Tue New York Independent of the 24th December last has an article by Mr. W. F. Gray in which the writer, commenting on the rapid payment by China of the Wuhu indemnity, recalls the outrages that have been inflicted on Chinese in the United States, and tells the true story which has only recently come to light of the unprovoked murder of thirty-four Chinese on the Snake River, at the point where that stream forms the boundary line between Oregon and Idaho, in 1887. In April of that year some farmers were horrified at finding in the stream the bodies of twenty Chinese, all with bullet wounds in them. The Chinese Consul at San Francisco was informed of the fact, and he employed a skilful detective regardless of expense to discover the truth; but all that could be learnt by him and from the local authorities was, that "the bodies had floated down from the vicinity of Wallowa, Oregon, but. that section was peopled almost entirely by desperadoes to whom the murder of a white man, let alone a Chinaman, was no importance, and it was useless to prosecute the enquiry further." With this the Chinese Consul had to be content and the matter was dropped. But as the Chinese Consul remarked to the writer of the article in the Zndependent, "Tt did not seem possible that God Almighty could allow the secret to remain hidden," and so it proved. Not long since one of the men who knew the details of the crime, if he was not actually avaccomplice, was on his deathbed, "and then, with eternity staring him in his face, he told the awful story." It was not known till then that there were fourteen other victims, whose budless were never found, besides the twenty whose remains the farmers buried. The bodies of these fourteen had been lodged among the rocks, driftwood, and shifting sands of the stream, in the seventy-five or one hundred miles that lay between the scene of the slaughter and the locality where the first twenty bodies were found.
Four white men, it is now learnt, not including the man who has told the tale, were engaged in the murderous work, They discovered, it appears, that the Chivamen, who had been placer mining ata bar on Snake River, had collected a considerable quantity of gold dust, and they planned to kill the men and steal the gold. Well armed with repeating rifles these four men approached the camp of thirteen Chinese quietly, two from above and two from below.
When they reached the camp, they opened fire on their unsuspecting victims, killing twelve of them at once and seriously wounding the thirteenth. They left him wounded, and set to work to take the gold dust, of which they found $6,000" worth, The next morning they found the wounded man, with one arm broken, trying to escape ina boat. They beat out his brains when he drifted ashore, and threw his body into the stream to follow those of his companions. Soon the murderers saw a boat containing eight more Chinese coming down the stream, apparently to join the camp. They hid themselves and allowed the Chinese to land, and then shot them down as they were walking unsuspectingly to the camp. Their eight bodies followed the former thirteen into the stream. 'I'hen the murderers bethought them that there was another camp of successful Chinese miners a few miles up the river. They took the boat in which their last victims had come, rowed up the river, found again thirteen Chinese on the bar, killed them all, threw their bodies into the stream, and captured their board of gold dust, worth about $50,000. Four white men, or five, had killed thirty-four Chinese and gained $56,000. The confession from which these facts have been learnt has been translated into Chinese at San Francisco, and sent to Peking, with a request for instructions. "In view of recent occurrences in China," says the writer in the Zndependent, "who can doubt what those instructions will be?"
The evident idea of the writer is, that the Chinese government might claim this outrage as a set-off against the anti-missionary outrages in China last year; or at Jeast that, as China has paid an indemnity for Wuhu, it would be justified in claiming a corresponding indemnity for the Snake River. The circumstances, however, are so entirely different that this crime in the United States in 1887 and last year's crimes in China cannot be compared. The murders in the United States were the act of a few lawless individuals in a wild region where law and order bad hardly been established at all, and where the government could not possibly prevent them, and certainly would not screen the culprits if it could arrest them. The outrages in China took place in regions settled for centuries, provided with all the paraphernalia for the maintenance of order, where prevention was immediately feasible, and where the arrest and punishment of the culprits could have been instantly effected, if the officials had a genuine desire to do their duty. 'I'he murderers in the United States were actuated by the mere unbridled lust of gain, and possibly by a little race hatred, which unfortunately the legislation of the country tends rather to foster than to repress, Race hatred had something to do also with the riots in China, but they were mainly brought about by the direct teaching of men of education, as Chinese education goes, and of official rank. The Chinese whisper that a high official was present in disguise, as one of the leaders of the riot at Wuhu. It is this official indifference, which permeates even the highest servants of the ''bronc, that differentiates these occurrences in China from outrages in foreign countries whither Chinese emigrants have gone. There can be yo question that China is morally bound to indemnify the sufferers from anti-foreign outrages in her own borders. 'I'here is no such compulsion on the United States government to indemnify the sufferers from anti-Chi-
except in as far as its anti-Chinese nese outrages in the Great Republic, legislation may seem to encourage lawless men to treat Chinese immigrants as an inferior race of beings.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.