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Volume 033-1 - January 1979 (6 pages)
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Page: of 6
Nevada County Historical Society
Volume 33, No. 1 January 1979
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The Chinese in Nevada County
A Century Ago
By Carmena Freeman
The explosion of gunpowder was
sufficiently powerful to blow out the
windows in Gold Flat, and sufficiently
noisy to drown out the fact that the
Methodist Church bells had not
contributed to the annual din. The
church bell ringer had, in his
enthusiasm, swung the bell clean
around and broken the castings. For
those who failed to note the arrival of
the New Year at the moment of its
appearance, there was a playback in
the next day’s Transcript.
“Just as the bells pealed forth last
midnight, the gray ghost of the Old
Year glided into the mysterious portals
of the shadowy past, and up to the
throne from which he had been driven
by the Gods of Progress, sprang his
infantile successor.”’
The infantile successor was: the
year 1879, and if there were those who
thought the Transcript’s greeting a bit
f™, too flowery, they had only to lend ear to
E.E. Downer, owner of the Downieville
"wMessenger, to realize that much was
yxpected of 1879 and that no
-Antroduction could be too flossy.
“Nevada City is undoubtedly,
judging by all available data, the most
prosperous and lively mining camp in
California,” Downer wrote. “It is the
busy center of a trade whose
dimensions would favorably compare
with that of many commercial ports.
One saloon, the Exchange, is reported to
enjoy a steady revenue of $1600 per
month, while the other pleasure resorts
are continually jingling the halves and
quarters.”
Aye, the coming year was freighted
with promise, but there was a segment
of the county’s population that
displayed no enthusiasm whatsoever
for °79’s arrival. True, this was a
segment whose traditions did not
include recognizing January 1 as the
first day of the new year, but it was a
segment, also, endowed with the vision
given ancient civilizations and the
vision held out to it for the coming year
was not one to be warmly embraced.
This segment? The Chinese.
The Chinese had been coming to
America for a quarter of a century,
drawn by the gold discoveries and by
the job potential these discoveries
generated. Some paid their own
passage, many permitted themselves to
become indentured in the belief that
they could pay off their contracts and
still come out in a more financially
pleasing position than they could by
staying in China. But all cherished the
notion that one day they would wash
the dust of this land of barbarians from
their hands and return, reasonably
prosperous, to their homeland.
This was a notion for which they
paid dearly. For two decades they had
been arriving in this country, over 95
percent of them in California, and
setting up miniature Chinas throughout the gold country.
Initially they were greeted with
amusement, these strangers who
walked into the gold rich Yuba River
country wearing their national
costume, “peticoat, trowsers reaching
to the knees, big jackets lined and
quilted, and huge basket hats made of
split bamboo; the lower part of their
legs encased in stockings made of blue
cotton cloth with soles full an inch in
depth.” The amusement was tinged
with curiosity and crowds flocked to
the river banks to stare at this alien
people who sheltered their higgledypiggledy collection of miner’s tools,
baskets, boxes and ‘fixins’ in crude
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