Digital Bob Archive

25 March 1980

AUGUST 5, 1886-The anti-Chinese element of our population is again in full cry, stirred up by a rabble-rouser from Seattle, said to have been a ringleader in the anti-Chinese riots there. Yesterday afternoon this man walked through the streets beating a triangle, shouting ?The Chinese must go!? and announcing a meeting to be in the evening at Sam Wheelock?s dance house. The meeting was presided over by John Timmins, a saloonkeeper, and there were many incendiary speeches and very few voices of reason raised on the other side of the issue. The meeting ended with the appointment of a ?Committee of Fifty? to call on John Treadwell at the Douglas Island mine and demand that he dismiss all Chinese on his payroll.

The committee went to the mine this forenoon and found Mr. Treadwell at his office near the mill. He explained that when he hired the Chinese most of the white men were either out prospecting or working their own placer claims and that the local Indians were away at the summer fish camps. He said that the Chinese have now been trained and are essential to the operation of the mill and for jobs around the boarding houses and other facilities. He offered to pay any man now unemployed $3 per cord for wood, delivered at the Treadwell beach and said he would buy any quantity of wood offered. The committee was adamant in its demands but left with them unsatisfied.

AUGUST 7, 1886-This morning a mob of about 105 men crossed the channel in rowboats and canoes and went into the Treadwell mill and mines where about 60 men were at work. These and about 20 others who were not working were forced to march to the beach where they were loaded aboard boats and brought to Juneau. They were not permitted to bring any of their possessions. Deputy Marshal John McKenna was at the scene and ordered the mob to stop but was ignored. John Treadwell had a number of his men armed but he did not want bloodshed and forbade them to fire into the mob. Meanwhile, a gang in Juneau rounded up half a dozen Chinamen who had returned here from Treadwell after the January trouble died down. There was a proposal to send the Chinese to Wrangell on the mail steamer Idaho, due here tomorrow, but nobody wanted to pay the cost of transportation. Instead, they were loaded aboard two small sailing sloops, 40 on one vessel and 47 on the other, and ordered to leave. As they passed the mine on Douglas Island, Mr. Treadwell sent out the tug Lucy with 15 sacks of rice, which were divided between the two boats. It was the only food on board but it is believed there are no utensils aboard for cooking it.