They really weren’t safe above ground after dark.
Pam Severe, Executive Director, Pendleton Underground Tours
Not all Chinese in Oregon were miners. In addition to providing manual labor, the Chinese in Umatilla County worked at service jobs and as merchants. Their religion, language and customs such as using chopsticks, wearing queus, smoking opium and exploding firecrackers on the Chinese New Year seemed foreign and strange to the white settlers of Oregon, who forced the Chinese to live separately. To discourage settlement, Umatilla County charged a $1 poll tax and Pendleton enforced a curfew for the Chinese.
Economic competition and cultural difference elicited violent anti-Chinese sentiment in Oregon and elsewhere. In 1891 Henry Villard’s Oregon Railway and Navigation Company tracks were extended east from Umatilla, and branch lines ran through the wheat country of Athena, Adams, Helix, Weston and Milton. On January 22 approximately 100 white railroad section workers put ropes around the necks of Chinese workers and hauled them out of the town of Milton. Although the Chinese in eastern Oregon escaped much of the violence directed toward them on the Pacific Coast, this mob action prompted similar behavior in Weston, Adams and Athena where railroad work was underway.
Eastern Oregon Census Data reflecting Chinese population and occupations
