope to flourish unless it contains a store where you can purchase fans painted with hump-backed Chinamen and impossible swans, or blue vases with green lizards crawling over them, and other things to suggest the horrible possibility that you’ve got ‘em again.”
The Chinese in Montana in the 1880s were a mobile population ranging out from the larger Chinese centers in Helena and Butte to outlying areas such as Fort Benton, Sun River, and Fort Assinaboine. In addition, the Montana Chinese traveled to and from San Francisco and even to and from China with surprising frequency. Perhaps the best insight into this mobility comes from a report in October 1882 in the Benton Record, headlined “A Celestial Returning to the Flowery Kingdom:
“Ah Too leaves to-morrow morning for China. He and Char Lee in partnership carry on the laundry opposite Murphy, Neel & Co. on Front Street [today’s site of the Grand Union]. Ah Too has been a resident of this country for a little over eighteen years, more than two years of which he has lived in Benton, and the remainder of the time in San Francisco.
“During the time he has sojourned in this country he has returned to China four times and he is now going back for the fifth, and is uncertain whether he will ever return again to this country or not, but will be governed by circumstances in that respect after he returns from China. He expects to go direct from Benton to San Francisco, and there take one of the ocean steamers to Hong Kong and from thence to Canton, and there he will embark on one of the boats peculiar to that country and go up the Canton river about 500 miles to his native place, Wam Boo, a town of about 3,000 inhabitants, immediately upon the river, and in the Province of Canton, and where he expects to arrive about the tenth of next November.”
Chinese Temple in Virginia City, Montana
The next week, October 12, 1882, Sim Sing, who had just arrived in Benton a few weeks previously to form a partnership with Hop Lee at the Oriental Saloon, presented the editor of the Benton Record with “a newspaper printed in the
celestial kingdom, at Canton, as a token of acknowledgment of the obligations which he is under to us for noticing the departure this morning for China of his friend Ah Too. He assured us that the paper contained news of the highest importance and interest, and everyone connected with the establishment examined it until they almost become cross-eyed, and attempts at deciphering it will have to be suspended until a more fitting opportunity.”
The Benton Chinese followed events closely in other communities in Montana. In March 1882 the Record reported from Fort Assinaboine that “Ah Wan, a Chinaman who has been working for one of the officers of this post was found this morning in a cellar of the house hanging dead from a beam, having committed suicide. The cause of the act was that John could not rest easy knowing that his father had killed another Chinaman. The Chinamen at the post say the Devil came after him . . . The body of Ah Wan, the Chinaman who committed suicide by hanging at Assinaboine the other day, has been sent to Helena for burial.”
The Benton Record, always fascinated by the Chinese, became more harshly racist in its later years, writing in 1883 “The Chinese must go. Ah Hay, or Gee Whiz, or some other euphoniously titled Celestial, left by the Helena stage this morning to make his home hereafter among his Mongolian brethren at the Capital.” In June 1883, the Record reported with horror and alarm on “The public sale to a Chinaman of a squaw in our very midst, for the trifling compensation of two sacks of flour. Does slavery exist amongst us in this year of universal enlightenment? Are human beings to be bought and sold upon our public streets, and at so small a price as that mentioned? Are Chinamen not only to pauperize our working classes, but enslave the original owners of this splendid continent. Why, where will they stop? If they would buy a squaw for two sacks of flour soon they will not hesitate to buy a white woman for four sacks, and so on until they will have us all in a condition of servitude.”
Most Chinese in Fort Benton were unmarried, and few Chinese women lived there. In April 1884 the more tolerant Fort Benton River Press reported on the marriage of Ah Son, of Benton, and his bride Ah Hou, of Bozeman in Helena at the Mount Helena House. The couple was married “melican fashion” by Judge Sterling. The Press continued, “Mr. Ah Son and wife, formerly the handsome and charming Miss Ah Hou, of Bozeman, who were recently married at Helena, arrived in the city on yesterday’s coach, and have now quietly settled down to the enjoyment of domestic affairs.”
A party of hungry travelers on Montana’s Benton Road arrived at the 28-Mile Springs stage stop late one evening in September 1884. Asking proprietor Colonel Andrew Jackson Vance if they could get anything to eat, he replied, “I don’t know; it depends on the Chinaman. If you can get him up, all right.” The travelers went to the Chinese man’s room, awakened him, and were informed they could get nothing at that time of night. The group reported back to Vance, but he kept deferring to the party to find a means to get the cook up. Finally, a traveler told Vance, “Well, you are the boss.” Vance replied, “You bet I am,” and proceeded to the room, roused the sleeping Chinaman, and raised him by the hair. “Throw him out of the window,” shouted the travelers. So “John” was thrown out into the night. The unhappy Chinese cook went into the kitchen, and the guests had a good supper. But, “the Chinaman got even by giving them in the morning the most execrable breakfast they ever sat down to.”
At 28-Mile Springs Proprietor Vance raised his “Chinaman” by his hair. Sketch in 1901 Anaconda Standard.
In February 1885 the River Press reported that an unusual event occurred at McDevitt & William’s saloon when a prize fight was arranged in the morning and the fight occurred in the afternoon between “Nosey, the Kid” and “Chung Lung, a Chinaman, under the rules of the London prize ring.” Later that month the Chinese residents of Fort Benton “commenced celebrating their New Year to-day in good style with the firing of immense fire crackers and other harmless but noisy amusements. The crackers made as much noise as a mountain howitzer, and caused many of our citizens to think the reservation bill had passed.” The next week on a typically wild evening in Benton “a shooting scrape took place in the Chinese saloon on Main street, during which John Lloyd, who is well known here, was shot through the hand and in the leg, shattering that member above the knee, by a Chinaman, known as Arthur.” Meanwhile, in January 1886 Lee Gee opened the Enterprise House in the new Cummings Building.
By the mid 1880s attitudes toward Chinese in some communities in Montana were hardening. From its founding in 1884, workingmen in Great Falls, with support of town leaders, had established a “don’t let the sun set on you in our town” Chinese exclusion policy. That harsh policy prevailed in Great Falls prohibiting settlement of any Chinese in the city until the mid-1930s.
Some years later Worden P. Wren, the agent for Murphy-Maclay & Company in the village of Great Falls, recalled the incident with the first Chinese in Great Falls:
“Chinese were good laundrymen, but did collars and cuffs so poorly that Mr. Wren sent his to Troy, New York to be laundered while he was in Fort Benton and even after he came into the Falls. In 1884 and 1885 other laundry was sent from the Falls to Fort Benton or Sun River, but early in 1885 an intrepid young Chinaman came from Sun River to start a laundry. Soon after he hung his shingle, several boys with a strong antipathy for the yellow race tried to persuade him to leave town. Pat Hughes led the crowd. He refused to comply with their request. They told him they were going to hang him with a long rope they had with them. He was led to the river, placed in a skiff with two men at the oars, and started for the opposite shore. The crowd on the bank yelled ‘Hang him’ ‘Hang him!’ It was getting dark; the Chinaman was so frightened he jumped overboard in the middle of the stream. The men at the oars and on the bank feared he had been drowned and the next morning they were not to be found. The streets were deserted. The Chinaman however, reached shore, went to the Townsite office, knocked on the door, and was admitted by Jim Matkin who gave him dry clothes to wear until his had dried sufficiently to put on again. The next day he left secretly for Sun River. The news was well circulated around the country, and Great Falls was visited by no more Chinese. Whenever one came to town, he carefully avoided the hotel, and spent the night locked in Murphy-Maclay’s store until Mr.Wren let him out the next morning. This was the first labor trouble in Great Falls.”
In January 1886 the River Press brought news to the Benton Chinese that “the Chinamen at Maiden received notice to quit the camp and not having complied with the same were last week escorted out of town by a band of masked men and instructed to keep right on going. They went.”
Anti-Chinese sentiment throughout the United States was building with the first Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. In February 1886 the River Press reported that Howell Harris had returned from Oregon with news that “there is great excitement over the Chinese question and the recent troubles in Seattle. There is a general feeling against the Chinese, who are controlled by the companies in San Francisco, although Mr. Harris is of the opinion that the habits of the Celestials in that section has probably more to do with the determination to rid the country of them than anything else. The citizens have tried every peaceable means to rid themselves of Chinese, but without avail, and it has been the general belief that agitation or legislation would bring no relief, and the people took summary measures to compel them to go, feeling sure that this would be the only means of calling public attention to the evil. That something must be done, and that speedily, is evident.”
One year later, in 1887, a Chinese man was held up and robbed in Benton. Zack Larsen and Rube Houser were arrested on the strength of damaging circumstantial evidence. The two were examined before Judge Crane and bound over to await action by the grand jury. More White-Chinese violence, almost unheard of in earlier years in Montana, occurred later that year when the River Press reported, “Chinaman Hong, who assaulted a man the other day with deadly weapons, two beer bottles and a tack hammer, was bound over by Judge Luke in the sum of $500 to appear before the grand jury. Hong is congratulating himself over the fact that in his excitement he did not make the fatal mistake of hitting his man with two bottles of Benton China whiskey. If this had occurred he is satisfied he would have gone to jail without benefit of bail, on a charge of murder in the first degree. As it is Hong furnished bail and is holding just as good hands as ever in the great American game of poker.”
In 1905 The Great Falls Leader carried a humorous story about the “Resignation of Chinese Cook” in 1887. The Leader wrote, “As one of the souvenirs of the old army post at Fort Shaw, which was abandoned by the war department for such purposes a number of years ago, Mr. F. Geo. Heldt, who during the days of that post was situated there as a member of the J. H. McKnight company and was in charge of its business at that place, retains a letter which was written by a Chinese cook employed by the company in its restaurant at the post. The latter complains of the methods by which the man in charge of the restaurant, Mr. Ferg, conducted the place. The cook was able to read and write in English, but the letter which he addressed to Mr. McKnight was so peculiarly constructed that it is evident the writer made use of a dictionary and employed words far beyond his grasp to express himself. The letter [which may drive you batty] follows:
‘November 10th, 1887, Fort Shaw, Montana.
Messrs. McKnight.
Dear Sir
I am very gratefully to you and every gentlemen and ladies, so kindness, and so nice place to work for. I am very glad to have it, but Mr. Ferg so grudge and manifest at frequently make me very hard to stay, the only trouble he is, but I tend to the place never had any not well of it and did to try how I possible, to do all boarders satisfy and rejoice. just work at every things take what they want whole day I never say a word and continually the meals in time and the morning he get up at 7 o’clock or half past 7 and take his breakfast then he way out and I wait on the table, some day in afternoon he went out to supper time nor come back and I wait on also, never speak a word to him. I suppose probably was a dutition, and some times may be I feel not well, he will say I get made and since in last Sunday morning make some cocoa for breakfast to boil over sat on the stove keep warm, then he take a cup put some cool milk on it and put little cocoa to it mix up and he say what is so cold, and I say the cool milk make so if put some ice on it more cold too and he just so fierce and he say G___ d____ wish to hold a log wood to lick me, so bottom and speak so many nonsence. I could not stay with and so for I refuse my place in 15th this month. If he was a good man I will stay a long time and when I go will send a good man to take my place before I way, but he was such circumstances I prefer not to stay. I am very sorry to say. I use to explication what do I be, and he was so highton and so lazy. on to do any work then. So and so I let to know
Yours respectfully servant
AH WAI’
At the bottom of the letter was the notation of Mr. McKnght, made before sending the letter back to Mr. Heldt at Fort Shaw, which read as follows: “What is the matter with the Chinaman?—if Ferg is not attending to his business better stir him up.”
Worden P. Wren recalled another incident involving Chinese burial bones in early Great Falls, and his story was written in Great Falls Yesterday.
“Murphy-Maclay and Co. were agents for the stage line to Lewistown and had a quantity of bedding and other things in the basement awaiting shipment elsewhere. Some of it got wet, so Mr. Wren had the store porter take a coal oil lamp to the cellar, sort out the packages, and throw in the river any that were badly damaged. The porter asked what should be done with one box he found. Mr. Wren told him to open it up and see if it was of any value. In the box were Chinese papers, incense, Chinese candies, paper covered with Chinese writing, and at the bottom, a skull. The articles were returned to the box, and Joe McKnight of Fort Shaw brought a Chinaman to the store to interpret the writing. A Chinese had been murdered at Lewistown--knocked in the head with an axe--and the remains were to go to China via San Francisco, for burial. Mr. Wren wrote Chinese headquarters in San Francisco telling them a box was held here awaiting money for express from Lewistown to China, but no reply was ever received to the letter so the box was taken to the warehouse and put on the crossbeams where it stayed for five years. Some boys found it, took it down, and no one knows what eventually became of the poor Chinaman’s remains.”
Chinese Section of Fort Benton in 1888 with two Chinese restaurants on Front Street and a Chinese Laundry near today's Hagen Building. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map 1888.
The absence of the 1890 U. S. Census [long ago destroyed by fire] precludes detailed analysis of the Chinese in Choteau County at that time. Some insight into the Chinese community in Fort Benton in the late 1880s comes from licenses paid and issued by the Choteau County treasurer during 1889. Wun Ling held both gaming and saloon licenses, while Hop Ling and Chin Hin held gaming licenses. King Faun held licenses to operate both saloon and gaming. Wah Soo operated a laundry, and Wah Sing held both saloon and gaming licenses. Sing Lee owned both a laundry and a restaurant. Wong Quot bought the Enterprise Restaurant from Sing Lee, while Sam Lun ran the White Elephant on Front Street.
The River Press made clear the sentiment of much of the Benton community in April 1891, editorializing “We understand that a Chinese resurrection will take place here next Saturday. The remains of a Chinaman, who died here several years ago, will be exhumed, his bones carefully secured and polished up--even to the smallest bone in the body--when they will be carefully packed, in the smallest square box that will hold them, and sent back to China. These people--the Chinese-- will not allow even their bones to rest in American soil. They are aliens alive and aliens dead, and have nothing in common with our people. It would be better for them and better for our people if every one of them could be sent back within the next twelve months to their own land.”
22 June 2009
My New Book -- Fort Benton
On July 13, 2009, my new book, FORT BENTON will be released by Arcadia Publishing.
FORT BENTON tells the story of Fort Benton on the Upper Missouri through postcard images and accompanying stories.
Fort Benton is the head of navigation on the Missouri River, the “birthplace of Montana,” and it’s history spans every era in Montana’s development. Fort Benton, founded in 1846 as a fur trading post and named for Senator Thomas Hart Benton, is Montana’s oldest continuously occupied white settlement. Built on a broad river bottom along “nature’s highway,” American Indians crossed the north-south ford, and Lewis and Clark navigated the waters before white settlement. Arrival of the first steamboats from St. Louis and completion of the Mullan Wagon Road from Walla Walla in 1860 heralded the steamboat era bringing gold seekers, merchant princes, scoundrels, soldiers, North West Mounted Police, and eventually women and children to the wild frontier. Then came the railroads, open range ranching, and homesteaders by the thousand. Today, Fort Benton serves the agricultural Golden Triangle and presents its colorful history through cultural tourism.
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