Review of Incident at Bitter Creek: The Story of the Rock Springs Chinese Massacre

Authors

Lyn Ellen Bennett, University of Kansas

Date of this Version

1992

Comments

Published in GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY 12:3 (Summer 1992). Copyright © 1992 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Abstract

Storti's account of the 1885 Rock Springs, Wyoming, riot adds a twist to previous interpretations, incorporating the legacy of unionism by laying part of the blame for this grisly massacre at the feet of the Knights of Labor, whose struggle for power with railroad management caught the Chinese in a crossfire. The author focuses briefly on United States immigration policy, the influx of Chinese labor, construction of the transcontinental railroad, and the rise of western unionism, all of which culminated in the Rock Springs massacre.