Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Spring 2005
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 25, No. 2, Spring 2005, pp. 128-29.
Abstract
The first thing readers should be made aware of is that the book's title is somewhat misleading. While the first two articles by Uping Zhu and Rose Estep Fosha focus on the Chinese in the Black Hills, the second two by Donald L. Hardesty and A. Dudley Gardner deal with the Chinese communities in Nevada and Wyoming, respectively. Perhaps more important, three of the four articles are actually about archaeology and what it reveals about the Chinese frontier experience rather than about the history and culture of the Chinese in the American West itself.
Billed as the background piece, Zhu's lengthy essay is the most substantive of the four, providing a historical overview of Deadwood's Chinese community. As in his earlier work, A Chinaman's Chance: The Chinese of the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier (1997), Zhu advances the inspiring theme that Chinese workers were creative competitors in the American West rather than simply passive victims resigned to their fate in stereotypical "oriental" fashion. Indeed, they not only survived in a hostile environment but also thrived in what Zhu aptly describes as "ethnic oases." He considers these oases as both Chinese enclaves and American neighborhoods within Euro-American towns and mining camps.
Complementing Zhu is Fosha's essay on the archeological excavations of Deadwood's Chinese community. Fosha's purpose is to present some of her preliminary findings. The rub is their paucity, making her contribution appear more like a research proposal than anything else. Instead of findings, Fosha recycles questionable ideas such as the failure of the Chinese to participate in the Euro-American economy as the cause of their problems in America. Without realizing it, she is implicitly blaming the victims for their victimization. Still, Fosha's site may yield some interesting results, and she would be well advised to be guided by what Hardesty and Gardner have learned at archaeological sites of Chinese communities elsewhere in the American West.
Comments
Copyright 2005 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln