boundary, a group of white community members created their own defense
76 RESTRICTION
against Chinese migration without any government support, organ izing sea-
borne patrols of the San Juan Islands.61
White locals were not the only ones who aided customs officials in the
arrest of Chinese mi grants. In August 1883, Native Americans reported to
the local deputy collector stationed in eastern Washington that ten Chinese
had crossed the line from British Columbia. Unable to leave his post at
O’Sooyoos Lake, the deputy appointed Aleck Macaulay, a white commu-
nity member, as a temporary “special inspector” and “dispatched him after
the celestials” in the direction of Fort Colville. When word came a few days
later that six more Chinese were “traveling along the line on the British Co-
lumbia side with the probable intent of crossing to the United States,” the
deputy at O’Sooyoos Lake hired an Indian messenger to send word to “spe-
cial inspector” Macaulay. With the help of Indian informers and messen-
gers, Macaulay was able to arrest ten Chinese. The Indian messengers and
temporary inspector were paid for their trou ble. Although the customs
deputy could not leave his post, he reported that he was confident that he
could protect the border with the help of Indian in for mants.62
Even a few Chinese residents were willing to aid in the search for smug-
gled Chinese mi grants. Deputy Price got a tip from a Chinese man that “par-
ties were shipping Chinamen into the United States and were using Port
Discovery as the port and that they landed after night.” The Chinese in for-
mant said that white men were organ izing the operation and he would at-
tempt to tip off Price when the next group came in. The deputy was not sure
this was truthful information, but thought it best to report it anyway. Simi-
larly, Blake was approached by a Chinese laundryman who promised to show
him three undocumented Chinese “if I would give him $5.00 a piece.” Al-
though Blake reported the offer to Bash, he did not dignify it by asking if
he should pay.63
Though Blake would offer a bounty to a white man, he did not trust the
Chinese man’s intentions. But perhaps he should have. Chinese shared many
of the white and Indian in for mants’ motivations, since undocumented
Chinese meant labor competition; reporting on them could bring compen-
sation and good favor. Although the Chinese appeared clannish, separatist,
and or ga nized to white outsiders, there were many internal divisions within
the Chinese community. Since the Chinese Restriction Act, one of the largest
divisions was between legal residents and unauthorized newcomers.64
EXPERIMENTS IN RESTRICTION
77
Although many legal Chinese felt solidarity with their undocumented kinsmen,
they may have resented how the actions of others cast suspicion on all.
Local media took note of widespread community involvement in policing
the U.S.- Canadian border, and some newspapers, like the Olympia Courier,
looked with disfavor on this practice. Commenting on a case where two private
citizens had named themselves “temporary inspectors” to arrest nine Chi-
nese, the Courier wrote, “It is humiliating to reflect that Uncle Sam’s power ful
government must depend upon the generosity of private citizens for the aid
necessary to enforce its laws.” 65 Such reports in the newspapers made the
public deeply aware of the customs officers’ strug gle to enforce the act and
the integral role the community played in supporting them.
The customs ser vice relied on private support not just to capture unau-
thorized mi grants, but also to deport them. Rather than seeking conviction
in the district courts and deportation by U.S. marshals, local officers often
sent undocumented mi grants directly back to Canada with the help of
shipping companies. By its very nature, this extralegal system of deporta-
tion, which existed alongside the formal pro cess prescribed by the Restric-
tion Act, was not well documented. But in 1885, an extralegal deportation
gone awry landed participants in a U.S. district courtroom, and the details
of both the par tic u lar incident and the wider practice were recorded in the
According to the prosecution, on October 23, 1885 the steamer Eliza An-
derson arrived at Port Townsend from Victoria with thirty Chinese passen-
gers on deck. Their con spic u ous arrival was observed by Deputy Blake and
the crew of a U.S. customs ship, the Wolcott. While Blake presumably in-
spected the return certificates of Chinese mi grants on deck, the Wolcott crew,
usually engaged in policing the smuggling of goods, began searching below
deck for human contraband. The Wolcott fireman, George Burns, went down
to look at the Eliza Anderson’s fire room, where he saw a suspicious looking
plank. Pulling down the plank, he found eight Chinese mi grants crammed
into the small area between the water tanks and the coal bulkhead. They
were dressed like laborers and, unlike those above deck, did not possess re-
turn certificates. Charles Davis, a customs inspector, “joshed” to the master
of the vessel that there must be “$600 in it for somebody.” 66
Although eight Chinese were found concealed below deck, Captain
Wright was (for unknown reasons) charged with smuggling only two Chinese
78 RESTRICTION
boys, Ah Wy and Ah Yuk, who testified for the prosecution. Through an
interpreter, Ah Wy stated that he was the fourteen- year- old son of a school-
teacher. He had spent his time in China attending school. When he arrived
in Victoria he found “nothing to do” and managed only to work for one day
as a cook, so he made the attempt to enter Amer ica because he had family
in San Francisco. Ah Wy testified that he agreed to pay thirty dollars to the
fireman of the Eliza Anderson for concealing him onboard. Ah Yuk was also
just fourteen. Although he had found a job working for a family in Vic-
toria, he was still eager to go to Amer ica and jumped at the chance when a
man in Victoria’s Chinatown offered to smuggle him across the line. The
two adolescents did not know each other before the trip, but they spent four
hours below deck together and two or three hours in the small hiding place
by the coal bulkhead.67
Instead of arresting and trying the undocumented Chinese passengers and
the white men who were trafficking them, as the Restriction Act required,
Blake simply “told Captain Wright to take them back” to British Columbia.
The Eliza Anderson was due at Seattle before returning to Victoria, so
Blake put the Chinese “in irons” on the trip to Seattle. During the trial, he
explained to the defense lawyer, “That is the custom. We always send them
back with the master of the vessel.” When questioned further, he admitted
that “sometimes we put them in jail,” but more often captains were told “they
must take them back.” Blake testified that this was “general practice” among
the masters of ships caught smuggling and was “sanctioned by the officers
&
nbsp; of the Government.” 68 He must have been referring to local government,
because there is no rec ord that such deportations were ever reported to the
Department of the Trea sury. Whether sanctioned or unsanctioned, this in-
formal and extralegal system of deportation was much simpler (and cheaper)
than the alternative, which required detention, trial, and an escorted trip
back across the border.
To make sure Captain Wright was complying with the orders to return
the undocumented passengers to Canada, Blake again boarded the steamer
after it returned from Seattle and confirmed that the eight undocumented
mi grants were still aboard. The Eliza Anderson then proceeded to Victoria,
and Blake trusted that the captain would land the Chinese passengers there.
It was only when Captain Wright was unable to land Ah Wy and Ah Yuk in
Victoria, because Canadian customs refused them, that the case entered the
EXPERIMENTS IN RESTRICTION
79
U.S. legal system and the “customary” practice of extralegal deportation in
Washington Territory left a trace.69
The Contested U.S.- Canadian Border
After several years of successful deportations to Canada, why did the Cana-
dian government suddenly turn away Ah Wy and Ah Yuk? The Eliza An-
derson case brings to light an unrecognized history of contestation along the
U.S.- Canadian border. Previous scholars have characterized Chinese exclu-
sion as a “binational” or “intercolonial” proj ect in which the United States
and the British Empire, through the auspices of the Canadian government,
worked together to police Chinese mobility.70 But such cooperation was
scarce during the Restriction Period when the United States and Canada
clashed over their mutual desire to bar Chinese mi grants. As the governments
dueled over control of the border, Chinese mi grants were caught in between,
figuratively and literally.
In many ways, the history of Chinese migration to British Columbia,
and of subsequent anti- Chinese legislation there, parallels events in the U.S.
West. Chinese mi grants, along with white miners, first poured into British
Columbia in 1858 after gold was discovered in the Fraser River. At first the
Chinese came from California, and later they came directly from China.
The gold- driven economy lasted less than a de cade, and eventually Chinese
mi grants went into agriculture, lumbering, and railroad work in the sparsely
populated but growing British colony. Early reaction to Chinese mi grants
was mixed. Some white Canadians saw Chinese as valuable members of the
community, but others feared that they would undercut white wages. In the
1870s, some British Columbians formed out spoken but short- lived anti-
Chinese socie ties, including the Workingman’s Protective Association and
the Anti- Chinese Association. At a time of economic downturn, they claimed
that white workers “would rather starve than go to work alongside a
Chinaman.”71
Although they heard the clamor of anti- Chinese British Columbians, of-
ficials in Ottawa and London prioritized the needs of the developing Cana-
dian economy and British trade in China. In 1881, the Canadian federal
cabinet assisted the Canadian Pacific Railway Com pany in arranging with
the governor of Hong Kong for the importation of Chinese labor. In 1882,
80 RESTRICTION
6,784 Chinese arrived in British Columbia, raising the total population of
Chinese to around 12,000.72 With the recruitment of Chinese railroad
workers and news that the United States had passed the Chinese Restric-
tion Act in 1882, many British Columbians began to fear that Chinese mi-
grants would soon overrun the province.
Circumstances worsened when it became clear that the railroad could
not reliably sustain its workforce year- round, and British Columbia saw a
sharp increase in starvation, crime, and strikes in the winter months.
The British Columbia provincial government responded by passing two
anti- Chinese bills in 1884: “An Act to prevent the immigration of Chinese”
and “An Act to regulate the Chinese population in British Columbia.”
While the first banned all new immigration of Chinese to British Co-
lumbia, the second taxed current Chinese residents, banned the use of
opium for nonmedical purposes, prohibited exhumation of Chinese bodies,
placed minimum size requirements on rooms occupied by Chinese, and
shifted the “burden of proof ” onto Chinese defendants.73 Both laws were
struck down by the British colonial government, but prompted Prime Min-
ister Sir John MacDonald to instigate an investigation of the Chinese
prob lem in British Columbia.
British Columbians were not so easily placated; the provincial government
again passed an act to prevent Chinese immigration in February 1885. The
law was nearly identical to the one that had been disallowed by the dominion
government the previous year, so there was little chance Ottawa would let it
stand. Nevertheless, the British Columbian government attempted to put
its provisions into practice. On April 2, 1885, a U.S. commissioner of cus-
toms wrote to the American attorney general to complain that customs of-
ficials had attempted to deport a group of undocumented Chinese mi grants
to Canada, “the country from whence they came,” but the British Colum-
bian officials had refused to receive the mi grants. The letter was quickly for-
warded to local and federal officials in the United States and Canada, but
within a month the issue was moot. The dominion government had again
disallowed the act on March 28, 1885, and U.S. deportation of Chinese to
Canada continued unabated in the spring of 1885. The incident gave both
the Canadian and American governments notice that if Canada were to
pass a restriction act in the future, it would affect U.S. deportation policy.
But the United States did not heed this warning.74
EXPERIMENTS IN RESTRICTION
81
In the summer of 1885, with railroad construction drawing to a close, the
dominion government fi nally yielded to pressure from British Columbia and
passed an act designed to restrict Chinese migration. The law placed a fifty-
dollar tax on each new Chinese mi grant (the equivalent of two months’ wages
for an unskilled laborer) and was designed to discourage Chinese, especially
poor workers, from migrating to Canada. The Canadian government antici-
pated that this new policy would interfere with U.S. immigration policy
and sent the U.S. government a copy of the new act.75 Under the new law,
the U.S. government would have to pay fifty dollars for every Chinese mi-
grant they wished to deport to Canada. But the U.S. federal government
took no proactive steps in addressing the inherent conflict in the two gov-
ernments’ laws and did not warn customs officials in Washington Territory
to expect prob lems.
It was the Canadian head tax law that prevented the Eliza Anderson from
returning Ah Wy and Ah Yuk to Victoria, threatening legal U.S. deporta-
tions as well.76 The head tax went into effect on August 27, 1885, and im-
mediately U.S. c
ustoms officers found it impossible to deport Chinese
mi grants. The new collector of customs at Port Townsend, Herbert F.
Beecher, wired the Department of Trea sury: “On 25th inst. Ah Teck an al-
leged Chinese Merchant arrived here from Victoria B.C. . . . was refused
admission by me sent back to Victoria on 27th. [He] was returned here same
day having been refused admission by Victorian authorities except upon
payment of $50. . . . He has no money. Brought him before court yesterday
on habeas corpus which remanded him back to Victoria. Cannot lawfully
imprison him. What shall I do with him[?]” The Trea sury Department did
not respond quickly, so Beecher sent another urgent message the following
week: “ Shall I pay [the head tax] in order to carry out order of court[?] If
not he comes back on me again.” The eventual response from the Trea sury
was short and to the point: “Chinese appropriation exhausted. Authority
for payment of fifty dollars denied.”77 Beecher was disturbed to learn that
at a time of economic downturn, the Trea sury Department had run out of
funds to enforce Chinese restriction. Even if the Trea sury Department had
the money, it was unclear whether they could legally apply their funds to
paying Canadian taxes. Once again, the customs ser vice in Washington
Territory was undermined by federal indifference, inflexibility, and parsi-
mony. Since Blake’s job was dependent on this fund, Beecher was forced to
82 RESTRICTION
officially fire him on September 1, 1885, and rehire him as regular customs
inspector.78
Just as it became nearly impossible to deport Chinese during the summer of
1885, the number of Chinese trying to enter the United States suddenly in-
creased, a product of continued new arrivals in Victoria and limited job avail-
ability in British Columbia. Collector Beecher reported to the Department
of Trea sury: “Some 800 or 900 Chinese arrived at Victoria last week, direct
from China. Six hundred more are expected to arrive very shortly.” This was
particularly concerning because “[t]he construction of the Canada Pa-
cific R.R. is drawing rapidly to a close,” meaning that the six thousand
Chinese working on the railroad were gradually being discharged. Beecher
predicted that it would be “impossible for that Province to employ all these