Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2023 - Day 27

May 27th, 1887 - Hells Canyon Massacre

Over 30 Chinese laborers were mining gold in an isolated part of northeast Oregon, when the entire group was gunned down by a white gang of horse thieves.?After murdering the entire group of Chinese miners, the horse thieves mutilated their bodies and dumped them into the Snake River.?The gang stole the gold dust the Chinese laborers had mined and burned their camp and equipment.?The crime was discovered when the battered bodies of the Chinese began appearing in the Snake River at Lewiston.?The crime was a savage act of racial hatred because the gang would have easily taken the gold and left.?The event is considered one of the deadliest attacks against Chinese-Americans in US history.??It reflected poorly on our American history, but it is our history.

Like previous acts of violence against Asian immigrants at the end of the 19th century, the identity of the seven murderers was known., but none were convicted or punished.???

Although the indictment listed 10 counts of murder, other accounts hold that the seven white riders killed a total of 34 people.?Three of them fled the area and were never seen again.?An all white jury declared the three remaining, one of which was only 15 years old, not guilty despite one of the horse thief confessed to his involvement in the crime and agreed to testify as a witness for the state.?A local rancher who attended the trial commented: "I guess if they had killed 31 white men, something would have been done about it, but none of the jury knew the Chinamen or cared much about it, so they turned the men loose."

The event was largely forgotten for more than a century.?For 107 years, the White community of Wallowa County covered up the Chinese massacre. They preferred to ignore the Massacre as only a Chinese crime.

In 1995, a Wallowa County clerk, Charlotte McIver, found a set of files locked away in a safe that had been donated to the county museum.?Documents in these files revealed detailed information on the 1887 massacre.?In an interview with the Associated Press in August 1995, Ben Boswell, a Wallowa County court judge, said, "The records were more than just lost, they seem to have been hidden. Somebody intentionally tried to keep this story from happening. Somebody intentionally caused people to forget."

?In 2005, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names named the massacre site “Chinese Massacre Cove” to first officially recognize the crime.?

In 2012, a granite?memorial?was installed along the banks of the Snake River at the site of the massacre, finally marking the atrocities. The names of 10 miners who were identified when they washed up in Lewiston in 1887 are inscribed on the memorial.