C6
OUTSIDE
East Oregonian
Saturday, November 16, 2019
Saving Oregon’s mining history
By ERIN ROSS
Oregon Public Broadcasting
JOHN DAY — It was the kind
of July day in Eastern Oregon
when the dusty air waits for a spark
to ignite a fire. In fact, two fires
were already burning nearby.
Chelsea Rose, clad in black
jeans, a black woven cowboy hat
and black leather combat boots,
was leading a team of U.S. Forest
Service employees, archaeologists
and volunteers through the back-
woods. Two-way radios crack-
led with fire spotters’ updates.
Although the fires were still a dis-
tance away, another could have
started at any minute. Everyone
needed to be prepared to evacuate.
Rose stepped over felled logs
and rutted ground. Piles from a
forest thinning operation were
scattered throughout the land-
scape. There was no trail, but
Rose didn’t need it — she spotted
a small, unassuming depression in
the ground.
“It’s a mining ditch, an aque-
duct,” said Rose, an archaeologist
from Southern Oregon University.
She turned to follow it after point-
ing out a large reservoir and a bump
in the aqueduct that probably held a
gate. Moving water, Rose said, was
crucial for gold mining operations.
Hand-built aqueducts like this one
could stretch for miles, descending
steadily across a mountainside.
The people who created them
are almost certainly dead, but only
recently. Many of their children are
still alive.
Rose works on the Oregon Chi-
nese Diaspora project. She studies
the mass immigration of Chinese
workers into Oregon, many of who
came as miners when Gold Fever
hit Oregon in the mid-1800s. At
one point, 40% of the residents of
Grant County, where Rose is cur-
rently excavating, were Chinese.
“If you look at the population
of Chinese residents [in Grant
County], in the 1860s up through
the turn of the century, there would
be a lot of folks here,” Rose said.
“There’s not now, and there’s a rea-
son for that.”
The reason is the Chinese
Exclusion Act, an 1882 law that
prohibited the immigration of Chi-
nese workers to the United States.
It was the first law ever passed that
was aimed at blocking a specific
ethnic group’s entry into the U.S.
Their mining claims were taken.
Their property was seized and they
were prohibited from purchasing
new property. Their towns and
neighborhoods were torn down.
Many moved to urban centers and
many more moved back to China.
Chinese Americans became a foot-
note in Oregon’s history books.
Just because history is recent,
doesn’t mean it’s remembered.
But if you know where to look
— and Rose does — you can see
evidence of Chinese influence all
over Oregon. Chinese immigrants
built the railroads. Their mines
helped prop up the economy of
Oregon. They worked in canneries
and hop farms. They even changed
the shape of the land they lived on,
in dramatic ways.
“We have very little that comes
from Chinese residents them-
OPB Photos/Erin Ross
Archaeologists excavate the hearth from a Chinese gold miner’s cabin in the Malheur National Forest.
Looters scattered artifacts throughout an archaeolog-
ical site in the Malheur National Forest.
selves,” Rose said. “Archaeology is
a way to capture that. The artifacts
we find in the dirt? They tell stories
about choices and opportunities.”
Eventually, Rose followed the
aqueduct to the site of an old mining
cabin. A few rotting logs remained
in a rough square shape. The site
had been disturbed — probably by
looters — so artifacts like glass,
cans, nails and bits of shovel were
strewn throughout the area.
This site was just for show.
The actual excavation was tak-
ing place a quarter-mile away, but
here, Rose’s volunteers could see
snippets of the sorts of things they
might find: glass stamped with
symbols that link them to compa-
nies in China, pieces of pottery,
tins of food repurposed as sieves,
water filters, and mining tools.
When they arrived at the actual
site, the excavation began. It was
less Indiana Jones and more a
meticulous documentation of each
and every object in the area.
Rose’s volunteers spread out,
marking the location of every sur-
face artifact with a flag. Then, they
took metal detectors and placed a
flag everywhere there was a beep.
Eventually, the ground was cov-
ered with orange and pink flags
fluttering in the dry wind.
Rose and a collaborator moved
from flag to flag, logging the GPS
location of each artifact before they
ever began excavating. It took all
day.
The next day, they dug, exca-
vating precisely marked square
plots. Anything the team found,
Jane Collier, a volunteer, sifts dust and sand through
a screen. Any artifacts larger than one-quarter inch
by one-quarter inch will get stuck in the screen, and
catalogued.
they documented, photographing it
in the ground before they removed
it from the plot. Dirt was care-
fully scraped and brushed from the
plot, layer by meticulous layer, and
placed into buckets. Those buck-
ets were then sifted through win-
dow screens to reveal even tinier
artifacts.
Eventually, a portrait of a life
revealed itself.
Katie Johnson, an archaeologist
and GIS specialist on Rose’s team
at Southern Oregon University, has
been documenting pieces of glass
bottles found in a hearth.
“He had a lot of different oils
and sauces,” she said. “And some
of these, I think, might have had
alcohol?”
You can learn a lot about a per-
son if you learn how they cooked.
Over the course of a week, Rose
excavated a number of sites. Each
piece, carried thousands of miles
across the sea, and from there
through inhospitable Oregon des-
ert, can tell a story.
“We’re looking at the types of
things you would bring with you if
you left home. Like, they answer,
‘What does home mean?’” Rose
said, holding up a small piece of
blue-green china. “We find these
breakable heavy tea pots that are
just beautiful things that someone
carried with them.”
It’s those fragments of home
that tell you who used to live there.
They find pieces of bone
china: cups and plates and tea-
pots. But not all of these artifacts
are eye-catching; some look like
trash, something discarded along
the road. But the empty cans and
food containers from midden piles
can tell an archaeologist even more
about how someone actually lived.
Was the can cut open with a knife
or just punctured? That can tell a
researcher if it was used to store
a liquid, or something large, like
pears.
The most striking site had a
massive stone wall, the remains of
a hearth with the bones of animals
the residents ate. To the side were
a pair of rubber boot soles studded
with nails — hob-nails — that Chi-
nese miners would push through
the soles of their shoes for traction.
These miners came from sub-
tropical areas, Rose said, but they
would mine all through the cold
Blue Mountain winters, standing
knee-deep in frigid water while
they worked. The boots kept their
feet warm and dry. They were
lovingly cared for, probably car-
ried by their owner over hundreds
of miles. They were all that stood
between the miners and frostbite.
There’s an urgency to the work
Rose and her colleagues are doing
in the Malheur National Forest.
The threat of wildfire is always
present and it’s getting worse. The
already fire-prone stands of pon-
derosa pine trees are under threat
as human-caused climate change
makes wildfires bigger, hotter and
more frequent.
A grant to the Forest Service
aims to mitigate those wildfires by
thinning parts of the forests and
doing controlled burns.
‘Muppets’ creator was a secret angler
By LUKE OVGARD
For the East Oregonian
Thesis statement: Jim Henson
was secretly a die-hard fisherman.
The man crucial to the devel-
opment of “The Muppets,” “Ses-
ame Street” and the less popular
1990s sitcom “Dinosaurs” built
his characters in a way that lead
me to believe he loved to fish. Or,
at the very least, he loved fishing
culture.
Here’s why.
“The Muppets”
Americans are either familiar
with “The Muppets” or have lived
an unimaginably sad life.
“Muppet” is the term the late
Henson used to describe his
own flavor of puppets that were
repeatedly thrust into complex
storylines full of humor, drama
and the unending yet confusing
romance between Kermit and
Miss Piggy.
Ah yes. Kermit and Miss Piggy.
These two characters initially
piqued my curiosity and made me
wonder if, in fact, Henson had a
theme with his characters.
One is a frog and one is a pig.
Apart from both being edible
and tolerant to living conditions
most humans would find abhor-
rent, the two animals really have
nothing in common — save one
thing: They’re both terms used by
anglers to describe large fish.
You’re probably familiar with
“hawg” and “toad” but “pig” is
also widely used, and in some
pike- and bass-specific circles,
I’ve heard “bullfrog.”
The two main characters are
named for big fish slang, but you
may not be convinced.
Add to their names the “Will
they or won’t they?” interplay of
uncertainty the two share. That is
fishing at its core; you never know
what you’ll get.
Add in that Pepé the Prawn is
the prime saltwater fishing bait
and Beaker looks like a worm, and
I think it’s clear Henson left a few
Easter eggs.
“Dinosaurs”
What hatched from eggs in the
distant past? Birds. Fish. Lizards.
Okay, sure, class, but the
answer I was looking for is
dinosaurs.
Large fish deemed to be pre-
historic, like sturgeon and gar, are
called dinosaurs by anglers.
Henson didn’t just name a
character Dinosaur; he named a
whole series after them. Actual
dinosaurs that hatched from real
eggs can’t speak for themselves,
but “Dinosaurs” speaks volumes
for Henson’s secret love of fishing.
“Sesame Street”
Naming wasn’t the end of it,
though.
Granted, “Sesame Street”
characters don’t bear secret hom-
age to fishing in and of them-
selves, but the episode in which
Bert and Ernie go fishing is true
to form.
Ernie immediately catches two
fish.
At first, Bert is helpful and sup-
portive, but after a few fish, you
can tell he’s frustrated. He tries to
be nice, but he’s not thrilled.
Ernie says they should trade
places because “The fish seem to
be biting better over here.”
Bert agreed, adding, “What a
pal.”
Ernie immediately catches a
fish in Bert’s former spot, and
the camera pans to Bert. In Jim
Halpert fashion, but years before
the famous prankster from “The
Office,” Bert stares deadpan at the
camera.
Ernie then offers to fish with-
out bait. Of course he catches
another fish.
The camera pans back to Bert,
who grunts in frustration.
“You have all the fish,” Bert
decries, “and I have none. I have
zero fish.”
Finally, feeling for his friend,
Ernie says he’ll stop fishing.
Bert is touched and agrees to the
gesture.
Almost immediately, Bert feels
a tug on his line and reels some-
thing in. It’s a note.
“What does it say?” Bert asks,
still holding the rod.
Ernie quickly reads the note:
“It says ‘What happened to your
friend?’” as both characters pull a
Jim Halpert and stare at the cam-
era while the scene ends.
I felt that in my core, and while
you are probably laughing, you
also felt the pangs of disappoint-
ment. Nothing sums up the frus-
tration and joy fishing offers like
that one scene.
Look at the facts, people:
hawgs, toads and dinosaurs. Bert
and Ernie’s comical-yet-sad fish-
ing trip. Was Henson secretly an
angler or a fan of the sport?
Pan to me, looking directly into
the camera.
———
Order performance fishing
apparel or read more at caughtov-
gard.com; Follow on Instagram
and Fishbrain @lukeovgard;
Contact luke.ovgard@gmail.com.
Don Hann, the heritage pro-
gram manager with Malheur
National Forest, said the Forest
Service is obligated to protect any
archaeological sites on its land.
“But we’re talking about tiny
pieces of clothing, milled wood,
pieces of leather and rubber,”
Hann said. “Any fire, even a small
one, can destroy all that history.”
The race against time is two-
fold: These sites need to be doc-
umented before they’re burned
away. And they need to be located
before they’re destroyed by thin-
ning operations.
There’s a problem, though.
There are no reliable records of the
locations of Chinese mines. After
the Exclusion Act, many worked
off-the-books. But a few years
ago, as part of a program to iden-
tify areas that are likely to burn in
a wildfire, the Forest Service used
a low-flying plane to get LIDAR
images of the area. LIDAR is an
imaging technology that maps the
ground with incredible accuracy,
catching differences in elevation
of just a few inches.
For archaeologists, that’s all
they need. Because the Chinese
miners did more than dig for gold:
they shaped the landscape. Their
aqueducts crisscrossed the moun-
tains for miles. They constructed
reservoirs that held and released
water in the driest parts of sum-
mer. They built streams where
there were none, and the massive
rock piles left behind after exca-
vations, called tailings, formed
mounds as well as deep, miles-
long ditches.
“Before, we thought we had
maybe 1,000 to 2,000 acres of
mining area. Now we’re looking at
7,000 to 8,000,” Hann said.
In recent years, a lot of miscon-
ceptions about the Chinese in Ore-
gon have been corrected — the
extent of the mining operations,
who was running the mines. And
even when historians began to
acknowledge the role the Chinese
played in Oregon mining, Hann
said many still assumed that Chi-
nese miners were laborers work-
ing for white-owned mining com-
panies. But that wasn’t the case.
They ran their own companies,
and as many as 70% of the min-
ers in the area could have been
Chinese.
“The fact that these populations
aren’t represented now means that
it’s even more important for us to
understand their historical contri-
bution and acknowledge it,” Rose
said. “That’s how we can start
to own up, and make up for the
wrongs that were done to these
early immigrant populations.”
Despite all those barriers,
though, Chinese people thrived for
a time in Oregon. They built infra-
structure, established commu-
nities and funneled gold into the
economy. And then, a suite of pol-
icies, targeting one ethnic group,
erased much of their history.
Racism and animosity did the
rest. But it doesn’t change their
presence.
They lived and worked and
made friends and built lives, Rose
said.
“Their stories deserve to be
told.”
Hunters
association
welcomes
guest speakers
East Oregonian
PENDLETON — Several spe-
cial guests will share at the upcom-
ing Columbia Basin Chapter of
the Oregon Hunters Association
meeting.
The no-host gathering is Tues-
day, Nov. 19 at 5:30 p.m. at The
Saddle Restaurant and Lounge,
2220 S.E. Court Ave., Pendleton.
The program, which starts at 6 p.m.,
includes Lizzy Berkeley of the
U.S. Forest Service, who will give
a presentation about the Ellis proj-
ect. Terry Reynolds of the Oregon
Department of Fish and Wildlife
will discuss the Umatilla National
Forest closed road project. Mark
Kirsch and Greg Rimbaugh, also
from ODFW, will answer questions
and talk about forest projects.
A nonprofit organization, the
association’s mission is to protect
hunting rights, promote wildlife and
habitat projects, and provide educa-
tion on hunting ethics. For questions
about the meeting or how to join the
OHA, call chapter president Dean
Groshong at 541-377-1227.