vii. The Colonial Precedent

Contrary to a popularized view among historians, racism was not always a guiding principle among Americans. It was not even a necessary prerequisite for the English colonies in America.  In 1614, Virginia's John Rolfe believed - rightly, as it turned out - that by marrying Pocahantas, the chief's daughter, he was not only wedding the woman he was enchanted with, but also bettering his position in life, despite their racial and religious differences and despite her having danced naked before the entire colony. He was marrying Royalty.

"My chieftest intent and purpose be...to strive with all my power of body and mind in the undertaking of so mighty a matter---in no way led with the unbridled desire of carnal affection, but striving for the good of this plantation, for the honor of our country, for the Glory of God and Jesus Christ of an unbelieving creature, namely Pocahontas, to whom my hearty and best thoughts are, and have for a long time been so entangled and enthralled in so intricate a labyrinth that I unwind myself thereout." - John Rolfe, petition to the colony to marry Matoaka (aka Pocahantas). 

John's plea is the colonial equivalent to "Love Conquers All". When the two toured England, the Queen greeted them - an honor reserved only for 'blue-bloods'. Within 4 years, Matoaka, also called Rebecca, died, on the shores of England, as the couple returned home. 

Above: Click for the death certificate: "Rebecca Wroth wyffe [i.e. wife] of Thomas Wroth/ gent[leman] [i.e. gentleman] a Virginia [America] Lady borne [i.e. born] was buried/ in the Chauncell [i.e. chancel]" The elision of the 'L', the merging of final 'th' and 'f' in Wroth/Rolfe suggests a similar mingling in some dialects of the southern United States, where Beth and Beff are indistinguishable.

	"There were many Indians there when I was a small girl and father used to hire them to bind and shock the wheat which he cut with a cradle" Corvallis resident Hulda Taylor Hammersly, WPA Interview 1933, speaking of 1855. Within a few years, labor was not 'to be had' by farmers for hire.
Above: The last of the Mary's River Kalapuya, in Corvallis, ca. 1870-80

The property of indigenous people in all empires has, of course, always been subject to plunder, but the labor of the inhabitants has been indispensable to the development of wealth from this newly acquired property, primarily land. To the contrary, genocide, on the sparsely settled US frontiers, created a 'labor shortage' and made it necessary to seek cheap labor abroad since the domestic supply, alongside immigration from northern Europe, was usually insufficient to meet demand in a continually expanding economy. Racism was necessary for the genocide and, equally so, it was necessary for the labor policies which followed. 

Slavery need not have been uniquely African. Immigrants for contract labor need not have been uniquely Asian, or East and South European. However, the coupling of racism with religious bigotry dictated that forced and uncompensated labor be from Asia, Africa or non-Protestant Europe, and proximity dictated which. On the East Coast, it was, early, Africa. The racism resulting from slavery had a lasting impact - the African slave trade's prohibition did not result in the importation of cheap free labor from Africa. Henceforth, it was from Catholic and Orthodox nations that poorly compensated laborers in the East were drawn. On the West Coast, it was from Asia. Chinese, Indian, Filipino and then Japanese laborers were imported successively (in fact Portuguese workers were tried for the Hawaiian plantations, but proved as unmalleable for the planters as others and the near-enslavement of the plantations was unjustifiable for men and women who had been sent to Hawaii as Christian, and sometimes Catholic, missionaries ("Our missionaries came to do good and did very well indeed" said the prize winning novelist James Michener). When Hawaii too was appropriated from its inhabitants in 1898, many of the new laborers in Hawaii could and did come to the U.S., including Oregon. A pattern thereafter developed of encouraging immigration in Boom periods, and of racist campaigns - often led by EuroAmerican labor organizations - to expel immigrants as well as indigenous people in times of Bust.

Here in Corvallis, this entire drama played itself out as it did elsewhere on the West Coast. The local indigenous population, the Mary's River Kalapuyans were removed to Grand Ronde, one of 3 reservations in the area (Siletz and Alsea Sub Agency being the other two). Labor shortages developed among the EuroAmericans who had expelled them and measures were introduced to import labor, which became especially scarce as Oregon males left for the California and southern Oregon Gold Rush. 

When the mining claims of the Gold Rush began to dry up, however, and customers ceased to flow through Corvallis on their way to Jacksonville and California, a labor surplus arose and other policies came into play. Corvallis shops, for example, were reliant upon the business the Army gave him in wars with the indigenous people of southern Oregon. Wrote D. D. Fagan, in his 1885 Benton County History: "Speculative gentlemen mused upon the profits of an Indian War, and took note how surely government reimbursed the contractors, the packers, the soldiers of previous wars. Being without other means of accumulating wealth, why should they not keep an eye open to chance of war against the Indians? 'A good crop pays well but a lively campaign is more lucrative'. These few schemers were ready to take advantage of a war, and doubly ready with their little bills, bills that the government found so exorbitant that it took alarm - imagined a grand conspiracy to bring on a war and by such means defraud the treasury; and finally would pay no bills..." 

This is called pork-barrel war, and is as common today as then, though on a much larger scale. The reaction of the public to Bechtel and Haliburton's fraud of government contracts in Iraq is slightly more muted, but that's indicative of a change in the public mien, which has become ever so much more docile than in the nineteenth century. 

In Pennsylvania, the Quakers with William Penn  were famously successful in their relations with the indigenous people because of their fundamental honesty and sense of equity, if not equality. It was perhaps not quite as idyllic as Nathaniel Hawthorne's homily on Quaker relations with the indigenous people, but close. 

When, however, the colonies, including Pennsylvania, reached the limits prescribed for them by their benefactors, the need arose to either live within their means or plunder their neighbors, which also meant killing them since they certainly would resist being victimized. The choice made, was for plunder and murder. No doubt, racism existed prior to that moment but, if it had not, it would have necessarily have been called into Being.

Since that moment, the "old pressure groups", as Oregonian Allen Eaton wrote, had been around, and especially since the early nineteenth century. 

The roots of all subsequent racism can be traced to a hundred sources, but its economic engine in the United States can be traced to a single policy - this decision to kill off the indigenous people, to the labor shortage that resulted and to the importation of laborers from abroad to fill the gap - an importation deeply resented by those whose goods and labor had been hitherto rising in value. 

The native inhabitants were in fact -  as owners of the land - the source of nearly all wealth in Oregon for decades and the last ignominy was left to Benton County - cheating the Siletz Reservation residents by illegally claiming land for a wagon road and railroad scheme which Thomas Hogg, and his Directors, including Joe Avery and Wallis Nash, had hatched. When the Indian Agent objected, the agent was replaced by Mr. Avery's editor Thomas Odeneal. The wagon road was never built, the land grant acreage was sold and no doubt was logged for profit. Mr. Odeneal was a central figure in the war on the Modocs, at Tule Lake, as well as the war on Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce (below). The U.S. government sued Hogg et al to recover monies. Corvallis resident Ben Biddle, another town founder, and the father of OSU's first woman alum Alice Biddle, was summarily removed as Indian Agent for corruption. In time, the reservation lands were seized at local initiative and there followed the Siletz Land Frauds, for which a number of Corvallis residents were indicted.

When the campaign against the indigenous people was concluded and the Mary's River valley emptied for settlement by Euro-Americans, there was no longer landless labor available for hire on the farms being cleared, planted and harvested.

The resulting labor shortage was marked. Of the many accounts recorded of pioneer life in the Corvallis area, the ability to find work was remarkable, with boys as young as twelve hired on, often for wages as little as room and board, and sometimes for shares, but working nonetheless. The lack of labor for commercial enterprises also led to flourishing cottage industries critical to the well-being of families ("Mother used to help earn a living for the family by making buckskin gloves for one dollar a pair. This work was done by hand at first but later years she got a small sewing machine that turned with a hand crank to sew the buckskin." - Etna Barchar)

Mr. Odeneal and Mr. Avery (see above) were both rabid advocates of slavery to solve the problem:

"That the African was placed on earth for some purpose is a rational conclusion. The great question of the day, at issue is - what position shall he take in the human family, to establish the most to his own welfare, and to the world's economy? 

The United States will probably settle this question about the year 1870.

But, as Oregon is about to become a sovereign state, the subject is on the table for discussion; to divest it of all fanaticism, it would easily be disposed of.

Phrenologists feel the head of their pupils to direct aright their genius - it is respectfully suggested that the head of Africa, on an average, be submitted to an examination; the result would be somewhat this: 'sagacity and instinct of an animal creation with a few degrees more of intellect; not capable of self-government without amalgamation,' and to do this would bring on another dark age and another 30 Years War. Yet in the world's economy he is a useful member; his labor when well directed, is a benefit to himself as well as his master. 

In Africa, they are barbarous, and cannot be Christianized to any extent; their priests, or Fetiches, will breakfast on the blood of a Methodist missionary with much gusto.England will probably establish 'apprentice' slavery in China within a score of years, to work the coolies - which will give an impetus to commerce in the Pacific without  parallel.

The Pacific States of America will be compelled, by their geographical position, to use this kind of labor to a great extent; and Oregon, if she adopt slavery, in the event of a short supply of labor from the trans-rocky mountain states, can import apprentices.  It may be urged that we could have the same privilege without a slave constitution. The answer would be that the relations of master and slave are the same under both systems, and the same protection is necessary. 

White man is very uncertain; can't keep him on a farm at one dollar per day when surrounded by mines. Chinaman no likee - no sabby. Free negro wants five dollars per day. The result it is feared, would be deplorable to sugar interests and farming generally. This is a strong argument in favor of slavery." - Earliest extant issue, Joseph Avery's Occidental Messenger

The vice presidential candidate of the pro-slavery democrats, under John C. Breckinridge, was in fact Joseph Lane, a former military governor of Oregon. When he returned to Oregon after the ticket's defeat, he was met by crowds of demonstrators everywhere he went, and was hanged in effigy in Dallas, Oregon (Dallas was the original habitation of the fiercely antislavery Applegate clan, for whom the Applegate Trail running through Corvallis is named). In Corvallis, Mr. Lane was met by Mr. Avery and others, who feted him. They were, the Oregonian called them "a little squad of cackling secessionists and escaped Negro stealers", the latter being a derogatory term of the time for those engaged in the African slave trade, illegal at the time. (Oregonian May 11, 1861).

Slavery was, in truth, never truly a viable alternative for local people needing workers. Many were themselves bitter opponents of Joe Avery and of slavery, and that was especially true in the labor-starved outlying farm towns of Philomath and Monroe where theabolitionists of the United Brotherhood and the Reverend Starr were active.

Free people of African ancestry were barred from coming to Oregon, despite the later poll tax provision, with a penalty of "not less than 20 nor more than 39 lashes" to be applied to the shoulders every six months for those who came anyway.  Nonetheless, a half dozen Americans of African descent lived in Corvallis before the Civil War. 

In 1857, the law was amended to: "the
legislative assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by public
officers of all such negroes and mulattoes, and for their effectual
exclusion from this State, and for the punishment of persons who shall
bring them into the State, or employ or harbor them."

The "Negro exclusion laws" of Oregon survived until after WWI. 

There were those in Benton County who contested slavery. Reverend Starr of Monroe, the United Brotherhood of Philomath, A. G. Hovey of Corvallis (for whom Hovey Hall at UO is named), and Jerry Hinkle, to name a few. 

In 1865, of course, slavery was abolished forever after a holocaust which took the lives of a quarter million in the War itself. 

The Civil War too was played out locally, with the volunteers in Oregon Senator Baker's California Hundreds (named as such in the hope that California would provide the funding for their arms. California declined but Pennsylvania did, on condition that the outfit could be counted as part of Pennsylvania's levy. Similarly, the 1st Massachusetts was equipped by that state though its members were all recruited by Senator Baker too.  It was the Pennsylvania troop from Oregon which took the brunt of 'Pickett's charge' at Gettysburg (Sen. Baker was killed at the Battle of Ball's Bluff).

After the Civil War, all but 4 African Americans left Corvallis for unknown and probably varying reasons. 

Click on the image below to view an invitation to an 1869 Portland celebration of "the emancipation of four millions of bondsmen" by "the Colored People of Oregon".

It was under Mr. Arnold (above), an ex-Confederate, that the Southern Methodists changed OSU colors from navy blue and silver to match the anti-Catholic Order of the Orange, then widespread. The Order of the Orange Award yet exists at OSU, according to Justin Roach, former ASOSU student body president, though it has not been awarded for several years.

Mr. Arnold's successor was John Letcher, whose father was the infamous Governor Letcher of Virginia in the Civil War. Governor Letcher had demanded, as a condition for Virginia not joining the other slave states, that slavery be introduced to, and protected in, Oregon, all other states and territories. His demand was rejected.

The changing milieu after the Civil War, when the State assumed responsibility for OSU (then OAC), with federal funding as a federal 'land grant' college, resulted in Mr. Letcher being replaced after a year by John Bloss, a Union Army sergeant who was famous as one of those who discovered 'Lee's Secret Orders' at Antietam. 

The dearth of slaves and free people of African descent in Oregon prior to the Civil War had meantime led to a search elsewhere for cheap labor. Hawaiian laborers were contracted for, with the King of Hawaii (or 'Owyhee' -the Owyhee River, Mountains, etc. spring from that era). About half the workforce at the original Fort Vancouver were of Hawaiian descent, according to records of the Hudson Bay Company. Most of the journals which exist from this period mention Hawaiian immigrants. In law, Hawaiians were referred to as Kanakas and treated as African and Chinese Americans were. Not enough Hawaiians were willing to resettle in the Northwest however, to satisfy labor demand. 

According to the 2000 census, there 188 of us who live in Benton County, who are of strictly  indigenous Hawaiian descent.

In 1848, gold was discovered in California and then in Oregon. The labor shortage intensified, as Mr. Avery remarked above, when men went to the gold mines. Mr. Avery himself migrated to the gold fields, and the Oregon legislature could not muster a quorum because so many men had gone. 

Drawn by the lure of the gold, and by jobs outside the mining districts, Chinese immigrants arrived in larger numbers on the West Coast after the failure of the Taiping Rebellion in China. Among those who arrived were some of the most sophisticated political intellects along the West Coast. This wave arrived as the 'Forty-Eighters' from Germany and elsewhere in Europe were arriving on the East Coast for similar reasons and with similarly good character.

When the mines began to yield little, Euro-American migrants returned to communities like Corvallis (and San Francisco for that matter). Mr. Avery used his earnings to open a store on Second Street. The cornice of that store still is embedded in Robnett's Hardware on Second St., where the rings for horse reins remain in the curb today. Others returned and sought work and found employers willing to offer only what they were accustomed to paying the Chinese immigrants who were working while the 'mine fever' had sway. Riots ensued, especially in the areas where miners competed for increasingly scarce returns.  In Hell’s Canyon, Oregon, miners robbed and mutilated thirty-one Chinese miners  in 1887.

"Usually when someone got liquored up he would march up and down the streets shooting off his guns. One source of amusement for him was getting the Chinese separated from one another, then making one of them do the bullet dance. This was accomplished by one or several men firing at the luckless creatures feet, and he had to jump and dance to keep from getting hit. I don't ever remember of anyone being hurt by this odd amusement but, most likely there was. We girls use to wish sometimes that the Chinese would get a hold of a white man and make him dance to the tune of their knives." 

-"Mrs. Neil Niven", Corvallis, Oregon 1937, WPA Interview. 

Corvallis resident "Mrs. Ford" recorded her experiences in the gold fields for the WPA in 1930 :

The Chinese were an honest, industrious race of people. Most everyone in Canyon had at least one working for him. Too, the poor fellows were often the source of much amusement, and the butt of many a practical joke in this rough and ready mining camp. The mining they did was quite different than the white man's. Usually, the Chinese washed the gravel which the white man had thrown out as waste. They made a good deal of money by using the tailings left by the whites. Joaquin Miller [ed. note: see far right], the poet, is so often mentioned today, and people look at me with a new interest when they

The late Corvallis resident Ed McClain told me of these hydraulic mining operations:

"We had mining canals on our land in Ashland years ago. They were all dug by Chinese guys. The water would run along the canals and into a chamber that narrowed to a small opening. The entire apparatus had a counter balance which allowed the operator to swing it back and forth and blast the ore out and into a sluice box which would trap the gold. Lots of mercury was used because it would attract the gold dust. One fellow was reclaiming the mercury and breathed too much of it in. He was always a little crazy afterward."

Oregon's most famous poet, Joaquin Miller (above right) lived in Canyon City and wrote: "The Chinamen were terribly taxed by the authorities but they

"He seemed to be waiting for me, and as I walked upstairs to greet my hostess, he backed before me, scattering rose leaves, which he had concealed in his broad sombrero, upon the white marble steps, and saying with fervour: "Thus be your path in life!" Often after this we met" - Lily Langtree (below left), of Joaquin Miller

Right: Thomas Nast, whose life was threatened regularly for defending Chinese immigrants, drew this cartoon of the "Bursted Boom", of the mining towns after they were deserted by the Euro-American miners. Mr. Nast was the predecessor and mentor of Oregon's Homer Davenport, whose life was also threatened, by the trusts, who even managed to pass a law against editorial cartoons in California, after Mr. Davenport's lampoons of the Southern Pacific railroad.

"A dastardly attempt was made to poison a whole family in Polk County, recently Mr. Thielson, living on the La Creole, discharged a Chinese cook, who was to leave the next day, Monday. After preparing a portion of the Sunday dinner, the Chinaman demanded his wages and left, on foot. After dinner, all who partook of the meal gave indications of having been poisoned. Medical attendance was secured promptly, and no serious results followed. It is supposed that the Chinaman in revenge for being discharged, placed some deadly drug in the meal. Look out for Mongolian cooks." Corvallis Gazette

In the Oregon state legislature, among equally discriminatory laws, the following prohibition was moved:

 "the carrying of baskets suspended or attached to poles carried across the shoulders "-1886 (this was the method for carrying burdens among the Chinese community - see right)

"The streets of the little town were ankle deep in mud, crossed by planks a foot wide. From the boat landing we crossed to the board hotel on the far side of the mud-filled gutter, being cluttered up with the just cut off heads of a dozen hogs from the butcher's shop adjoining the hotel, thrown in there to get them out of the way. No one took account of the hogs' heads in those days, not of calves heads, nor of sweet breads, or other internal organs of the slaughtered animals. They were just thrown away regardless of where they might fall...In those days Corvallis consisted of a wide street built up with one or two story houses, four saloons, and half a dozen churches; a courthouse, surrounded by oak and fir trees, and a two story schoolhouse for the public schools, and another schoolhouse and a church owned by the South Methodist church, the school being called the Oregon Agricultural College, and receiving the emoluments provided by the US. The majority of the storekeepers were of Jewish nationality, as was commonly the case in Oregon in those days." [ed. note: Mr. Wallis is exhibiting his own anti-Semitism. Actually, merchants in Corvallis were predominately not Jewish, though Max Friendly's and Klein's were both owned by refugees from the Czarist empire at the end of the century.] With the advent of the railroad crew, this town increased 40% overnight and the small city was suddenly 30% Chinese in origin (not especially unusual - Baker County was 60% Chinese in origin). In time, these workers were distributed between Corvallis and Toledo. Because the railroad was designed as a scam, it often failed to meet payroll for 6 months at a time, although Mr. Hogg, for example, was in New York spending the interest on 3 million dollars worth of bonds he issued himself as his share. As a consequence, railroad workers laid down their tools until the funds were forthcoming. In time, the entire scheme collapsed, taking with it the city's primary bank and the savings of most of its residents. Mr. Hogg's house is usually photographed and written about, as lying on the present day OSU campus, where Waldo Hall is today.

 As the quick surface riches of the local mines had been exhausted, pressure was brought to bear, first upon Latin Americans, then Catholic Europeans, and finally the Chinese, to leave the mining districts.  Anti-Chinese riots broke out in mining districts, including those of Oregon. The worst took place in the cities of southern California, where race riots remain a way of life. "Nineteen Chinamen were hanged and shot in one evening. The massacre was accompanied by the theft of over $40,000 worth of their goods." 

Political organizations sprang up which were designed for one purpose only - to rid the west coast of its Chinese population and to close further immigration from China.

After  the Chinese Exclusion Act, there was not an unending supply of the labor of Chinese immigrants for the industries which depended upon them - the salmon canneries (right), farms, railroads and service industries. Irish, Basque and Latin American workers were recruited, and it was then that the anti-Catholic Orange Order spread widely from Canada through the Northwest, with the OSU faculty changing the school colors to match.

Workers from India and Japan were recruited and then the Anti-Asiatic League was then created. The Ku Klux Klan was revitalized and its targets in Oregon were anyone not Euro-American and Protestant Christian - Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, African and Asian Americans.

 Walter Pierce, of the Ku Klux Klan, and later a governor, was on OSU's Board of Regents in 1911.

Above: Salmon cannery workers in Astoria, ca. 1885, including Chinese Americans

Racism was not confined to East Asians. In the wake of riots directed at Northwestern immigrants from India, Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna, founded the Portland Hindustani Association in 1913. Mr Bhakna worked in the Hammon Brothers saw mill in Bridal Veil, Oregon, which was owned by Indians and provided funding for the Ghadr Party which led a rebellion against English rule in India. Factory exercises in the morning began with "What's our name?" Answer: "Mutiny!" "What's our product?" "Mutiny!"

Mr. Bhakna remained in India after the Ghadr Party "mutiny" and is here (see left)  celebrating the 100th birthday of fellow Ghadrite Baba Karam Singh Cheema in 1966.

Japanese immigrants had not stepped into this cauldron until 1885, when the City of Tokio had arrived in Honolulu carrying the first 944 official migrants recruited for the Hawaiian plantations. Relations between planters and workers were not always harmonious.

In 1898, upon the overthrow of Hawaii's monarchy by the planters, Hawaiians, including those of Japanese ancestry, were free to enter the US.

"Fresh produce from our families to yours"

"Western Growers members are the family farmers you trust to feed your family. They are the dedicated families who care about the health of your family and the families of our nation and the world." - From the current web site of the WGA [ed. note, compare to the WGA racist campaign at right. The WGA has never been held accountable for its role in the pogrom of 1942.]

Racism was not confined to the uneducated. Locally, the eugenics movement was led by the OSU Zoology Department Chairman, Nathan Fasten, an Austrian immigrant. He left in 1944, to go to work for the Seattle Water Dept., after the excesses of the Nazi concentration camps had been uncovered and the entire eugenics movement was discredited. It was the Eugenecists who wrote the law in Oregon making marriage with those of European ancestry illegal for Asian and African Americans. The concepts of racial purity, and ultimately of racial responsibility - which has presumably been a part of Western civilization since