Attack on Squak Valley Chinese laborers, 1885
The Attack on Squak Valley Chinese laborers took place on September 7, 1885, in Squak Valley (now called Issaquah), Washington Territory, when a group of men fired their guns into several tents where a group of Chinese hop pickers were sleeping. The gunfire resulted in the death of three Chinese men and the wounding of three others. The attackers were later identified and brought to trial, but all were acquitted.
The attack was part of a widespread pattern of racially motivated violence against Chinese immigrants in the United States. During the latter half of the 19th century, there were more than 150 documented group attacks against Chinese communities and settlers throughout North America.
Some of the details about what happened in Squak Valley are in dispute. There are brief accounts from two of the Chinese victims of the attack and several statements from those who investigated the crime, but otherwise the remaining information comes from statements made by the individuals who were either on trial or awaiting trial for the murder of the Chinese laborers. Several statements made during the trial directly contradicted the accounts made by others.
Ingebright and Lars Wold were two brothers who owned a large hops farm in the Squak Valley, about 15 miles east of Seattle, in the 1880s. For several years they had been using local Indian laborers to the pick hops crop, but in 1885 the market prices for hops were very low. After failing to negotiate lower wages with the Indians, in late August the Wold Brothers contracted with the firm of Quong Chong & Company in Seattle to bring Chinese laborers to pick the hops for a reduced rate.
On Saturday afternoon, September 5, a group of thirty-seven Chinese laborers arrived at the Wold Brothers' farm. They pitched their tents in the orchard at the farm. That same night a group of local Squak Valley residents, led by Sam Robertson and DeWitt Rumsey, visited the Chinese and told them they should leave the Valley. They were interrupted by one of the Wold Brothers' workers, who persuaded the local men to go see the Wold Brothers. The local men met with the Wold Brothers and told them that the Chinese must leave, or else the same men would come back and force them to leave. The Wold Brothers told the group to go away and let the Chinese do their work. The group then left and returned to their homes.
On Sunday, September 6, news of the Rock Springs Massacre of Chinese miners was on the front page of the Seattle newspaper.
On Monday, September 7, 1885, at about 4 o'clock, another group of about thirty Chinese started to enter Squak Valley and were met at George W. Tibbetts' store by a group of white men and Indians. The crowd intimidated the arriving Chinese, who turned around and went back the way they came. There are no known reports of who was in the group of men that turned the Chinese away.
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