Paradise presentation looks at Montana’s historic Chinese communities

Sunday afternoon, The Paradise Center hosted another “Conversations with …” which is an ongoing series that brings authors, experts and notable people to both inform residents and engage them in a dialog regarding subjects of shared interest.

It isn’t that well known that in 1870, Chinese residents made up more than 10% of Montana’s population. Hence, the topic of Montana’s Historic Chinese Communities attracted an audience wanting to know more.

Born and raised in Great Falls, MMark Johnson was studying at Carroll College in Helena when the history of Chinese in early Montana grabbed his attention. He spent eight years teaching in Shanghai, China with summers back in the Big Sky County combining his love of history and knitting into it the Chinese side of the frontier. 

“As I was teaching over there, I had students with the necessary language abilities that when we found anything written in Chinese that came from over in this area, they could translate it and it turned out we found about 350 letters written to family from those that originally came to the United States for the California gold rush,” he explained on how so much of this research was accomplished.

“This is my hobby,” smiled Johnson. “Humanities of Montana arranges for speakers to go across the state to discuss humanities-based literature, history, archology and such. It’s the Montana Humanities Council, basically, as there is an arts council, but this one is for humanities. My full-time job is I’m a professor with the University of Notre Dame training K-12 Social Study teachers. I live in Helena, work for the University of Notre Dame (Indiana) and do most of my work in California.” 

He travels extensively to help teachers who are working in Catholic schools. He has one son who is a freshman at Notre Dame and the other is a freshman at Jefferson High School in Boulder. Johnson is on a tour that started in Missoula with the subject being the Chinese New Year, and then after Paradise he will be teaching about the Chinese experience in Eureka and Kalispell and wrapping back up in Missoula.

“There were about six to ten thousand Chinese workers on the Northern Pacific (Railroad) who came through exactly this part of Montana performing extraordinarily hard work to try and bring the infrastructure to Montana. They were paid about a dollar per day, compared to the non-Chinese workers receiving one dollar and fifty cents. They lived in segregated camps along the railroads not mixing with the co-workers,” he shared. 

Interestingly enough, there are not many photographs, or evidence, of Chinese laborers compared to Irish and other Caucasians. One might think that the Northern Pacific Railroad logo with the black and red yin and yang might be a nod to the work and sacrifices made, but it was originally used as Korean exhibit at a world’s fair that upper management of the railroad took a liking to and incorporated it. 

Johnson shared a tragic story that happened just outside Plains. 

“It was an accident with explosives,” he said. “The research explains that the explosives were frozen and the Chinese people were trying to warm them up, which sounds like a recipe for disaster. It’s very possible that the men that were killed had worked on the railroad in the Sierra Nevada’s so they had deep experience working on railroads so this has not been proven.” 

A schematic from the Montana Historical Society was displayed indicating where the Chinese graves were along the railroad tracks. 

“It is estimated that about a thousand Chinese died while building the NPR. It was noted the (Chinese) graves were marked on the maps and they were shallow for two reasons: One was to aid in decomposition, and the other is to aid in excavation. Because for the Chinese, they didn’t want their bones to reside outside Chinese soil. It is very important culturally speaking for descendants to be able to honor and venerate ancestors. They wanted their bones exhumed, respectfully cleaned and shipped back to southern China.” 

Johnson shared that there were bone-collectors that walked the railroads using whatever maps they might have but looking for small wooden markers with the names of the deceased, where their home village was and when they died all written in Chinese. 

The afternoon went to laundries they started and restaurants, primarily in Butte. The living conditions and their determination. And the Chinese sacrifice that played such a crucial part in the early years of Montana.

For a cloudless sky that was robin’s egg blue, and the high priority NFL playoff games all day long, those in attendance at the Paradise Center felt that they made the correct decision to enjoy another aspect of history and enjoy each other’s questions, camaraderie and cookies.