have arrested them, and do not doubt they would have been convicted on
their own evidence— for I do not doubt that they had recently come from
B.C.” But they could not be tried locally for the simple reason that neither
Blake nor the local judge had a copy of the Chinese Restriction Act. He dis-
embarked the Idaho to telegraph Bash for advice, but found that the wires
were down. Fi nally, with great regret and frustration, he deci ded to let the
Chinese go. The Idaho left port that night with the Chinese onboard. The
next morning at 9 a.m., a steamer arrived from Port Townsend bearing a
copy of the Chinese Restriction Act and a letter from Collector Bash. “Had
I [received] it a few hours sooner,” Blake bemoaned in his diary, “I would
have arrested the Chinese.” To Bash he wrote, “Now that I have a copy of
the law, I shall in future try any prisoners I take, at this place, and then send
them down to you.” 42
Blake’s farcical chase through the woods reveals blunders large and small.
Sixteen months after the Restriction Act went into effect, the primary man
in charge of catching undocumented mi grants did not possess a copy of the
law, showing the limited reach of federal bureaucracy in the western territory.
70 RESTRICTION
More fundamentally, Congress, imagining major ports like San Francisco
and Port Townsend as Amer ica’s western gates, had designed a law ill- suited
to the real ity of a continuous border like the one in Washington Territory,
where points of entry abounded. Blake was undermined, in part, by the
federal government’s missteps and lack of power.
Many of Blake’s difficulties, however, were due to congressional compro-
mises and choices that had deliberately weakened the law. Congress’s small
appropriation meant Blake alone had the impossible task of inspecting all
incoming traffic in a district too large for one mounted inspector to ade-
quately monitor. The lack of a passport system— a concession to maintaining
Amer ica’s good relations with the Chinese government— meant Blake was
forced to rely on subjective and vague descriptions provided by local resi-
dents to distinguish between new, unauthorized mi grants and current legal
residents. The presence or absence of umbrellas was hardly a failsafe form of
identification. The challenges Blake faced included not only harsh and ex-
pansive terrain and the difficulties one would expect in the operations of a
large, young bureaucracy, but also a distinct lack of enthusiasm on the part
of Congress to truly end Chinese migration.
Smugglers in the Borderlands
As the Restriction Act forced Chinese migration underground, it created a
booming business in smuggling. Chinese workers had long relied on mid-
dlemen to help them secure transpacific passage, the required fare, and work
on arrival. The law was intended to halt this business, but it may actually
have expanded the trade, as Chinese mi grants found it increasingly difficult
to arrange their own passage. Rumors circulated constantly about who was
running Chinese and how much money they earned in the pro cess: fifteen
to twenty- five dollars per head during the early years of Chinese restriction
and over one hundred by the late 1880s.43 If such rumors were accurate,
smuggling Chinese “contraband” was often more lucrative than smuggling
actual goods.
Since customs officers were more concerned with capturing smugglers
than regulating their business, traces of this history of exploitation are few
and far between. Blake, for his part, did show moments of concern for the
undocumented mi grants. In the summer of 1883, he heard a disturbing
EXPERIMENTS IN RESTRICTION
71
rumor that Lummi Indians, hired to smuggle Chinese mi grants, were actu-
ally killing them. To investigate, Blake spoke to Jason Taylor, a white man
whose wife was the daughter of the chief of the Lummi tribe. Taylor did
“not credit the report” but promised to “enquire further.” Obviously con-
cerned, Blake approached Taylor again a week later to find out if there was
any truth to the story, but Taylor did “not think it is so.” 44 Blake and his
tactics. While the Restriction Act mandated deportation for undocumented
mi grants, it came down harder on smugglers, threatening a thousand- dollar
fine and one year of imprisonment. But this, like so many aspects of the law,
proved difficult to enforce.
It was rare for officials to witness smuggling; more often they only heard
rumors. The deputy of Roche Harbor learned from his boat carpenter, who
had recently returned from British Columbia, that “Chinamen [ were] paying
$25.00 per head on safe deliver[y?] and $100 in advance.” 45 Sometimes, of
course, the rumors proved false. “I received information,” Deputy J. H. Price
reported, “that a man by the name of Willey had told a number of persons
that he Willey was engaged in carry ing Chinamen across from Victoria in a
sloop” at the price of fifteen dollars per man and “a share of the opium that
they brot [ sic] with them.” But he also added, “This man Willey was drunk
the time he told this, and it is likely that there is nothing in it.” A month
later, Price reported that he had investigated the matter and found no evi-
dence, so his tall tale must have been due to his “state of intoxication.” 46
Whether or not Willey’s words held truth, it is curious that he found smug-
gling Chinese a subject worth bragging about publicly. Despite general anti-
Chinese sentiment, some must have believed the risky business of bringing
Chinese into the country was an exciting and manly endeavor.
Customs officials also heard rumors that Indians as well as white smug-
glers were aiding undocumented mi grants. As Blake patrolled the northern
section of his district, he was highly aware that Chinese “might easily pass
there without detection” because “ there are so many Indians and canoes,
in that vicinity.” 47 Blake would watch Indian canoes coming and going along
the coastline, carry ing passengers from logging camps in British Columbia.
He noticed when “a large canoe left the Indian camp opposite the spit,
keeping well out in the Gulf and heading for Lummi island. There were
three men in her, one only, paddling.” Finding it suspicious that the canoe
72 RESTRICTION
carefully stayed far from shore, Blake watched through his telescope. The
passengers “seemed to wear the loose blouses of Chinamen” but were too
far away to capture. Although Blake often reported suspicious be hav ior of
this sort, he never successfully arrested any Indian smugglers.48
No doubt there were also Chinese smugglers, but they proved particu-
larly difficult for customs officers to identify. When deputies managed to
capture a group of undocumented mi grants, the officers could rarely discern
who among them had or ga nized the crossing.49 But as Blake investigated
undocumented migration, one name came up repeatedly: Wa Chong.50
Though he believed this to be the name of a man, it was in fact t
he name of
a com pany. Wa Chong Com pany, formed in Seattle in 1868, was one of the
oldest Chinese import / export businesses in Washington Territory. It was a
partnership between Chin Ching- Hock, Seattle’s first Chinese resident, and
Chin Gee Hee.51 Although the com pany’s original business was merchan-
dising, Chin Gee Hee was more interested in labor contracting. He traveled
the territory seeking labor contracts for Chinese workers in coal mining, rail-
road construction, farming, and domestic labor. When he found willing
employers, he would negotiate a contract, then providing gangs of Chinese
workers and a bilingual boss. After the passage of the Restriction Act, ru-
mors circulated that Chin Gee Hee continued his contracting business with
the help of a network of smugglers.52
Blake’s investigations give some credence to rumors that Chin was deeply
involved in smuggling. In July 1883, a community in for mant brought in a
Chinese man whom he had captured on the road. The mi grant’s name was
Ah Sin and he was in possession of a return certificate, written by Blake,
which proved he was a legal resident in the territory and could come and go
as he pleased. After a long conversation with Ah Sin, Blake reported to Col-
lector Bash: “In my opinion, he is the man who is pi loting the Chinese
I could make out, he offered to pay me $2 per head, on all Chinamen I would
allow to come in.” Blake pretended to consider the offer to learn all he could
from the man and noted that Ah Sin mentioned “Wa Chong’s name fre-
quently, tho’ I could not understand what he said about him.” Despite Ah
Sin’s apparent confession to smuggling, Blake “did not detain him.” While
the Restriction Act made the act of aiding an unauthorized mi grant a pun-
ishable misdemeanor, it did not criminalize the intent to smuggle Chinese.
EXPERIMENTS IN RESTRICTION
73
Ah Sin could directly offer Blake a bribe, and the deputy could still not press
charges.53
Though he monitored the border every day, Blake saw only glimpses of
the growing trafficking business. And even when he had credible evidence
and a smuggler within his reach, the law denied him the power to inter-
vene. “I doubt not the man has been engaged in pi loting them in,” Blake
complained, “but can prove nothing. ”54 Blake fought to stop undocumented
migration, but limited congressional appropriation and the language of the
law repeatedly undermined his battle to control the northern border.
Communal Border Control
As a result, Blake and other customs officials in Washington Territory turned
to extralegal solutions. Frustrated by his inability to tell authorized Chinese
from unauthorized ones, Blake devised his own system of identification.
When the act first went into effect, he traveled through his district to visit
white men who employed Chinese, instructing them to give these Chinese
laborers “certificates of discharge when paying them off ” at the end of a job.
With such a certificate, the now- unemployed laborers could travel within
the territory, looking for work without arousing suspicions that they were
undocumented mi grants. Blake asked Collector Bash to institute a similar
extralegal system on a regional level. He believed “a system of local passes,
checks, or certificates” would prevent “Chinese contraband” from moving
through the area undetected. With such a system in place, Blake could ar-
rest any Chinese mi grant not in possession of a certificate of discharge.
Blake eagerly drew up a sample certificate and included it with his pro-
posal, not realizing that Congress had deliberately rejected provisions for
internal passports. When Bash ignored the suggestion, Blake gave up the
proj ect.55
Blake’s solution to the lack of federal appropriations for enforcement and
the resulting lack of manpower was to enlist members of the local commu-
nity as in for mants. Blake asked for information from anyone he met on the
road and eventually built up a network of collaborators who sent tips when
they encountered unfamiliar Chinese in the district. For example, on Sep-
tember 20, 1884, he recorded in his diary that while riding to Lummi “to
look for Chinamen” he “met a man who said he had passed two coming
74 RESTRICTION
towards Whatcom, five minutes before. Rode on but did not meet them,
prob ably hid in the brush.” The same day he met two men from Semiahmoo
“who said 6 Chinamen crossed ferry at Ferndale at 10.30 a.m. and took either
the Diagonal or 10 mile road.” He tried to intercept the six men on the trail,
and when that failed, he tried the Chinese laundry in Whatcom. There he
“found three men only.”56
By the time he received a tip, Blake often discovered he was too late. He
complained to his supervisor, “At midnight of the 26th inst. three Chinamen
came to a saloon here, got drinks here, and asked for food, stating that they
had just come from Westminster [British Columbia]. A man who was in
the saloon at the time, came to my hotel to inform me, and went all over
the house, but could not find me. I was not informed of this until the eve-
ning of the 27th.” As such sightings of Chinese mounted and Blake felt
increasingly powerless to stop the flow of undocumented mi grants, he envi-
sioned a pos si ble solution. He wrote to Bash: “The question is frequently
asked of me, ‘Has a private citizen the right to arrest Chinese entering this
country, across the Border line?’ Also I am asked, ‘If he has the right, will
the Government support him in so doing? ’ ” Locals were clearly aware that
Blake was struggling single- handedly to protect the border and wished to
offer help.57
Bash was more receptive to improvisation in this area. Without writing
to the Trea sury Department, he responded that “a private citizen has the
right to arrest a Chinese entering this country across the border and also
a right to arrest the smuggler or man in charge.” He granted Blake permis-
sion to promise three to four dollars a day to any citizen who arrested an
unauthorized Chinese mi grant, and told him to visit citizens who live “on
the line” to encourage them to make such arrests. In December 1883, Bash
was particularly worried about infractions because he had heard reports that
the Canadian Pacific Railway had recently discharged three hundred Chi-
nese laborers for the winter. “If a very large number comes in your way,” he
urged Blake, “call upon as many citizens as are necessary to help corral them.”
Bash was aware, however, that citizens alone might not be able to stop such
a large number of Chinese from crossing, writing: “In the meantime, I want
you to see General McPherson, and quietly inform him that I may be obliged
to [request,] through the Governor, for assistance of the militia.” He was pre-
EXPERIMENTS IN RESTRICTION
75
pared to use members of the community— civilians and militiamen alike—
to enforce the Chinese Restriction A
ct.58
As it turned out, three hundred Chinese did not attempt to storm the
line. Blake did, however, spread the news that citizens could arrest Chinese
and would be paid for their labor. Whether motivated by hostility toward
the Chinese or desire for the reward, within a few days citizens arrested six
Chinese, and others sent information of “large gangs on their way down.”
On December 3, a group of five Chinese were arrested by Solomon Allen, a
farmer who lived within a half mile of the border. In an expense report sub-
mitted to the collector the next day, Blake requested bounty payments for
helpful citizens, warning that smugglers were willing to pay those who looked
the other way. “Permit me to say, that I think a little liberality on the part
of the Gov’t towards the farmers, in this Chinese matter, will have a benefi-
cial effect. . . . Wa Hing, the proprietor of the wash house here, asked me
‘if it would not pay officer better to take $2 or $3 a head and let chinaman
[ sic] go.’ ”59
Federal liberality was not forthcoming. Two months after Allen arrested
the Chinese, Blake wrote to his supervisor to remind him that the farmer
had never been paid. “Allen,” he wrote, “is a poor man, and has already asked
me twice for the money.” Fi nally, in April, Blake gave up and rode out to
Allen’s farm to pay him out of pocket the six and a half dollars promised for
the “Chinese affair.” The Trea sury Department did not authorize reimburse-
ment until October 13, 1884, ten months after the original arrest. Although
paying citizens to arrest Chinese was far less expensive than hiring additional
customs officers, the federal government was still reluctant to pay out of their
small enforcement bud get.60
Despite the lack of federal support, locals continued to contribute to the
enforcement effort. Blake was never able to raise the posse of citizens that
Bash originally envisioned, but men like Allen continued to arrest Chinese
and report their movements. Some locals did not need the promise of re-
ward to launch vigilante attempts to defend the border. One American cit-
izen traveling on a ferry from British Columbia to Port Townsend spotted
two Chinese workers on board and alerted a policeman as soon as they
landed. On Orcas Island, less than three miles from the U.S.- Canadian