By Roberta McKern
For The New Era
Recently a copy of the Portland “Oregonian” dated Feb. 11,1959, showed up in the East Linn Museum work room.
The 66-year-old newspaper actually was a forerunner to the events planned around Feb. 14, 1959, the 100-year anniversary of Oregon’s arrival at statehood as the 33ird member of the United States.
The Feb. 11 newspaper was to set the scene for remembering Oregon’s history, plus a list of fairs and picnics included to help participants find their way to festivities particularly throughout the summer.
Some of us who were younger then can remember this as a time for beard growing contests and seeing the high school basketball team lumber in wearing a good crop of whiskers.
So what can we glean from the old newspaper? Quite a lot.
Those of us who grew up in the 1950s are inclined to see it as a happier time, with a certain amount of security in the timber industries’ supplies of jobs. A young man graduating from high school could likely look forward to a job in logging or a plywood or paper mill.
In fact, those bearded high school boys were often already at work in logging with their dads or other family members.
But prognostications offered by the Valentine’s Day newspaper noted the decline already showing up in Oregon’s timber industry as the virgin forests were being harvested. Oregon still led the nation in production but the yield was beginning to drop.
Two brief stories show the hazards and the myths associated with work in the woods.
The first involves the tragedy of a young Oakridge logger caught between two logs. He died of head and chest injuries, leaving a widow and three children.
The second recounts the Paul Bunyanesque adventures of another young logger. Refused a drink in an establishment, the 6-foot, 4-inch, 240-pound man dismantled the place. It took 10 men, plus deputies, to bring him down. Loggers were often thought of as being tough and he was!
However, in 1959 all was not considered lost for the timber industry. By 1975 it was decided the state’s population would grow by 43%, to around 2,300,000, and housing would be needed. In the meantime, agriculture, tourism and promising new industries would fill the gap.
Tales of Oregon history filled gaps in the special newspaper edition, two of which we hadn’t encountered before. One involved early journalism in the state and an alternate route into the upper Willamette Valley that allowed pioneers of the late 1840s to veer off of the Oregon Trail and its dangerous final boat trip down the rapids of the Columbia River by taking the Applegate Trail. The other has to do with a Chinese Tong War in the early 20th century.
The Applegate Trail takes its name from two brothers, Jesse and Lindsey Applegate. Along with several others they discovered and worked out a route for the trail. Among the trail blazers was David Goff, who also traveled to Fort Hall in Idaho to pass on information about the new route to wagon trains already on the road.
The route had its drawbacks. Cutting away from the well-traveled Oregon Trail, the Applegate followed the Humbolt River-California Trail through the Black Rock desert of Nevada in and out of the Great Basin, over the Siskiyou Mountains and up the rugged valley of the Umpqua Valley to the headwaters of the Willamette River There was the possibility of meeting hostile Indians. David Goff led the way and the going was not easy, especially as the year was drier than usual.
Certainly, it not easy for one of the wayfarers of the journey, J. Quinn Thornton. Once he was safe and sound in Oregon City, Thornton used the pages of “The Oregon Spectator,” one of the first newspapers in the area, to blast David Goff and the Applegate Trail and its other proponents.
A candidate for the office of provisional governor in the upcoming election, George Abernathy backed Thornton by declaring the Applegate Trail unsafe. (It is suggested that settlers already in the Northern Willamette Valley saw little future profit in having the Valley settled by the southern route.)
David Goff, as it happened, was illiterate and unable to reply to J. Quinn Thornton’s attacks, but his son-in-law, James W. Nesmith, was quite able to write a reply for his father-in-law and he had a large vocabulary.
Not only did he challenge Thornton to a duel, but he published what is likely the first broadside put out in Oregon. He characterized Thornton as being an arrant coward, an infamous scoundrel, a vagabond…, a disgrace to his profession and country and one who injured the honest and honorable in general.
Nesmith could not win, however. George Abernathy won the election for provisional governor and immediately appointed J. Quinn Thornton as a judge, an office Nesmith might have gained had his party won. Naturally, this provoked more vituperation from Nesmith, who called Thornton “a monkey on a pole,” plus several other things.
The Applegate Trail eventually became a respected route to the Willamette Valley, especially in 1848 when the Cayuse War – following the attack on the Whitman Mission on the Walla Walla River, slowed travel along the Columbia Trail.
Thornton flourished as a judge and in later years told his side of the story in a book he published, Oregon and California 1848. (This story was told by Martin Schmett of the Special Collection Library of the University of Oregon who perhaps came across a first-hand account of a vituperative venture of earlier days)
Now for the Tong Way that added unexpected consequences to some of the Chinese caught up in situations beyond their control: Our sympathy is with all victims. This was a story written by Sam Galloway for the Oregon Historical Society and involves incidents which happened from 1905 to 1920, connected to Portland’s Chinatown.
In the first place, Tongs were a way of organizing Chinese men into work gangs sent out to labor in foreign lands. There were at least six tongs active in Oregon. The tongs functioned like fraternal organizations. A member was expected to be faithful and an insult to any one member was open to revenge by all.
Tong membership started in China before men were sent out to visit the celestial mountain – which in the 1850s could involve building railroads in the United States or searching through the tailings of gold seekers throughout much of the West including Montana. (There is a good book written by Rev. Dimsdale about a Tong War in Virginia City, Mont.).
A tong member paid at least a third of his expected salary to those in charge of the organization to which he belonged. There was a government tax to get out of China, a tax on his salary (he might be left with 80 cents for a day’s wages) and a tax to send his body back to China, should he die away from home.
Those who controlled the tongs reaped the profits, but tong members, we assume, gained a certain amount of value and security. In Oregon Chinese men found work in woolen mills and canneries, especially fish canneries. There was also an “anti-coolie association” which reared up now and then among white laborers, who saw the Chinese as being used to provide cheaper labor, which they were.
At any rate Oregonian headlines ran “Tong war breaks out in Portland. Streets run red with blood…” “Running gunfight occurs on NW Flanders.” “Several killed and a number injured. Lee Moi killed and more expected,…” “The Dalles police chief escapes injury when bullet lodges in his badge.” Pretty much the whole story is told in these headlines.
Because tong wars were blood fueds, the tongs in Oregon imported hatchet men from San Francisco who were free to commit violence against an enemy tong with alibis prepared beforehand to fall back on. Tongs involved were the Hip Sing, Suey Sing and Bow Leong.
Bits of rice paper tacked to posts in Chinatown bearing messages like “Bring one puppy and two dogs, plus dog food” were meant to send word to hatchet men to show up armed.
How effective the gun battle was on Flanders Street can be questioned. Although several died who may have been meant to die, two by-standers who were not Chinese were also wounded.
Frank Heater, The Dalles police chief, had been fore-warned of a hatchet man’s arrival and was in Portland’s Chinatown when he took a bullet to his chest with his police badge stopping it and saving his life. We might wonder how an officer of The Dalles got involved in a Portland gang war but it had to do with fish canneries in Astoria and The Dalles.
The 1917 shooting of the chief of police brought greater efforts to end Portland’s tong wars and Mayor Baker saw to it the leaders of the feuds were arrested, along with the hatchet men. Twenty-seven were arrested and at least one tong’s membership building became a mah jong parlor.
There is still much to be learned from the 1959 centennial issue of the Oregonian printed to prepare for Feb. 14. For example, Vice President Richard Nixon was expected to help celebrate the state’s birthday with a visit to the rotunda of the Oregon State House.
But we think we will end this blandly, literally with an old recipe for “poor man’s pudding” recalled by an 81-year-old daughter of a pioneer family.
So here it is:
Bring one quart of milk to a boiling point in a skillet.
Sprinkle white flour a little at a time slowly while poking at the mixture, but not stirring it so it won’t get slick and smooth and will stay “ever so slightly lumpy.”
Keep it at a high heat but don’t boil hard for about 15 minutes. It should be fairly thick like a cereal.
Serve warm, with very thick cream sweetened and flavored with cinnamon or nutmeg or both. Should make this pudding on the next Valentine’s Day for Oregon’s birthday. We can add red-hot hearts for color and flavor.
The old newspaper has a lot in it.