The Fallout of the Anti-Chinese Expulsions
A witness recounts the inhumane treatment of Chinese merchants who were brought back to Tacoma to testify after being violently displaced.
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.
A gentleman who came down from Tacoma last evening condemns very severely the treatment the Chinese merchants received when they were taken to that town by the United States Marshal as witnesses. Most of the witnesses were men who had been driven out of that place and had their property destroyed. None of the citizens would furnish them food, except one cheap restaurant, where they could get a poor meal, barely fit to eat, by paying a high rate for it. The court was appealed to and he ordered the sheriff to allow them to sleep in the jail and to provide them with food. As soon as they were temporarily released from the court they came to Seattle to get a square meal and a good night's rest before returning to Portland. They said the United States Marshal during the trial they would have to come back to eat and sleep, as they do not fight the people of Tacoma any more than the people of that place like them. Consider the business in China versus the Christians, while citizens in this Christian land treat even these heathen in an inhuman manner to which these people have been treated by the people of Tacoma.
This account captures the immediate aftermath of the 1885-86 anti-Chinese expulsions in Tacoma. It highlights the stark contrast between the violent, exclusionary civic culture of the time and the federal government's struggle to maintain basic legal order, mirroring how historical trauma often lingers in the geography of the Pacific Northwest.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.