The frame of the paper mill, nearly 300 feet long and fifty feet high, is up and shingles are going on. … A hundred Chinamen are cutting wood and clearing land on the town sight
The Morning Oregonian, June 26, 1884
When LaCamas was established in the 1880s, town residents included Germans, Swedes, French-Canadians, Native Americans, Chinese, other European immigrants, and Americans. Chinese laborers, who were prevented from American citizenship by the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, helped build the mill and the town.
The following stories by longtime Camas residents reveal apparent racial tensions in the interactions between white settlers, Chinese laborers, and Native Americans:
We had a great many Chinamen here in the early days. I well remember one afternoon when one of our frisky young fellows threw a handful of yellow straw pulp out of the window into a Chinaman’s laundry basket. That Chink was sore and he went and told William Lewthwaite, the superintendent, all about it. I happened to look out of the window just at that time and got all the blame and had a hard time squaring myself with the boss. –Mill worker Bede Butler in the April 1919 Makin’ Paper
There were a lot of Indians around in those days and I remember once some of them were passing down the road just south of the mill and the boys threw some pulp at them, plastering one of the squaws with the soft yellow pulp. Two of the Indians were very angry and came into the mill after the pulp throwers. The guilty ones, however, went away and hid and I, being innocent of what was going on, was the man in sight when the two enraged Indians appeared. Of course, I was the goat, and they were going to scalp me until I grabbed a four-foot length of piping lying on the floor and drove them out of the mill. — Mill worker Jack Harrington in the April 1919 Makin’ Paper
Clark County Minority Population Statistics:
from federal census records records
|
1910
|
1940 | 1970* | |
| Indian | 35 | 24 | 398 |
| Chinese | 88 | 21 | 70 |
| Japanese | 69 | 110 | 145 |
| Black | 29 | 18 | 569 |
| total population | 25, 854 | 49,852 | 128,454 |
*In 1970 Camas had a total population of 5,790. Minority residents included 12 Native Americans, 9 Chinese, 3 Japanese, 15 African Americans, and 2 Filipinos. Ten other town residents were listed as belonging to “other” ethnic groups. The rest of the population was white..
