The Wild West 4: East Meets West

The Gold Rush became a beacon of hope for many. They headed West to seek their fortunes. But Americans weren’t the only ones looking for a better life.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Rudyard Kipling once wrote, oh, east is east and west
is west, and never the twain shall meet. But that
all changed in the mid to late eighteen hundreds, when
thousands of immigrants flocked to the New Frontier in search
of an opportunity, a golden one, you might say. It
started with the eighteen forty eight California gold Rush. Soon,

(00:26):
though miners were seeking other states to find their fortunes,
they arrived in South Dakota on sacred Lakota land. As
you might imagine, people stealing indigenous property caused quite a
few skirmishes. By eighteen sixty eight, the Treaty of Fort
Laramie ensured that everyone knew that the Black Hills of
South Dakota belonged to the Indigenous people already living there.

(00:47):
But settlers thought that if the Lakota people considered the
Black Hills sacred, it had to have some sort of
value other than spiritual. Then, in eighteen seventy four, Lieutenant
Colonel George Custer found gold aloe on the French Creek. Naturally,
word got out and caused a sudden influx of fortune hunters.
American and Chinese miners from California quickly set up camp

(01:09):
that they named Deadwood after a number of fallen trees
found in a nearby gulch. But Deadwood's reputation as a
place of lawlessness grew as quickly as the population, which
swelled to over five thousand. The next big growth spurt
happened when a pair of brothers found one of the
largest veins of gold bearing ore in American history. As
a result, Deadwood skyrocketed from five thousand to twenty five thousand.

(01:34):
Murders became common, opium was freely traded, Fights broke out regularly,
and while settlers clashed with each other, they also had
plenty of run ins with the Lakota tribes and the
Chinese prospectors for familiarity and protection. These Chinese miners formed
a tight knit community that other settlers referred to as Chinatown.

(01:54):
These immigrants established businesses that catered to the prospectors and others,
including restaurants and houses of gambling. It was East meets West,
give and take, friend and stranger, all made possible by gold.
I'm Aaron Mankee and welcome to the Wild West. James

(02:22):
Wilson Marshall had come to Colomba, California from New Jersey
in search of work. He'd been hired to build a
water powered sawmill for his boss, John Sutter. The job
wasn't easy, but at least he was paid. Unlike the
Native Americans that Sutter enslaved, Sutter controlled the colony and
everyone in it. Marshall spotted something shining in the riverbed

(02:43):
at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains on a
clear January day in eighteen forty eight. He scooped out
a handful and stared at the gold flakes. To his delight,
the whole bed sparkled with gold. At first, Marshall and
Sutter tried to keep the discovery a secret, which meant
that before along everyone along the entire western coastline knew
about it. In San Francisco, storekeeper Sam Brannon debated only

(03:06):
a day or two before setting out to see if
the rumors were true, and they were. Brandon returned with
a vial of gold flake not long after that. He
was wealthy, but his fortune didn't come from the gold.
It came from selling shovels and other tools to prospectors.
By mid June, most of the city's male population had
bought supplies and headed to Coloma in search of gold.

(03:29):
By August, four thousand prospectors had gone, each seeking to
strike it rich. Ships arrived from everywhere, Chile, Hawaii, Peru,
and China. Those in Boston choosing to travel by ship
had to take a fifteen thousand mile eight month trip.
The journey by land was faster and shorter, taking six
months in between two and three thousand miles, but it

(03:50):
wasn't without risk or hardship. Travelers faced steep mountains and
swift river currents. Some faced starvation and attacks from indigenous people,
and even others. Those on the East Coast could hardly
believe the news coming from out west. It seemed too
good to be true. A letter from one prospector to
the editor of the Philadelphia North America read, your streams

(04:11):
have minnows and ours are paved with gold. In December,
President James K. Polk confirmed in his State of the
Union address that California did indeed have gold. Time was
of the essence. Though everyone knew that there wasn't enough
for everyone to flock to California. Men abruptly left their
jobs at factories and shops. They took their life savings

(04:33):
and headed west, leaving their wives and families behind, promising
to return once they had struck it rich. And this
flood began to arrive in California by eighteen forty nine,
earning them the nickname the Minor forty nine ers. And
as you might imagine, these mining towns boomed overnight shops, saloons,
and gambling establishments all sprang up. Towns were overcrowded almost immediately,

(04:56):
and often without any sort of law enforcement, making them
the perfect place thieves and outlaws. Women who were left
behind on the East Coast struggled to support their children
or to work the farms. Finding employment outside the house
was difficult. Even if they managed to find a place
that hired women, the pay wasn't good enough to support
an entire family. Some of these women made their way

(05:18):
west to be with their husbands. Others believed that the
move would offer a change of pace and a bit
of adventure compared to their everyday lives back home. And
then there were the women who saw a way to
make their own fortunes in a town where everyone couldn't
be a miner. Out west, jobs were more plentiful. They
could be shopkeepers, cooks, and teachers, just to name a
few others took a more entrepreneurial route, studying up boarding

(05:42):
houses or becoming hotel proprietors. Due to the need for
these services, women had more societal power than they did
back out east. Out West, they could own property and
run a business. But life wasn't all gold and riches
when people moved from one mining town to another. Business
has failed as the populations moved on, and without access

(06:03):
to as many doctors, illnesses and injury killed many of
the new residents. In reality, those seeking a glamorous life
were unlikely to find it, but as long as the
mountains and rivers had gold, they would keep on trying.
If there were fortunes to be had, people would keep coming,
creating new opportunities and then, of course, dashing those dreams.

(06:24):
Chinese immigrants, which happened to be all men at that time,
started out as entrepreneurs while others worked for the miners.
Discrimination kept them from living among the white residents, but
they set up their own city within San Francisco. Like
the area in South Dakota, the settlers there called it Chinatown.
In eighteen forty nine, twenty year old Ah Toy stepped

(06:46):
off a boat traveling from China. She was a foreign woman,
alone in a foreign land. San Francisco was already a
bustling town, but like the Chinese men who came seeking gold,
Ah Toy was determined to make her mark. It's unclear

(07:07):
if the ship arrived from Hong Kong or another port.
She arrived alone, though, although there seems to be a
couple of theories about why that is. In one story,
a Toy was the captain's mistress. He offered her safe
passage and enough money to start a life in San Francisco.
Another story is that her husband died during the travel,
leaving her alone to navigate a new life on her own.

(07:28):
Regardless of how she came to America, some believed that
a Tooy arrived with her feet bound, a common practice
in China's upper classes. Where Victorian England coveted women with
tiny waists, Chinese men preferred those with tiny feet. A
foot size no more than three inches was prized the most.
Those with feet longer than five inches or more were
considered undesirable. Binding became a way of preventing women's feet

(07:51):
from growing longer, although it also left them disfigured. With
a new life came new freedom and a toy removed
her bindings. Without a husband, she needed to find work,
which wasn't exactly plentiful for women, especially minorities, but she
managed to find employment with the trader who hired her
as his servant. The gold rush brought thousands of immigrants

(08:12):
from China. Soon enough, one third of San Francisco's population
was Chinese. American miners found the increasing numbers posed too
much competition for the gold that they wanted, so in
eighteen fifty, California enacted a law requiring all immigrants to
pay a twenty dollars per month foreign miners license. Additionally,
racial minorities, including Native Americans, Mexicans, African Americans, and Chinese

(08:36):
immigrants were limited in their right to vote, to own property,
or even participate on juries. Marriages between races were absolutely prohibited.
Mining became too expensive for Chinese miners, and those who
stayed in the area had little choice but to find
other ways to earn a living. One of the most
common occupations was doing laundry for the prospectors. This allowed

(08:58):
them to keep any gold dust or flakes that they
found on the miner's clothing or in the washing water.
Some of them, though, pivoted to other businesses, opening restaurants,
gaming halls, retail shops or shoe repair A few ran
opium houses or pharmacies, and those who still hoped to
strike it rich left California for other states that did

(09:18):
not require an expensive license. Black Hills, South Dakota became
one of those popular destinations. But women in the West
didn't have the same opportunities as men. Longing for a
life that didn't continue to leave her in poverty, a
toy noticed how other women were earning a living with
limited opportunities. Some of them had turned to sex work.

(09:39):
She noticed that there was no shortage of men willing
to pay, driving the price for their services higher than
other forms of employment. Their lifestyle was purely for economic reasons,
so the women kept the liquor flowing at saloons and
dance halls. The average age of a customer there hovered
around twenty, although some were as old as fifty, others
were just thirteen. Regardless of though, the women all have

(10:01):
the same goals make money, marry well, and get out
of the business. This was more difficult, if not impossible,
for minority women. Now the number of men in relation
to the available sex workers determine the price in a town.
Sometimes the women made ten dollars or the approximate equivalent
of about four hundred dollars today. At night, the women
worked in bordellos. The money and the opportunity to find

(10:24):
and marry a rich prospector brought in women from all
over Europe. Ah Toy watched these women rise in society.
The most beautiful European and American women worked in the
better parlor houses and bought the finest dresses. They entertained
the most influential and wealthiest men in San Francisco. Sex
work was a profitable business in mining towns, but it

(10:45):
was also dangerous, and while some women earned enough to
make a fresh start elsewhere, ah Toy realized that the
real money was in the running of the brothel. She
decided to set her goals high. One day she would
run a brothel of her own, but first she needed money.

(11:06):
A Toy set up her shop in a shack just
four feet wide by six feet tall in Chinatown. Her
slender body, good looks, and infectious smile allured many men.
While most of her clients were miners, she kept some
of San Francisco's social elite company as well, including a
French writer living in the area and California's Senator David Broderick.

(11:26):
Broderick's fixer, Charles Dwayne, was quoted as saying that a
Toy was the finest looking woman he had ever seen,
and that made her stand out, which was important. San
Francisco was home to nearly twenty five thousand people. A Toy, though,
was the only Chinese sex worker in the city, which
made her popularity grow. More Chinese women came in on

(11:47):
steamships and men lining the harbor streets to greet them.
The women were auctioned to the highest bidders willing to
pay for their services. For a Toy, business was more
than good. In a year, she opened her own parlor,
hiring women knew to the city. San Francisco had plenty
of brothels and enough customers to go around. San Francisco's
first Madam, Irene McCready, owned two previous establishments that burned

(12:11):
to the ground. When she rebuilt a third time, she
chose a brick building and if they weren't going there,
they were going to. Another famous madam, Belle Cora, who
ran a posh bordello on DuPont Street. Now there were
other brothels in town, although perhaps not as stylish as
MacCready's or Cora's. The lesser establishments kept to the basics
of furnishings a wash bowl, a chair, and a bed.

(12:33):
Like the more upscale Madams, A Toy wanted a more
upscale business at Tooy's first parlor house, opened on Pike Street.
Instead of the basics, she insisted on stylish furniture and
embroidered cushions. She was a shrewd businesswoman with a reputation
for being tough, and frequently took clients who refused to
pay right to court. The problem was that technically her

(12:54):
establishment wasn't legal, so when a Toy took dead beats
to court, she had to choose her complaint care carefully,
citing failure to make appropriate compensation for services rendered. But
it turned out that a Toy wasn't the only entrepreneur
in Chinatown. Chinese gangster Ye A Tai offered protection to
businesses that paid him, and trouble for those who didn't.

(13:16):
He should have known that when he tried to extort
a Toy, she would fight back. Yi Aah demanded that
a toy pay him a protection tax, and she declined.
If she wanted protection, she knew exactly where to find it.
The police station was just down the street from her parlor.
Although the court dismissed her lawsuit, ye A quickly found

(13:37):
himself behind bars for assault and grand larceny. When he
was released a year later, he never bothered a toy again.
The law changed for Chinese immigrants in the mid eighteen fifties.
The taxes loving on immigrants and minorities forced many of
them to move. Miners, fishermen, laundry operators, and brothel owners
earned less income as a result. A Toy, who operated

(13:59):
so vereral brothels across the city began to feel those effects.
The source of her problems was a group of Protestant
men who formed the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance in
eighteen fifty one. Their mission was to stamp out prostitution
along with other unregulated vices. Although they were a small
subset of the city, they had connections with prominent and

(14:20):
highly influential people in authority. In eighteen fifty four, the
city passed in ordinance against brothels Mexican and Chinese brothels
were the first to be shut down, and authorities arrested
A Toy. She was released a short while later, but
the city was changing. Soon there would be no more
minority owned brothels left. Then, in eighteen fifty five, the

(14:42):
gold Rush officially ended in San Francisco. Although many of
the better known brothels managed to stay open, there was
no longer room or clientele for entrepreneurs like a Toy,
so she shuddered her business then returned to China. In

(15:04):
eighteen sixty, San Francisco began reinventing itself from a wild
West mining town to something more upscale. Authorities cracked down
even harder on Chinese brothels, passing eight new codes against
prostitution between eighteen sixty six and nineteen oh five. Chinese
women were jailed for five days and fined upwards of
fifty dollars that's roughly eight hundred dollars today. White sex workers,

(15:27):
though mainly seemed to be exempt. A Tooy did return
to the United States in eighteen sixty. Although she could
no longer work in her former profession, she enjoyed the
companionship of several long term partners, and yet she never
married any of them. Why what Laws known as anti
missagenation laws prevented those in mixed race relationships from marrying,

(15:48):
and those laws remained in effect until nineteen forty three.
More regulations and laws followed to curb the influx of
Chinese laborers immigrating and mass to the United States. President
chess U A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act in
eighteen eighty two, setting a ten year ban on workers
coming from China. Although she may not have come to

(16:09):
the United States seeking gold, at Toy did earn a
considerable fortune. She also made her mark on history. She
was the second ever Chinese woman to arrive in San
Francisco and became the first Chinese sex worker. It said
that miners often raced to her shanty and that the
men standing in line wrapped around the block. A Tooy
had become San Francisco's first Chinese madam and opened several brothels.

(16:33):
She managed to navigate life in one of Chinatown's most
dangerous locations too. Most brothels were tucked away in alleys
with opium houses. As far as the city was concerned.
If the establishments were not on the main roads, they
would turn a blind eye. But there's a darker side
to that. While many Chinese women who came to the
United States to work in brothels did so willingly, others

(16:54):
did not. You see, some were kidnapped back in China
and then sold into the business. Then in America, brothel
owners and wealthy men seeking a mistress would buy them
at an auction. It was horrifying, an alternate version of slavery,
and deeply dehumanizing. In the end, the crackdown on sex
work ended a Toy's livelihood. And while many a miner

(17:15):
lost and found a fortune during the gold Rush, it
seems that ah Toy was wise with her money. Reportedly
she had earned and saved a considerable fortune. Ah Toy
lived a quiet life after closing her business and disappeared
from the spotlight. The last time her name was recorded
it was in the nineteen twenties to announce the news
of her death. But she lived a life that stood

(17:37):
out from the crowd. Like Belcorra, Madame MacCready, and other
women of the Wild West who were denied a way
to earn a living, ah Toy quickly learned how to
command power and financial security in a strange New Land.
For them, the West was won with sex. The story

(18:00):
of San Francisco and the gold Rush certainly takes on
a new appearance when viewed through the lens of the
immigrants who played a key role from service jobs to
sex work. The Chinese experience was bleak, always uphill, and
usually surrounded by prejudice. But of course there is always
more to the story. Stick around through this brief sponsor
break to hear my teammate Ali Stead tell you one

(18:22):
more tale from San Francisco.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
In the years since the gold Rush, Chinatown continued to grow,
so much so that the boom in population would present
a problem. Throughout the late eighteen nineties, San Francisco's Chinatown
had become a bustling neighborhood filled with shops, restaurants, and homes.
That was all about to change, though. In March of
nineteen hundred, forty one year old Wongchut King, a Chinese

(18:52):
immigrant who had come to America nearly two decades earlier,
wasn't feeling well. He worked hard at the lumber yard
not far from his home. Home, however, was a generous
word for his living conditions. The dank room he and
several other men shared wasn't fit for the rats that
frequently visited, much less other human beings. The men rented

(19:14):
the space from the Globe Hotel on DuPont Street. Small
and dank, the men took turns sleeping on the floor
and mere feet away. Wong and the others had dug
a small pit to use as a toilet. They had
no other options. Chinatown residents were busy celebrating the lunar
New Year, and ironically, it was the Year of the Rat.

(19:35):
Wong wasn't up for celebrating, though, he had come down
with a fever, chills, and body aches. He consulted a
Chinese doctor, who could do little for the swollen lymph
nodes in Wong's neck and groin. Soon, his fever raged
higher and he couldn't keep food down. Before long, he
slipped into a coma and passed away. When the city's

(19:55):
undertaker received his body, he faithfully reported Wong's symptoms, which
prompted city health officials to come down and inspect the body,
and what they found horrified them. Wong had died from
bubonic plague, and officials now had a problem on their hands.
Board of Health members met and debated late into the night,

(20:16):
finally deciding to quarantine Chinatown, hoping to stop the spread.
The root cause of bubonic plague had only been discovered
a few years prior. Until then, people believed that the
plague was transmitted from germs through open wounds or food,
or even bad air. The real cause was a tiny
bacterium spread by rats, or more precisely, the fleas than

(20:38):
infested those rats. Within a week, eight more people in
Chinatown had died, though that number might have actually been higher.
Doctors converged going door to door searching for potential victims,
but their search turned up empty. Doctors did report on
the deplorable conditions families were living in, all of which
were the perfect breeding ground for the plague. They also

(21:02):
believed that residents were hiding sick family and friends, rightfully
fearing racial backlash and poor treatment. Public health officials initiated
a massive clean up effort, but it was too little,
too late, and the death toll continued to rise. Doctor
Joseph J. Kinyon, a leader in disease prevention, wanted to

(21:22):
warn San Francisco residence of impending infection. Politicians and business
owners did not. A senator from San Francisco even stood
on the Senate floor and shouted that doctor Kenyon should
hang for spreading disinformation. These upstanding citizens, however, did not
fear the disease. They feared economic loss, and a smear

(21:43):
campaign to discredit Kenyon's reputation began in earnest newspapers claimed
that the doctor and city health officials were spreading fear
of plague in order to fleece taxpayers out of money. Meanwhile,
government officials, including the governor himself, denied the outbreak even existed.
Doing otherwise, they feared would undoubtedly harm the state's produce

(22:06):
industry worth over forty million. Governor Henry Gage proposed that
it be made a crime for anyone to publish reports
or articles about the plague outbreak without express written permission
from the California Board of Health. Doctor Kenyon, of course,
would never receive such permission. Over the next fourteen months,

(22:28):
the city covered up more deaths, plague or not. The
public was beginning to panic, and many blamed the Chinese
community for the outbreak. In April of the following year,
United States Surgeon General doctor Walter Wyman ordered doctor Kenyon
to leave San Francisco, though Gage continued to protest, Some,

(22:49):
like the governor of Texas, didn't believe him. He threatened
to stop all trade with California until they had the
outbreak under control, and asked federal investigators to step in.
Gage intended to declare the state had eradicated the disease,
if only to save face, But in early July, another
resident of Chinatown died, and by summer's end a dozen

(23:11):
more were dead. The federal government descended to investigate and
began to prove Governor Gage was covering up the truth.
Gage insisted the federal government was wrong and that men
had died from syphilis, but as more deaths occurred, voters
were losing faith in him, and they showed their disapproval
by voting against him in the nineteen oh two election.

(23:33):
The succeeding governor, George Pardie, eventually put an end to
the epidemic. In nineteen oh four, Grim.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
And Mont Presents The Wild West was executive produced by
me Aaron Manky and hosted by Aaron Mankey and Alexandra Steed.
Writing for this season was provided by Michelle Mudo, with
research by Alexandra Steed, Sam Alberty, Cassandra de Alba, and
Harry Marx. Fact checking was performed by Jamie Vargas, with
sensitivity reading by Stacy partial Jensen. Production assistance was provided

(24:02):
by Josh Thain, Jesse Funk, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
To learn more about this and other shows from Grim
and Mild and iHeartRadio, visit Grimandmild dot com