RUSSEL STARKS: We are here at the home of Mr. Charles A. Dambacher in Peaceful Valley.  Our subject matter today is the Chinese that have visited and made their homes in Tuolumne County from the days of the Gold Rush era: 1849 there-abouts up until possibly even the present time.  The reason I have chosen Mr. Dambacher for this interview is the fact that we have on two previous occasions been together for interviews.  The first being that of Charles Dambacher, born in Columbia in 1859, and then a follow up to the Charles Dambacher recording session with Charles A. Dambacher and his brother Garnet concerning lumbering and mining here in Tuolumne County back in the early history.  With the knowledge that the people here in Tuolumne that have been here since the on-rush of the gold discovery, it is interesting to note that we have a cultural situation bring in the Chinese to do their own bit in the mining field and later on to become virtual slaves, so to speak, to the American way to life; or the way it was in those days. So Mr. Dambacher, welcome to this recording session, or should I say, or may I be welcome to this recording session?

ARTHUR DAMBACHER: Russel, you have always been welcome in my home, and I do enjoy talking with you.  Um, to give you a little of the understanding or knowledge I have of early Chinese.  So I’ll start by saying that prior to 1850 there was another handful of Chinese in California.  There was a man by the name of (Chum-Lee) who arrived in California in 1848 and then he learned of the gold discovery.  He wrote his friends in China, stating there was great wealth in this area and, more or less, suggested come to this land of great promise.  Then a man, in fact 2 men and a woman, a man, and a wife, and his friend and they in turn wrote to their Chinese friends and started an exodus and migration to California. 

            The steamship companies, in appreciating that this was good business, actually blackguarded all China, printing out and painting fantastic pictures as to the great wealth we had in this new land, stating that there were mountains of gold and it was there for the taking.  Anyone could go and pick it up.  So to make a long story short, it started a migration of the Chinese to California that is unbelievable.  As a ship would come into San Francisco Bay it would appear on arrival to be void of passengers, but as soon as it docked, why, the Chinamen seemed to come out of the very cracks of the ship and would have a procession from the ship to the, their Chinese-town area.  One Chinaman after the other in what was considered a golden era in California turned into a yellow streak of ours, a migration of Chinese.  They were ill-clad, their foreheads shaven with cues, and they had meager belongings.  They could carry everything they brought with them with no problem.  Well, San Francisco could not entirely accommodate the hoards that did come, so they started to migrate to the gold fields.  So far to this area, the first Chinese came up through the Le Grange area and then camped at a place called Salvador, Camp Salvador, which was just at the crest of the mesa overlooking the gorge of the Rich (?) Creek or the Shaman grade area.  However, the camp there was short lived and the Chinese started to move from Salvador to what was then known as Camp Washington, later becoming Chinese Camp.  Chinese Camp was a dry diggings and not too attractive so far as the American’s and other like people were concerned.  So the Chinese got a wind hold at Chinese Camp and they were tearing their dirt on their backs down to what is now known as the Sim’s (?) Ranch and a little creek.  They’d mine there and when that wasn’t plentiful enough they went to Six Brick Ranch (?) which is further down in the area known now as the Red Hill.  Well the Chinamen were doing quite well so the white men immediate moved in and tried to run them out.  But the Chinamen were rather too well entrenched and held their claim so the white men took up claims on the boarder and then paid fifteen dollars a cartoon to have their dirt hauled to these creeks for washing. 

They actually were never able to move the Chinese out because of their heavy entrenchment and, of course, Chinese was the scene of the first war in this area and it was a real Chinese war.  It came out of a very insignificant incident that was occasioned by the rocks of one claim rolling down again to the claim of another group of Chinese who belonged to a different khan.  And as such they finally decided they’d have a war over it and began to prepare for this war.  In so doing, they hired blacksmiths and other technicians to fashion implement of war: spears, and hooks, and bludgeons, and you name it, they had them manufactured.  For this they were starting to pay the American blacksmith or whoever he might be with the sum of ten dollars a day which was not too bad in that time but as the material grew scarce, the price went up, and it became quite costly.  And then they had to choose a place for battle and that was the place was chosen that as the area now known to us as the Crimney (?) House.  There is a big flat in there devoted more or less to the turkey business at this time.  Well the sides lined up, there was 700 men, Chinese, on one side and 900 on the other and the battle took place in some of the manner, some of the Chinese were able to secure some American muskets and that the entire causality list for this war was far none killed and far wounded.  One of the men killed happened to be wearing armor and in checking it out it was handmade out the remnants of sardine cans sewed to a canvas vest which well might have stopped a spear but it was not enough to ward off the musket bullet and it penetrated his armor and killed this Chinaman.  I understand that armor is still available someplace; that someone had found it and it has been kept with the bullet hole and so forth ripped.  Some authorities at that time arrested about 250 Chinamen as a result of the war but since no charges were brought against them, they were turned loose and the war was soon forgotten. 

Then, of course, the Chinese started to go to other areas of the diggings and at one time, I think, the Columbia area hosted about some 1,200-1,500 Chinamen, but they were kept out of the town proper because of they were being blamed for some of the fires that were happening.  They were necessarily blamed, but they were a target already, scapegoats. 

STARKS: Wow.

DAMBACHER: Even though they were excluded from living in the town site of Columbia, they started in Columbia and to give you some idea of where that area was where they settled as one crosses main street going to the school, there used to be a brick building in the corner of this junction of main street and Scoop (?) or Parshall (?).  Whether they walked but it has been since raised and isn’t there, but that was one of the main stores and that whole area in there was Chinatown as far as Columbia was concerned. 

STARKS: Now my I interject here?  In definition of the location, this would be on the North end of the town and we’re talking about the old red brick school rather than the new.

[unintelligible interrupting]

DAMBACHER: Oh right.

STARKS: Okay.

DAMBACHER: Thanks for correcting me on that.  It is the old red brick school up by the cemetery and if one is familiar you’d realize there’s a little stream comes down the Carls Maleton Gulch (?).  The Chinatown was spread over this little gulch area that you just mentioned.  Well then later there was a butcher shop established by the Chinese down in the heart of Columbia, in early days the butcher is not common knowledge because that building is, as I understand it, was just that, it was a sight to behold since the Chinese were not clever so far as the dissection of a critter was concerned.  They would just hack at it with an axe or a cleaver and that bone and meat chips would just fly in all directions and I’ve been told that the walls were splattered with meat and bones parts and it attracted all the flies in the area and stayed there until they turned to dust so it wouldn’t be very appetizing butcher shop and I would say the matter of sanitation was just not one of the high points of the Chinese in those days. 

The way they found themselves obliged to take what was more or less left over by the white men as far as diggings is concerned.  But they did pretty well establish themselves out in the Gold Springs area, working was the other miners had passed over and were doing very well until some pranksters thought they’d give the Chinamen a bad time and went there and destroyed their flumes and other mining operations to the point that it was an extremely costly pranks so far as a pro Chinaman was concerned. 

STARKS: Let’s just explore that one theory there that they were doing quite well, now would that be in relation to what would be quite well for a white man or quite well for a Chinese and what sort of ratio would you say this amounted to?  How much in those days would it take for a Chinese to make a good living compared to a white man?

DAMBACHER: That’s a good question, in that surprising that was one of the situations that brought a problem to the Chinese that they were capable of surviving on so much less than a white man they could work diggings and do quite well.  And to answer your specific question do quite well by the standard of a Chinese and not necessarily a white man because a wage for a Chinese in those days could be anything from two to four dollars a month and out of that four dollars he’d probably send a dollar and a half back to China to pay off his debts there to getting to America and perhaps supporting a family in the home country.  Now they operated through tongs at the Six Companies, as it was later known, and give you a little idea of what that is, these leaders actually did the thinking for these poor fellows.  They were ignorant and unable to provide for themselves and so they collected their wages, if they were working for wages, and they’d pay their bills and sent their money to China and the little residue that was left after the tong or Six Company got their commission was mighty little. But a Chinaman could actually live on fifty to a hundred dollars a year with no problem at all.

STARKS: And we’re talking then too about the American and his diggings and what he had to pay for not only materials but a decent way of life was a great deal more, hundreds of dollars more.

DAMBACHER: Oh right, the Chinese because of this willingness to work long and hard hours and his ingenuity just made him competition that the average white man couldn’t live with.  I think it was about 1856 or 60 they petitioned the legislature to enact a law to curtail the immigration of Chinese to California.  And the locals passed ordinance to enforce this presumed legislation and brought our atrocities to pass so far as the Chinamen are concerned, just makes your blood curdle today because the poor fellows were taken advantage of under all and every circumstance.  However they stood together in a manner that no other class of people could possible do and they did survive as a result.  Now they became victims of Valkin (?) and his gang in particular, Three-Fingered Jack just got great joy in watching them until he found the advantageous opportunity and then rush them and grab as many as he could and tie their cues together or tie them with their cues tied to a tree.  And then unmercifully beat them until they would tell where they had their gold hidden and would rob them that way.  And if Three-Finger Jack hadn’t become entire satisfied with what he got he didn’t hesitate a bit to murder the whole bunch of them. They became extremely fearful of Marietta and his gang but it was the very cause of the downfall of Valkin Marietta and Three-Fingered Jack because of the atrocities and there was finally a reward put out through the authorities at Sacramento that dead or alive this reward would be paid for the evidence of the death of Marietta and Three-Fingered Jack.  And so when the Chinese learned of this, they added several thousand dollars more to that reward and it was so lucrative that that was the end of those two people.  And of course when the word went out that they had been killed, whether they were or not, the Chinese took it for granted and had a tremendous satisfaction and a great celebration; celebrating the fact that their enemy had been, finally been destroyed. 

STARKS: Okay we’ve gotten to a time frame now and I can’t relate exactly the time frame of Valkin Marietta here, but you mentioned 1860, that was a year after your father was born.  But if we jump ahead far enough that you can remember some stories your father may have told about the Chinese in and around Columbia.  I think it would be very interesting and before we get into that, I think we’ll take a break here, get over on the other side of the tape so that we’ve got plenty of room and we’ll be unhindered with this, uh…

END OF SIDE A 19:33.5

General Information:

Interviewer: Starks, Russel

Interviewee: Dambacher, Charles Arthur

Name of Tape: Chinese Migration to California (dambacher_c_c_0)

When: 1974

Transcriber: Judy (1/22/09)

Transcriber’s Note: n/a