Located on a remote and difficult to reach stretch of the Snake River (on the Oregon side) is a monument I never knew about before, and was somewhat saddened to see. During my rafting trip through Hell’s Canyon, we made a stop here and hiked up to see the site.
It was here in 1887 that a group of about 34 Chinese miners were killed. They were employed by a Chinese owned gold mining firm based in San Francisco, and were looking for gold. A group of horse thieves and bandits laid ambush to the men, robbed them of their gold, killed most of them, and dumped their bodies into the Snake River. There likely was racial hate also involved — no one knows for sure what the main motive was, except that it was a heinous crime.
A trial was held in Enterprise, Oregon, against a group of men charged with the murders the following year, but a guilty verdict could not be reached because of “insufficient evidence”. In a rare act, Congress paid the Chinese government over a quarter million dollars in 1888 as a “humane indemnity” — a form of financial reparations.
The site was officially named the “Chinese Massacre Cove” in 2005, and this memorial was placed in 2012. It’s a beautiful but sad spot.
