Gregory Nokes Signs Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon

Hells Canyon, Oregon — the deepest canyon in North America — beheld the 1887 massacre of over thirty Chinese miners. No charges were brought until nearly a year later, when one of the killers confessed. A quick trial brought no convictions or punishment, and then key documents went missing. The crime was all but forgotten for one hundred years, until a county clerk in Wallowa County found hidden records in an unused safe.

Massacred for Gold traces the author's long personal journey to expose details of the massacre and its aftermath and to understand how one of the worst of the many crimes committed by whites against Chinese laborers in the American West was for so long lost to history.

"Nokes' book is a chronicle within a chronicle," says The Willamette Week, "explaining not only how and why the murders occurred but how the author had to sift through scant and often contradictory evidence to make sense of a crime that happened more than 120 years ago. The result is a challenging but refreshingly honest portrait of how history is not only made but written—a messy, non-chronological affair full of gaps and contradictions that are usually papered over in most of the informed speculation that passes for history today."

Praise

"Meticulously researched and engagingly written, Massacred for Gold should be required reading in the American West." — Jim Lynch, author of The Highest Tide and Border Songs

"An informative and exciting account ... Nokes is particularly good at placing the massacre in the larger Western story" — The Oregonian

"A chronicle within a chronicle... [a] refreshingly honest portrait of how history is not only made but written" — The Willamette Week

About the Author

R. Gregory Nokes traveled the world as a reporter and editor for Associated Press and the Oregonian. He first wrote about the murders of the Chinese miners in 1995. Nokes spent the next decade researching the massacre, making two dozen trips to Wallowa County to understand the historic community, the crime, and the apparent cover-up that followed. He published an extensive article on the massacre in the 2006 Oregon Historical Quarterly. His reporting on the subject has resulted in a formal designation of the massacre site as Chinese Massacre Cove. Nokes attended Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow. He lives with his wife, Candise, in West Linn, Oregon.

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