Cowboy Terry, the Chinese Smuggler, and the Ghost of a Deputy’s Killing
Caught smuggling Chinese laborers near Sumas, “Cowboy” Terry waives examination and is bound over—while insisting a fatal 1892 shooting began with other men’s guns.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
WHATCOM, March 10.—[Special.]—“Cowboy” Terry, who was caught last week smuggling Chinese laborers near Sumas, waived examination at Sumas today and was bound over in $1,500 bail to await the action of the United States grand jury. He expects to be convicted on the trial and get one year in the penitentiary. Speaking today of the Sedro affair two years ago and the killing of Deputy Sheriff Poor, he admitted that he intended to smuggle the Chinese laborers, but finding that capture was almost certain, he wired Poor, who, he said, was his friend, intending to deliver them over to him and Holden. He and Poor had just reached the place where he told the Chinese laborer to meet him, when the shooting commenced, as he says, by Baird and Buchanan. Terry is bitter toward the deputy marshal here, because of alleged unnecessary severity in guarding him and putting manacles upon him. He is now in jail, but hopes to secure bail.
“He admitted that he intended to smuggle the Chinese laborers, but finding that capture was almost certain, he wired Poor, who, he said, was his friend, intending to deliver them over to him and Holden.”
The Chinese Exclusion Act turned the border near Sumas into a criminal marketplace, with smugglers moving laborers across for profit while federal officers pursued them. Terry’s case also shadows the earlier Sedro killing of a deputy—a reminder that immigration enforcement in Washington was violent long before the modern era. Then as now, border cases tangled crime, race and official power.
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