40 Chinamen came here that year; then, of course, they began to increase as
rapidly as ever.”26
Undocumented Migration in the Pacific Northwest
Federal statistics on Chinese migration also failed to account for the thou-
sands of Chinese who entered the country undetected during the Restric-
tion Period. After San Francisco, Washington Territory was the second most
popu lar entry point for Chinese in the 1880s. And unlike San Francisco,
where customs officials could monitor the arrival of international steamships
and demand a list of Chinese passengers before they were allowed to disem-
EXPERIMENTS IN RESTRICTION
63
bark, Washington’s long border with Canada offered an ideal route for Chi-
nese laborers hoping to slip unnoticed into the United States.
Then, as now, estimating how many made the crossing is difficult. Con-
temporary local newspapers did not agree; some stated that by fall 1885, one
hundred were crossing per month, while others claimed it was closer to
one hundred per week. National newspapers also offered estimates: in 1884,
the New York Times claimed that thousands of Chinese had already been
smuggled across the border, and in 1891, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine
estimated that fifteen hundred had been smuggled annually. During an
1890 congressional investigation, a U.S. customs official stationed in Wash-
ington argued that the number was more like twenty- five hundred annu-
ally. It is probable that one to two thousand Chinese entered the country
this way each year, suggesting that any reduction in Chinese admissions in
San Francisco saw an equal or greater increase in migration through Canada.
In short, it is unlikely the Chinese Restriction Act slowed Chinese migration
at all.27
In 1846, the United States and Britain had drawn a line at the forty- ninth
parallel delineating their territory in the Pacific Northwest. But giving
meaning to this territorial border, an imaginary line on the map, involved a
much longer pro cess of social construction and maintenance.28 The experi-
ences of a small band of customs officials in Washington Territory drama-
tize the factors under lying the act’s failure to harden the U.S.- Canadian
boundary. At the time, the man in charge was A. W. Bash, collector of cus-
toms at Port Townsend, who managed the entire customs ser vice in Wash-
ington Territory, including the half- dozen smaller port cities near Puget
Sound and the hundreds of miles of land border with British Columbia.
After only two weeks of attempting to enforce the act, Bash could see
that he was woefully understaffed and turned to the federal government
hoping for aid and guidance. He wrote to his superiors in Washington, D.C.,
“The new anti- Chinese law . . . has caused some perplexity and a great deal
of work. I have learned that 17 seventeen chinamen [ sic] have crossed into
this territory, east of the Cascade Mountains where there is but one officer
to guard two hundred miles of frontier.” Two more officers, argued Bash,
would at least give “a show of re sis tance or watchfulness,” and, he admitted,
this was “ really all that can be made on so extensive a frontier, with so very
64 RESTRICTION
few officers.” In addition to the prob lem of manpower, Bash noted that
questions regarding the act were “arriving at this District almost each day,”
many of which could not be answered by the language of the law. What was
he to do about Chinese seamen who arrived on American vessels, or Chi-
nese laborers who were naturalized British subjects? Between the difficulty
of capturing unauthorized Chinese mi grants and the confusion over who
was in fact unauthorized, “So far,” explained Bash, “we have been unable to
enforce the law.”29
The Department of Trea sury did not grant Bash additional staff or funds,
but it did send a special inspector to assess the U.S.- Canadian border.
Special Agent J. C. Horr toured the district in May 1883 and submitted an
overwhelmingly optimistic report. While he admitted there were ten thou-
sand Chinese in British Columbia just across the boundary line, Horr wrote,
“I . . . can without fear of truthful contradiction aver that no Chinese from
British Columbia have entered Washington Territory or Oregon without
production of proof of professional or mercantile vocation or proof of pre-
vious residence in the United States.” The land border posed no threat, ac-
cording to Horr, because there were only five pos si ble trails, which “pass
through a mountainous, densely wooded country, interspersed by many
creeks and rivers so swollen by the Winter snows and Spring rains as to be
impassible for six months in a year.” When they were passable, mounted
customs officers guarded all but one. The last trail, which led from Fort Slope,
British Columbia, to the Skagit mines of Washington Territory, was not a
prob lem because the “white miners at Skagit are hostile to the Chinese and
would promptly notify the Customs Officers of any violations of the law.”30
Horr admitted that “the thousand miles of coastline on the mainland of
Washington territory and the many islands adjacent thereto would seem to
indicate that the law could easily be evaded,” but again insisted that there
was no danger of infractions. Horr believed the Chinese were not mentally
capable of utilizing this route. “The British Columbia chinaman,” he main-
tained, would have to “tax[] his ingenuity” to travel by canoe because cus-
toms officers were stationed at the most accessible points, and the collector’s
steamer, the Revenue Cutter, was constantly crossing the waters of San Juan
and Puget Sound. Moreover, “any such attempts, to be successful, would
require the cooperation and the good will of the people, neither of which . . .
is likely to be extended.” “If a stranger should seek entrance by the Islands,”
EXPERIMENTS IN RESTRICTION
65
argued Horr, “the hostility of the people would lead to discovery before he
could reach a settlement or a town.” He counted on the people of Wash-
ington Territory to aid the customs ser vice in their fight to protect the border.
With the help of inhospitable terrain and civilian vigilance, four customs
inspectors could successfully defend over a thousand miles of coastline and
border.31 Even at the time, contemporaries charged that Horr’s low estima-
tion of Chinese intelligence and high estimation of local anti- Chinese
sentiment reflected his own prejudices. The U.S. consul in Victoria, B.C.,
warned that Horr was “imbued with animosity against the Chinese race. . . .
He appears to think the Chinese have no souls, and that the brightest of
them is as degraded as the lowest.”32
When Bash read a copy of Horr’s report a few months later, he was dis-
mayed. To counter Horr’s assertion that hostile whites would prevent mi-
gration, Bash argued that there were also developers who found Chinese
labor useful for their businesses. He counted twelve large sawmills and lum-
bering forts on Puget Sound as well as the Puget Sound Railroad, which
&nb
sp; already employed two thousand Chinese. As Chinese laborers left these jobs
to seek other employment, “it is rumored that the contractors are endeav-
oring to fill their places with Chinese from British Columbia.”33
Bash’s view was echoed by local officials. After traveling to British Co-
lumbia to investigate in July 1883, Inspector Ira B. Meyers reported: “I talked
with several Chinese, to whom I was unknown, and they were anxiously en-
quiring for some way to get into the United States, they offered me $25.00 a
piece if I would get them through. I know there are scores of them only
awaiting a favorable opportunity to smuggle across. My opinion is that unless
very closely watched hundreds of them will cross over, as new ones are coming
in frequently from China.”34 Captain C. L. Hooper, of the Revenue Ma-
rine, agreed with Meyers’s assessment. In an 1884 letter to the territorial
governor, he wrote, “ There are thousands of Chinaman just without the
border, waiting for an opportunity to get in. Plenty of worthless characters
are ready to assist them, and all passenger steamers ready to carry them,
provided it can be done without risk.” With so many ave nues into the country
and so few customs officials, Captain Hooper thought that the United
States had little hope of stopping undocumented migration. There may have
been many white residents of Washington Territory who hated Chinese
labor, but there were also power ful and unscrupulous men who sought it.35
66 RESTRICTION
“Birds- Eye View of Puget Sound.” This 1891 map depicts the land and sea border
between the United States and Canada. The maze of waterways and islands in
Washington and British Columbia facilitated clandestine entry, undermining border
control. University of Washington Libraries Map Collection, C. G. Maring, map-
maker, Charles H. Baker & Co., publisher, UW29556z.
In addition, Bash argued that there were nine pos si ble overland trails, not
five, and that Horr’s descriptions of treacherous terrain had been exagger-
ated. Illegal entry using these trails was highly probable because “a number
of Chinese mining camps are located near the Boundary line in British Co-
lumbia” and “the department allows but one man in Eastern Washington
and consequently the balance of the trails must necessarily remain un-
guarded.” As for the coastline and islands, it was Bash’s opinion that “not a
few have already crossed over in Indian canoes and small boats and others
will surely follow,” because “it would be difficult to apprehend Chinese . . .
in an archipelago of more than fifty Islands with only two customs officers
stationed in that quarter and one of them being obliged to remain at Friday
harbor the Sub Port of entry.”36 With his colleague based at Friday Harbor,
the only man free to patrol the islands and coastland— the most porous part
of the U.S.- Canadian boundary— was Deputy Inspector Arthur Blake. On
EXPERIMENTS IN RESTRICTION
67
his shoulders fell much of the task of enforcing Chinese restriction north of
California.
A Night with Deputy Arthur Blake
Blake began his work as a customs inspector in the villages of Sehome and
Semiahmoo one year before the Chinese Restriction Act went into effect.
When recommending Blake for the position, Bash described him as a
“shrewd, sober, industrious and staunch Republican,” whom he was con-
vinced would make “an efficient officer.”37 Born in Boston, Mas sa chu setts,
Blake worked as a civil engineer, but at age fifty he migrated three thousand
miles to Washington Territory. Washington was a far cry from the devel-
oped towns of New England he had left. According to the 1880 census, fewer
than 72,000 white people lived in the expansive territory. The largest city,
Seattle, had a population of only 3,553, and Blake was bound not for Seattle
but for a tiny village in the wilderness. He was to guard the northwest
corner of Washington Territory from people smuggling goods from Canada
without paying American taxes. This was not a simple job. His territory in-
cluded the many small winding waterways and hidden bays of the San Juan
Islands: a smuggler’s paradise. Mainland terrain was not much easier: twenty-
five miles of densely forested and scarcely populated coastland between
Sehome (present- day Bel ingham) and Semiahmoo, adjacent to the Canadian
border. He left his wife and son in Port Townsend, likely deciding that his
destination was too rough and unsettled for his family.
It was clear from Blake’s first day in Sehome that he did not have the
natu ral constitution to perform the strenuous task of patrolling the border.
August 11, 1881, was a “fine warm day,” but Blake recorded in his diary that
he felt “very unwell from headache, indigestion, and a cold in the chest and
back.” In the first week, he wrote his wife daily and, in a rare show of emo-
tion, wrote in his diary that he “felt very lonesome, so far.” As the weeks
and months passed, his list of physical complaints grew to include insomnia,
asthma, and chest pain. Still, Bash was right about him. Blake’s illnesses did
not stop him from performing his duties: meeting locals, walking along the
coast, riding to neighboring towns, inspecting steamers that passed through,
and writing detailed reports to his superiors.38
68 RESTRICTION
Although the Restriction Act went into effect in August 1882, by the fol-
lowing May Blake had only arrested a handful of Chinese mi grants and be-
lieved that few were eluding him. He wrote to Bash, “I saw an article in the
[Port Townsend] Argus recently, stating that Chinamen were constantly
coming over the line, from New Westminster, Port Moody etc. and in large
numbers. If they are so coming, which I doubt, they must cross the line fur-
ther to the north and east, for they do not come through here or Semi-
ahmoo.”39 A year after the Restriction Act was passed, Blake felt confident
that he could defend the coastline and islands from the trickle of undocu-
mented mi grants from British Columbia. Every arrest he made, Blake be-
lieved, deterred future undocumented migration.
Blake spent every day fighting Chinese migration, but in his professional
correspondence and personal diary he never said a word against the Chi-
nese. Unlike Special Inspector Horr, Blake did not underestimate the inge-
nuity of Chinese mi grants, and he showed moments of recognition of their
humanity and suffering. Blake complained to his superior that the jail cells
where Chinese were kept seemed “unsafe, and unfit to confine human be-
ings in. . . . They are about 6' × 6' feet, cold and filthy. The sheriff does not
furnish blankets, there is no stove on that floor and the cold nights of winter,
prisoners will stand a good chance of freezing.” 40 While many of his col-
leagues did not shy away from insulting Chinese mi grants, Blake was either
too professional or too sympathetic to these “ human beings” to rec ord any
harsh words.
Still, he fought to protect the northern border, especially once he discov-
ered, in the fall of 1883
, that a flood of mi grants was pouring across it. Blake
quickly realized that few Chinese had attempted the crossing during the first
year of restriction. In October 1883, he reported to Bash that he had cap-
tured eleven Chinese laborers from Victoria. But he was not excited about
the large arrest, merely worried that “many are crossing over.” By the end of
November, Blake’s letters to his superiors were sobered by fears of defeat.
He vowed to do the “best I can to detect and capture them,” but he be-
lieved “that Coolie immigration in this quarter, cannot be checked even
temporarily.” 41
Blake found his work undermined by a weak federal commitment to pre-
venting Chinese migration. At 5 p.m. on November 25, 1883, a typical day,
he received word that six Chinese were spotted departing the Ferndale ferry
EXPERIMENTS IN RESTRICTION
69
coming toward Sehome. He hired two men, as he often did, and ordered
them to track the Chinese through the woods. As the sun set, Blake heard
rumors that the mi grants had stopped at the China Wash House, so he
rushed there with the town sheriff. By the time they arrived, they found only
Ah Hing, the proprietor of the laundry, who admitted that five Chinese had
approached him, but said he had not allowed them to stay. Ah Hing believed
that they had gone aboard the steamer Idaho. So Blake rode to the docks
and boarded the Idaho and found five Chinese passengers.
But when he questioned them individually, they “would not understand
anything” or state where they had come from, answering only “no sabe”—
an ungrammatical Spanish version of “I don’t know.” Without their own ad-
missions, Blake had “no evidence” that these Chinese men had crossed from
British Columbia, or even that these were the Chinese he had tracked all
night. He noted that their descriptions did not match his original tip, since
he had been looking for six Chinese men, three of whom were supposed to
be carry ing umbrellas, but these five held none.
Blake was unsure if it was worth arresting and sending them to Port
Townsend at government expense to face trial when they could easily be
found not guilty. “Could they have been tried here,” he wrote, “[I] would
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