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Greg Nokes - Massacred for Gold
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Time: Saturday, June 5, 2010 5:00 p.m.
Location: Sunriver Books & Music
Phone: 541-593-2525
We are very pleased to have Greg Nokes appearing at Sunriver Books & Music. Here is a bit of information about his latest book. R. Gregory Nokes’ book “Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon’’ will be published by Oregon State University Press in October.
The book is the first authoritative account of the little-known massacre of as many as thirty-four Chinese gold miners in Oregon’s Hells Canyon in 1887. The killers were a gang of horsethieves and school boys living in what is now Wallowa County, none of whom was ever convicted. The massacre was the worst of the many crimes committed by whites against the tens of thousands of Chinese laborers who immigrated to the American West in the 19th century to mine gold and build the nation’s new railroads. The author goes behind the massacre to explain why the Chinese came, how they were treated and what happened to them.
Nokes has traveled the world as a reporter and editor. He worked for The Associated Press in Salt Lake City; New York City; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Buenos Aires, and Washington, D.C. He joined The Oregonian in 1986, from which he has since retired.
Nokes’ assignments for The AP included Chief State Department Correspondent during which he covered trips abroad by Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan. In Puerto Rico, he served as Chief of Caribbean Services, responsible for AP’s Caribbean news and business operations. His news assignments have taken him to more than fifty countries, including three trips to China.
A native of Oregon, Nokes attended Willamette University in Oregon, graduating in 1959. He was awarded a Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University in 1971-1972. He was a contributing author to The Media and Foreign Policy, published by St. Martin’s Press in 1990.
Nokes was interviewed on-camera about the Chinese massacre for the Bill Moyers’ three-part PBS series, Becoming American: The Chinese Experience, which aired in 2003. He also wrote an article about the massacre that appeared in the Fall 2006 issue of the Oregon Historical Quarterly entitled “A Most Daring Outrage, Murders at Chinese Massacre Cove, 1887.’’ The article won him an honorable mention for the 2007 Joel Palmer Award from the Oregon Historical Society.
At The Oregonian, he worked in various capacities, including reporter, national correspondent, Oregon roving correspondent, and assistant managing editor. It was during Nokes’ work as a roving reporter that he learned of the discovery of hidden documents, which shed new light on the massacre. He retired from the newspaper in 2003 to research and write his book.
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Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon(Trade Paperback)
by
Nokes, R. Gregory
Format: Trade Paperback
Price:
$18.95
Published: Oregon State University Press, 2009
Inventory Status: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
In 1887, more than thirty Chinese gold miners were massacred on the Oregon side of Hells Canyon, the deepest canyon in North America. Massacred for Gold, the first authoritative account of the unsolved crime, unearths the evidence that points to an improbable gang of rustlers and schoolboys, one only fifteen, as the killers.
The crime was discovered weeks after it happened, but no charges were brought for nearly a year, when gang member Frank Vaughan, son of a well-known settler family, confessed and turned stateas evidence. Six men and boys, all from northeastern Oregonas remote Wallowa county, were chargedabut three fled, and the others were found innocent by a jury that a witness admitted had little interest in convicting anyone. A cover-up followed, and the crime was all but forgotten for the next one hundred years, until a county clerk in Wallowa County found hidden records in an unused safe.
Massacred for Gold traces the authoras 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.
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