Transcripts For CSPAN3 Chinese Native Americans And The Transcontinental Railroad 20240714

Those cultures forever impacted by the railroad. Today were going to have two perspectives, one on the Chinese Railroad workers and another on native americans. Please hold your audience questions. Were going to have our two speakers on this topic give their presentations, and then were going to sit down and have a little chat in front of you here on the chairs. Then we will have opportunity for the audience to raise questions. So to start out our program, were going to talk about the Chinese Railroad workers, and our presenter is hilton obenzinger. He has been a lecturer at Stanford University in american studies and english and associate director for honors and advanced writing. He received his doctorate from the modern thought in Literature Program at stanford. Hes a critic, a poet, a novelist, a historian, and the recipient of the american book award. Hilton is the author of american palestinian, melville twain and the holy land mania, cannibal elliott and the lost histories of San Francisco, new york on fire. His recent auto biographical novel, busy dying, and other books as well as many articles in scholarly journals. He is the associate director of the Chinese Railroad workers of north american project here at Stanford University. He is assisting in the development of the projects website, content, and digital visualizations along with writing about the Chinese Railroad workers themselves. He is one of the editors of the soontobereleased and theres information on the front table about this but in the next few weeks, theyll be releasing from this project a book called the chinese and the iron road. So please would you welcome hilton obenzinger. [ applause ] hello. Are electronics set . Okay. Thank you very much. Im glad to be here, and thank you to the organizers of this, and thank you for getting up so early in the morning. So i welcome you on behalf of the Chinese Railroad workers of north america project, which is a transpacific project of scholars, and i welcome you on behalf of the gordon chang and Shelly Fisher fishkin, the codirectors. This is a very busy time for us with our books coming out, but also, you know, the commemorations, theres a lot of interest in the railroad. Gordon is in new york speaking at a major chineseamerican conference. Shelly is at another conference, so were traveling everywhere to try and speak about this. Oh, wrong one. There we go. So this is one of the pictures thats iconic of this time. East meets west, alfred russell. And as you can see, there are no chinese. Now, well talk about that in a bit. But chinese, you can see some here, and this is at bloomer cut, which is a cut is exactly what you see there. Instead of going over, they just cut through. And we believe some chinese started to work on this late in 1864 and 1865. This is the kind of work they did here, carting. This is bloomer cut again, then and today by li ju, a major exhibition. This is, you know, track work in nevada, working in the snow. This was supposed to be a snowplow clearing the tracks. It didnt work. Shovels worked and eventually sheds over, you know, areas where the snow would fall. Now, there are some chinese if you can see in this picture, laying the last tracks. Notice how theyre dressed, in kind of very shabby clothes or loosefitting. Three of them laying the last track. So now were back to this picture. We believe studying this, there may be two or three chinese in this picture. If you notice, the man with the back turned to you, wearing shabby clothes of a worker, that may be a chinese worker. And then the man holding his hat in front of someones face. You had to hold a pose for a long time, and so we think it could be that there was a chinese man there by the clothing, and he didnt want his face in the picture. Now, am i going the right way . Okay. Now, there were no chinese or very few chinese in that photo. The fact is there were very few chinese at that ceremony, and most of the people, if you look at that photo again, are wearing, you know, fairly welltodo clothes for the time and hats and shoes. In fact, there are very few workers there at all. Irish workers working on the Union Pacific or working with chinese on the Central Pacific, none of those workers were there. Now, the irish workers on the Union Pacific, they werent paid, and they actually the ceremony was supposed to be may 8th, and durant from the Union Pacific was stopped by a barricade on the tracks, and they held him hostage until they got their money, and they did get their money. It was for good reason that they were afraid they wouldnt get paid. Now, many of the workers were released, but many of the chinese went back to rebuilding the shoddy, you know, construction. But when they began, they needed workers, and there was a shortage, a scarcity in california. So they put out this flier in january 1865 for 5,000 workers. And crocker, i think, testified that there were no more than 800 that ever showed up. They simply did not want to work. Its difficult work, and the pay was very low. They could get jobs in the mines, other places, and get better pay and a better life. So those white workers, mainly irish, were not interested. Then they said, well, lets hire chinese, okay . Crocker got the idea and said, well, they built a great wall, didnt they . They could do this. Strowbridge did not, you know, think that the strowbridge was the construction manager did not think that they were strong enough. And here is stanford reporting to the congress in 1865. So, you know, strobridge says, i will not boss chinese. I will not be responsible for the work done on the road. From what ive seen of them, theyre not fit laborers anyway. I dont think they could build a railroad. So they did an experiment and worked them, loading up carts. Then they hired 50 more when that seemed satisfactory. Then another 50, and that seemed to work well. So the bulk of the labor force became chinese. The First Chinese from, you know, the area, auburn, San Francisco, et cetera. This is the kind of initial work. Another cut. So they went to chinatown in San Francisco, sacramento, and by march, they sent out Labor Contractors to guangdong. So by july 1865, the workforce, chinese was 4,000. By 1867, approximately 8,000 chinese were working in constructing the tunnels, and another 3,000 were laying track. Now, they all came from one area in guangdong, four counties at that time. Now its five. They split one in half. And they were familiar with california, gold mountain, the gold rush, and why from there and not beijing, for example . Well, access to hong kong and macau, and they got the news. So this is the way it looks today. One of the more prosperous areas of china today. And they came from these villages. We visited the villages, some of our colleagues in china had been doing research in the villages. Some of them are still called railroad villages. Our archaeology project led by barbara voss has been digging in villages, finding important artifacts linking them to the railroad and what life was like at that time. They would arrange with the contractor to take the ship, and soon it would be the Pacific Mail Steamship Company that the big four owned parts of. Then they would arrive in San Francisco. This is a great painting by jake leoned by the Chinese Historical Society of america. And they would be taken through the six companies, which is what we kind of call a grouping of kinship and regional benevolence societies and businesses. There they would arrange to be shipped to the end of the line, and they would pay a small amount for medical insurance. There would be a chinese acupuncturist, herbal doctor available. And then they also paid for their bones to be shipped back to china if they died. Now, this is at the golden spike visitors center. I dont know if its still there, but a couple years ago. This painting trying to imagine the white workers, mainly irish, and the chinese happily working together. I guess you can tell, you know, the white worker. You cant tell that hes irish particularly. But ive never seen any of the pictures of Chinese Workers with an open vest with their chest exposed, posing a little bit more like bruce lee. Okay. So the records, as you heard, are diminished. Many of them destroyed. There are a few payroll records left, incomplete, inexact, and its very hard to find out who and how many. Most of the names, if you can see it were like ah wong, ah being like mr. Ister, but diminutive. Theyre also like nicknames, not their full chinese name. Then in some places, you would get John Chinaman one, John Chinaman two, John Chinaman three as they named who they were. And then they would pay the Labor Contractor or the subcontractor, and he would divvy up the money through the foreman. Now, they became absolutely essential. As much as 80 to 90 of the workforce. The greater portion of the laborers employed are chinese. Without them, it would be impossible to complete the western portion of this Great National enterprise within the time required by the acts of congress. Now, as Richard White pointed out, this may not have been a big moneymaking deal initially as a railroad. As a scheme, maybe. But it was highly political. They debated where the route would be before the civil war, and there was a debate between, you know, the north and the south. The Southern Pacific Railroad would have been the easiest with that route. That meant allowing the south to expand slavery. So they went with this middle route, and very, very difficult terrain. So they needed these workers. Now, the white workers left. The way to look at this is that they could have had a lot of white workers, a lot of irish workers if they had decided to pay them well. They wanted to pay chinese less. So its important to keep that in mind. Wait a minute. Okay. Here we go. This is the route around cape horn, named after the southern part of south america that they had to go around in a big loop. Theres kind of a picture of it. This is on digital visualization on our website. This is one of the first major engineering feats they had to go through. Now, theres been a lot of debate, especially amongst, you know, historian buffs and railroad buffs that this one article says they were suspended by ropes from above because there was a, you know, sharp they wanted to cut in to make the roadbed. So this became some notion that they were hanging in baskets, and this is, again, jake lee kind of making a characterization of the whole building. The railroad by the chinese in baskets. Theres no direct evidence that they actually were in baskets at cape horn, but we believe after a lot of research that they actually did hang in baskets but further to the east. The cape horn area is not enough of a slant to allow for baskets. So we have an opinion about that working with scholars. They also built tunnels, 15 tunnels through the sierra, and this is kind of a graphic showing some of them and the summit tunnel. In particular, number six was the most difficult, that they dug out. No power tools. All by hand, mallet and, you know, banging to get a little spot through granite, putting in explosive and then getting out as fast as you could. As you can imagine, there were a lot of accidents, and when they did the summit tunnel, they used nitroglycerine, newly invented. And after a huge explosion blew up a block in San Francisco, they banned shipping nitroglycerine. So what they did is get a chemist who drank a little and mixed it onsite to make nitroglycerine and, you know, so very dangerous. Now, they stopped using it, and some people think, well, it was too dangerous, but, no, they realized they were going to have to pay patent fees for using nitroglycerine, and they were too cheap for that. Now, one of the things they did that was a little different is they built a vertical shaft to go down the middle and be able to work on four sides, in going out and out going in to meet. And they hauled locomotive engine to the top, and they used that to raise buckets, to, you know, clear the rubble. That was the only machine of that sort that they used. So this is going through donner pass. You can see these tunnels today. They still exist. They moved the route. And so they did this amazing job. Now, part of the thing is when they were first hired, they were paid 26 a day, some people doing skilled work a little bit more, and they had to pay their own meals. They had to arrange their own food, and they also had cooks. So it was a very interesting arrangement that they had. Eventually the pay went up, but it was never the same as the white workers or the irish, who initially were paid 35, and that went up. And the company paid for their food. Now, chinese food became another source of income for the big four, and they would attach a railcar as it moved up the railroad, selling chinese food. In the any case, they were able to get a wide variety of dried foods from china, grown in california, a very big Distribution Network developed. They also drank tea, and when they drank water, it was boiled water. This prevented it wasnt necessarily intended this way. You know, intestinal diseases whereas the white workers thought this was rather crazy and drank cool water coming down the mountains, and they had more problems with, you know, intestinal diseases. Well, at a certain point, the inequality between the white workers and the Chinese Workers became unbearable. There was a big explosion in one of the mines in june 1867, and this triggered a strike by the Chinese Railroad workers. It was a very across a very long area from the tunnels to grading, et cetera. All the work that was being done. There must have been a lot of organizing done initially, and theres a report that a flier went around, and they chose the date. And gordon believes they chose the date for propitious reasons of chinese beliefs of earth and heavens. And they launched it in june 1867. They said, now, one of the demands in one of the newspapers, the right of the working man, overseers of the company to either whip them or restrain them from leaving the road when they desire to seek other employment, they protested the right to do it because labor was so scarce. They had already had their wages raised to 35 an hour, and they wanted parity. Now, this is only one report in one newspaper, and as you heard, there are a lot of antirailroad people. So were not sure that this was actually a demand, but they were reported to be very bullying people on the line. Strobridge would walk around with an ax handle. Crocker would ride on a horse, and they would, you know, whip people, beat people, you know, hurry up, work. So this may have been a demand. It doesnt seem unthinkable. And as they noticed, they said, it will be impossible to do this while we have a strike. If we get over this without yielding, it will be all right hereafter. And as e. B. Crocker, charles crockers brother said, theyre getting smart. Theyre realizing that theres a labor scarcity. They could leave and work in the mines in nevada, not too far away. So the strike lasted a week. In their panic, they suggested, lets go to the Freedmens Bureau and get some freed slaves and have them come in. Get 10,000 of them. At one point, they said, look, we need thousands more chinese, japanese, mexican, anyone that we can get. That way the cost of labor would go even lower. So the strike was over in eight days. They starved them out, cut off food supplies, and then crocker said, well, if you want to quit and go back to sacramento, you cant ride on the train. And they basically gave in. Now, they also asserted that Chinese Labor was not slavery. It was free labor, just as free labor as yours and mine. Now, the big four were republicans, abolitionists, prolincoln, and to say that they were using slave labor would be very difficult for them. They said, no, theyre paid. Theyre free. Theyre not indentured. They are not cooleys meaning indentured and forced to work, but there was lots of argument about that. So this ended up being the route that they were going. You can see the whole extent of it from sacramento here in this illustration. One of the other things that they accomplished is, you know, building ten miles in one day, and this is standing there in the black suit is james strobridge. If you go to hayward, you can see his ranch, and theres a street called strobridge. And next to him is h. H. Minkler, who was his main foreman. As they went ahead in a militarytype fashion there was a military person there who was very impressed how they brought things, unloaded them, and there were eight irish track layers and thousands of Chinese Laborers. The eight track layers got their names listed and were paraded in celebration in sacramento. The Chinese Workers didnt get their names listed. Now, i always imagine the ten miles was a straight line, but as you can see, it kind of curves around, and they had to bend the rails to make the curves while trying to do this fe feat. And the memory of it is still alive. Now, some people say this is the most anyone has ever built a railroad in one day. I dont know. But at that time it certainly was, and at that time the strike was the Largest Labor action in the country 3,000 workers at least went out on strike. So these are kind of amazing things. At the end, in the golden spike, strobridge saluted the workers and presented them as the chosen representatives of the race which have greatly helped to build the road, a tribute they well deserve, which evidently gave them much pleasure as the newspaper reported. So that was the extent. Now, the chinese went on to work. They worked here, as you can see on the bottom, the canadian pacific, point alones village in monterey, and railroads around the country. Weve counted 70 railroads they worked on all the way to the east coast. I grew up on long island right across the street from the far rockaway line, and i learned that was a very shoddy railroad. It was known as a death trap, going over sand. So they brought in a crew of 300 Chinese Workers, 187576 to rebuild that part of the railroad. You know, i didnt realize at that time. So amazing work afterwards. And in the immediate years afterwards, chinese and Chinese Labor was highly praised before the onset of the, you know, fullblown antichinese movement. Of course there was a price to be paid in the plains was the attack, the extermination war led by William Tecumseh sherman. In the Central Pacific, the destruction of many of the native societies had proceeded before the railroad, and crocker came up with the idea of giving in nevada, where there were more giving them free tickets on the railroad. But they also worked on the railroad. In nevada, at one point it was reported there were 8,000 chinese, 1,000 irish workers, and 1,000 native american workers. And with the chinese and the indians, they could not tell them apart, the white the supervisors. So payday would come. They would come with bags of money, pour it into the foremans hat, who would then divvy it up because they could know who worked and who didnt work, all this, for the native people and for the chinese. Part of this was the rise of the antichinese movement, and if you can study this picture a little bit, the man with the cre ponytail is chinese. The stereotypical irish hat on the other side, and theyre both eating uncle sam. Theres progressing quite a bit in the bottom left panel. And then at the very end, you see the chinese man with an irish hat on his head, eating the irishman. So this was the fear of immigration at the time for both of them. They were antiirish, but irish could be white, and irish could vote. Irish could own property. The chinese could not at all, could not testify in court, were extremely limited and subject to attacks all the time, which is what happened leading up to the 1882 exclusion act. In 1919, they had the 50th anniversary, and these three gentlemen were veterans of building the railroad, and they attend attended. We think they may be the three people who were laying the tracks at the end, but were not sure. Now n 1969, the 100th anniversary, they had a ceremony at promontory summit, a reenactment, a lot of speakers, and they pushed there was supposed to be a chinese speaker from the Chinese Historical Society. They had a plaque to present, and they said, oh, sorry, you cant speak. We have a special guest to take that slot. The special guest ended up being john wayne. So the image of the cowboy, the image of the western white man supplanted the reality of the chinese. And then secretary volpe, the transportation secretary under the nixon administration, gave a speech, a rousing speech about only americans could dig these tunnels. Only americans could work in the hot desert. Only americans he went on this whole litany and then talking about the irish and the germans and the you know, on to all different european nationali nationalities, never mentioning the chinese. This is one of the things that spurred on the asianamerican movement of such blatant, forced invisibility. So, you know, this is chinese working near watsonville, building the paharo river railroad. The chinese built railroad to santa cruz. There was a horrible accident after, you know, the transcontinental that about 50 chinese died in an explosion in a tunnel. I dont know what happened to that railroad, but it would have been good if they kept it. Now, so thats you know, thats all i have to say with this and youre going to hold off questions, right . Thank you. [ applause ] so another perspective about a culture that was greatly impacted by the railroad is, of course, the native americans. Today we have professor snipp to help us understand that perspective a little bit more. Matthew snipp is the burnett and Mildred Finley wollford professor of humanities and science at Stanford University. Hes also the director for the institute for research and social Science Secure Data Center and formerly directed Stanford Center for the comparative study of race and ethnicity. Before moving to stanford in 1996, he was a professor of sociology at the university of wisconsinmadison. He has been a Research Fellow at the u. S. Bureau of the census and a fellow at the center for advanced study in the behavioral sciences. Professor snipp has published three books and over 70 articles and chapters on demography, economic development, poverty, and unemployment. His Current Research and writing deals with the methodology of racial measurement, changes in the social and economic well being of american ethnic minorities, and the americanindian education. For nearly ten years, he served as an appointed member of the census bureaus racial and ethnic advisory committee. As a contributor to major publications, he has provided census overviews on American Indian populations and written about what sociology can learn from the American Indians. Professor snipp, please join us. [ applause ] well, thank you. Im pleased to be here. What im going to tell you today is im soesologyist, but im someone who spent years reading American History because you cant really understand the present and particularly the standing of American Indians without knowing something about the history. So thats how i come to this. Lets see. Let me see if i can make this thing work. So laura jones invited me to do this and asked me to talk about the impact of the Transcontinental Railroad on native americans. And so i thought, well, what do people think its impact was . I did what everybody does these days. I went and googled it. So, you know, what was the impact of the Transcontinental Railroad on native americans . And theres generally, if you do this little exercise, youd see that theres generally a consensus out, but these two statements that came from the Digital Public Library of america, these two statements pretty much summarize, you know, the conventional wisdom, and that is the railroad was completed. Thousands and thousands of white americans came streaming across the western frontier. It uprooted and destroyed people in sort of a mass extermination, and it was just terrible. Okay . Well, yeah. What happened out on the frontier was terrible, but the railroads actually had relatively to do about it. So i want to offer a somewhat different perspective, and that is the Transcontinental Railroad really represented was a consequence and not a cause of this, and that it was really sort of an outcome of longterm historical processes and sort of the golden spike was merely a punctuation mark in a longrunning narrative, okay . And that what this really is about, what the story of natives and the railroad is really about is about the coalescence of a colonial project that had been under way for many, many years. But to kind of put this into context, you have to remember that at the beginning of the 19th century, there were essentially five parties all struggling for the possession of north america. There were the spanish to the south and southwest and mexico in whats now the american southwest. There was the french in the interior of the u. S. , the drainage of the mississippi river, the missouri, the ohio and arkansas rivers. There was also the british who claimed you know, had sort of freshly been kicked out of the colonies but still felt that they would repossess them at some point. And then there was the new american nation. And then there were a variety of different groups of American Indians, mostly ununited, disunified in their opposition to european expansion. But what happened over the sort of the first half of the 19th century was at first the french pulled out. Napoleon decided he needed to spend his time and money conquering europe. This led to the Louisiana Purchase and then shortly thereafter the exploration of that territory by lewis and clark. The war of 1812 basically consolidated american possession of of the colonies, especially the eastern seaboard, and pushed the british up into what is now canada. And then finally in the mexicanamerican war, extinguished spanish and then later mexican claims on the american southwest. And what this became was basically a project that was fueled by continental imperialism represented in the doctrine of manifest destiny and then the Free Soil Movement. So at the beginning of the 19th century, the United States went about nationbuilding in earnest, and it reached a crescendo midcentury, but theres a couple of observations and these are sociological observations about the nationbuilding project. And at one, very, very important, is that if youre going to claim a territory and if youre going to make it part of your nation, you need to have your citizens on it. And these citizens need to be loyal to the state, and one way of making them loyal to the state is that you give people land. You give them someplace to live. We see this even today. There are parts of the world where this strategy is under way. Nationbuilding really became the catalyst for european population growth and Railroad Construction throughout the 19th century. Population centers were the impetus, the driver of Railroad Expansion because the railroads went out to people and not vice versa. So what was the original source of this population growth and this expansion to the west, and exactly how did it take place . I want to suggest to you that it really wasnt the railroads, okay . First of all, it was immigration from europe. It was people fleeing wars, famine and religious persecution. But it also was the expansion and the spread of people was made possible through the establishment of a very expansive set of trail networks. The two main trails were the oregon trail and the santa fe trail. The santa fe trail was established in 1821. In 1836, the oregon trail. But there were lots of other trails, smaller, less important, less significant, less used trails. But there were trails to the gold fields in montana and colorado, and there were offshoots of these oregon and Santa Fe Trails that made possible american expansionism. Okay . And so you can see here on this map, this shows the oregon trail as it was established in 1836. And it started off in independence, missouri, which is just outside of kansas city. Then it traversed the Northern Plains and then finally ended up in the Pacific Northwest in puget sound area. The santa fe trail was established in 1836, and the santa fe trail actually followed a path that had been established by native americans from time immemorial. But you can see here lets see if i can it starts here in independence, roughly the same place as the oregon trail. Then it went out through the southwest, and it terminated in santa fe, whats today santa fe, new mexico. But what was important also important about this trail was that it linked to another trail that went from santa fe all the way down to mexico city and was essentially sort of a path for trade goods between the north and the south. And Something Else thats unique about santa fe is that this was a place where native people from the plains came to trade and sometimes intermarry with the pueblos that were established in this area. Okay . The other thing that i think is useful to note about this particular map is that for people wanting to sort of tra ver verse either the santa fe for the oregon trails, they came from the east. But then the main vehicle was that they could then traverse down the ohio river, down and then overland either to st. Louis or down the mississippi river. That became the jumping off point overland to independence, where there were companies that had been established to take settlers out across one of these two trails. Okay . And there were mountain men, traders, trappers who were sort of familiar with these trails, who made a rather good living doing this. Okay . Probably the most famous was a man named jim bridger. So why were people out here, you know . Why did they make this journey out to independence and then this even longer, more dangerous journey out to the west . Okay . Basically it was for land. There were a number of acts that were passed in the mid19th century that allocated land to anybody that wanted to go out and settle on it. The first and one of the most important ones was this thing called the preemption act which allowed squatters, people who had simply gone out and were living on public land without title, it allowed them to purchase 160 acres at 1. 25 per acre. This is basically how the kansas excuse me yeah, kansas and nebraska territories were settled. Oregon was a special concern in the 1840s because there was a territorial dispute between british canada to the north and the United States and then that the british claimed a large chunk of what was then considered the oregon territory. So it was especially important to get as many people out there living on that land who were loyal to you as possible. To sort of spur the settlement of the oregon territory, anybody could go out there beginning in 1850 and claim up to 640 acres of land scotfree. And five years later, they began to charge for it once there was a large number of People Living on the land. The Free Soil Movement, as some of you or probably many of you know, the Free Soil Movement was basically the idea that anybody who went out on an undeveloped piece of land, labored on it, turned it into a working farm should be allowed to possess it and own it free and clear. And this became the Free Soil Party was later folded into the Republican Party in 1854, and they successfully elected their first president , abraham lincoln, and one of lincolns acts was to sign into law the homestead act, which basically was the touchstone of the Free Soil Party, basically that anyone could work the land and gain ownership to it. The timber culture act was established from the cultivation of commercial forest. Free land to anybody that wanted to plant forests. And then the desert land act was to encourage irrigation agriculture out in the deserts. And this is a deed of the sort that people received when they had completed their homesteading experience and wanted to make a claim for the land. Now, by 1869, as professor white noted, the Transcontinental Railroad really didnt amount to much, okay . And you can see that what was really significant was out here to the west, you know, and particularly up in this sort of nascent industrial part of america, this is where the Railroad Activity was greatest. But by 1870, the tribes that had occupied this territory had been either fully removed either out to the indian territory to the west or simply exterminated. So by the time you get out to roughly 1865, the blue land on this map is the land that was still claimed by American Indians, okay . So you can see that by 1865, the lands claimed by American Indians was really only about a third of what is today the 48 states. And so the colonial project of expropose rating land from native people was well under way at the time of the Transcontinental Railroad had been constructed. But its also the case that there was a large chunk of land right here that the railroad had to traverse. So the army got busy about the business of clearing it. So by 1870, five years later, this is the land that was still now, this land had all become settled, established by the pacified by the army. But these areas up here, these are important to Pay Attention to. These areas essentially become the military theaters of the union wars from 1870 to 1890. And this was in a sense those indian wars from 1870 to 1890 basically culminated the american colonial project in the west. And to get a sense, you know the resolution isnt very good here, but these xs are places where conflicts between indians and the military took place. So here in the southwest with mostly the apache and then up here in montana, wyoming, between the army and various groups of Northern Plains tribes like the cheyenne, the sioux. So what was the impact . Well, one of the things, the conventional wisdom is the Transcontinental Railroad did result in the extermination of the buffalo. And in one sense, thats true. Some of the hunters came on trains out to the herds. Its also important for transporting bones, hide, and meat back to the east. Buffalo tongue used to be considered a delicacy. But the thing that really drove the destruction of the buffalo more than anything else was that there were innovations in hide preservation, in tanning, which made leather, industrial leather for the growing numbers of factories in the east that leather became a cheap source of material for machine belting. So conveyor belts, machine belts all were made from buffalo hide, and it was relatively inexpensive, and it was one of the things that helped fuel the industrialization of the United States in the late 19th century. Now, the u. S. Army, for its part, also had a very significant role in this process and that the impact of the army was that they were out, especially after the civilpeace oregon trail and its tributaries and down to the santa fe trail. There was a network, a port built along both trails. Particularly in the north these trails became increasingly well traveled and army forts were built for a section of those travelers, the tribe saw what was coming in what was happening and they were all watching the destruction of a buffalo herd and increasingly the relations between settlers and the tribes became ever more hostile and there were a series of very bladder wars blood he wars that took place and the two people who led the military campaign in the north were to civil war generals, and both of these generals will skilled and knowledgeable about military tactics. So while he led his march to the east trudging fields and burning down houses, it was a simpler task for him because what it meant is they didnt have to burn down anything they just wanted to destroy the buffalo herd. Thats what they did. Here are a couple of quotes from sherman and his memoir through the outcome the destruction of the buffalo herd and then the second quote is by sheridan i think its ambiguous but based on the extermination of the buffalo its essential for plains tribes. So the larger argument is that the growth of industrial capitalism in the 19 century and the east, not the west but the east that was the far more destructive element. Not so much the railroad. American industrialization was fueled by hides of Agricultural Products move from the west to the east but it didnt rely on the Continental Railroad but they did rely very much on the railroads in the east. Maybe more to the point is the material requirements of Industrial Production related mandate and food to feed the workers in the east was essential i said industrial hides for industrial weather that was widely used. So, what the ride slideshows is the Railroad Network of 1890. This is what we think of today, chicago, these were areas where grain and beef was basically. Kansas city, i carried grain and beef to a railroad hub and that went out to various points to the east that all terminated in the livestock yard. So, let me conclude in the time i have left and say, the Transcontinental Railroad was not the thing that destroyed people even before the railroad was invented. And thought what the railroad did serve as is an important tool in an engine of mass destruction and that engine of mass destruction was industrial capitalism. The Transcontinental Railroad is less of a cause than a consequence and the destruction of buffalo but also, ultimately whats really consequential is Eastern Industrial development, Industrial Development that urbanized america at the same time marginalize native people in a way that excluded them from the prosperity of the 20th century and today. So with that i will quit and i think we are supposed to take questions. [ applause ] okay. I will put my time away. This is working. Thank you, that was an interesting perspective now we wanted to maybe do a little comparing of the two cultures. What really, ultimately affected them as they moved on into the 19th and 20th centuries and today. So, after, i have two or three questions that will open it to the audience for questions before we take a break. So, gentlemen, after the building of the railroad that the chinese immigrants faced tremendous constraints with the chinese conclusion act of 1882. And it was not repealed for those of you who didnt know the chinese exclusion act which restrict the poverty ownership and restrict did labor and quite a few things and didnt get repealed until 1943. Native americans also suffered with the indian removal act and the reservation system. How would the two of you compare the challenges faced by these two groups after, as were going into the 19th and 20th centuries . As i said. The go was the first mass media that was a report that he missed, there was a huge celebration all over so, it may not of been a moneymaking venture in some respects it was definitely important politically. 1862 was when lincoln signed the railroad act as the homestead act. Okay. And huge numbers of Chinese Americans and chinese have been coming. And this year was huge so there was a conference being held in Salt Lake City organized by Railroad Workers. So, all kinds of events, recognition finally and there was a growing, maybe Labor Movement there was an attack on chinese and you could easily get killed and the murder wouldnt get prosecuted. How many Chinese State and how many left, so life was difficult , still more chinese game after the exclusion act and theres i will thing of people posing already living in the u. S. And they would leave because they had to be pose to be part of a family. One of these was an oral history project that you will soon be able to refer to. And defendants know something about the ancestors but the story of the families in the tenacity and success and we know it was not easy to be chinese or any asian, filipino even in the u. S. In 1943, they decided the chinese were fighting the japanese and maybe we should get rid of them. And it was restricted immigration and with the reform of integration which im sure the Current Administration would like to get rid of but a sizable Chinese Community could reemerge in the u. S. , life was difficult and there were massacres in different parts of the country, driven out is the name of the book but the chinese being driven out of california. So it was very difficult. Now 1877 was the national railroad, the railroad lowered wages across the country so there was a huge strike in San Francisco it took the shape of an antichinese riot. And they climbed up [ null ] hill and demonstrated shaking their fists. He wanted the whole block to build, but one family, one man held out and refuse to sell and so what he did is he built a 60 foot wall, three sides, so that he wouldnt get any light. And so, people march to their and raise their fists and then went down california street, there were armed and hired police, offduty police and others that wouldve been shot down and then they went all the way to the pier. The government in San Francisco became the workingmans party which meant the white workingmans party, something had a union label that said white labor only union label. So, deeply ingrained racialized structure of u. S. Society that was a legacy of all of this. But for American Indians theres a story in the sense that you remembered mentioned indian removal, that was a process that took place in the 1830s and 1840s and was pretty much complete by the time there was any around of Railroad Construction because what happened is they ran out of places to remove the indians to into indian territory. But, what happened with the establishment of the reservation system is those places became places of starvation, malnutrition, severe hardship and deprivation and by the late 19th century, various reform groups and even before the 1890s, early to late 1870s and late 1880s culminated into the creation of two measures to basically force the assimilation of the American Indian people. One was the establishment of a boarding School System where indian children were taken away from their parents and fit into boarding schools. They wore military uniforms and they had a regimented daily schedule and most significantly they were not allowed to practice their traditional religion or speak their native language or to engage in any sort of behavior that was anything but culturally white by the boarding schools recognition. Then the other piece was the passage of the general allotment act by a senator from massachusetts named henry dodd and the point behind the general allotment act is basically to break up the reservation after providing indians with the land allotment and once they had the land the thinking was that they would become bombers like their white neighbors and eventually they would blend and disappear from history, but that hasnt quite happen that way. Yesterday, they had an article in the la times saying chinese immigrants have been written out of californian history. With the exception of the fourthgrade teacher we have in the audience, we know that western history, the Chinese Railroad workers and American Indians, that is the misperception and talked about in that this is not what was happening with native populations and with Chinese Railroad workers so Little Information remained or is it accessible. Do you think todays scholarship is rectifying this in the firsthand stories of Chinese Railroad workers and or the American Indians themselves. Yes, i think its a start and i will point to my friendly colleagues, Richard White who has made huge contributions in that area and we have need of historians that are coming up now and were beginning to reflect and think about the larger context of the history. I think its underway but more can be done. I said that the 1969 commemoration was better info for the Chinese Americans. That was a start to the Asian American movement along with other civil rights movements which then sparked scholarships to the field. There has been no scholarship about the chinese, there been many books written that talk about the chinese but the authors dont know anything about the chinese except what they can read from newspaper articles. There is nothing written by the chinese that worked on the railroad and there was a myth or people assumed they were illiterate. Most of them were literate in writing and reading chinese that they had not taken the exams, the level in china for the truly literate but those letters, whatever they were, the flyer for going on strike that was passed around, we dont have them. They were destroyed in the burning down of chinatown driving people out of rock springs or wherever it might be. So, its very difficult to write this history. Later in the history there are documents writing a kind of diary in english and chinese so we have to piece it together. So that her is still very evident to a lot of people in reaching out of people of the chinese American Communities that are descendents they have pride and they worked on this national project, their ancestors, but, they werent truly recognized. So, when we began the project seven years ago, we began uncovering and developing more research and interacting with not only other historians but with government agencies, so that a few years ago i think 2014 there was an induction into the labor hall of honor at the department of labor and others brought defendants of the Railroad Workers to this. This was like the beginning of recognition as they had a ceremony there and then using ping comes to visit barack obama and both of them talk about the contribution of the Chinese Railroad workers. The chinese were also ignored because they were ashamed that people had to leave the country and at a certain point you want to be associated with the chinese at all especially drtme the cultural revolution so this was a big revolution. We had an event in 2015 and for the first time Stanford University acknowledged the contribution of the chinese to the existence of this university. So they could begin understanding different conceptions of history as well, we worked with irish and Irish American scholars she and maybe we wrote letters home that people still have with working people that took baths at the end of each workday and found that very strange. Heating up water in barrels and took baths. For example. We will take questions from both sides and i think there are people heading up to the microphone. Im struggling with the notion that the Continental Railroad was really just a consequence and not a cause. It sounds like a false distinction, almost in Advocacy Campaign written by the pacific railroad. I think there were many causes and what you didnt mention was the discovery of gold and Precious Metals owned by indian tribes. I always thought of the railroad as an enabler and accelerator and the reason is there was a desire to build railroads on land that had been given to tribes by treaty and those treaties were broken in one of the reasons was the need to build a railroad. The other thing was once built, the railroad would sometimes be attacked by tribes that were not very happy with the presence of the railroad and then the army had to be brought in to protect the railroad and the stays in. I dont want to blame the Transcontinental Railroad for all the destruction you mentioned but think of it as an enabler and even and accelerator. Yes. I think as richard made the point, there was not that much freight or traffic and in a sense, it did facilitate the expansion and also facilitated the destruction, especially expanding to the east but you have to remember that this project and in terms of creation of the United States, the project that was well underway before the railroads were ever established and before railroads were even invented and the removal that happened before railroads came along. It was sort of the quest, the territory that began really from the arrival of columnists in jamestown and later plymouth , began a long history of conflict and the struggle for the possession of the land in north america. And the railroad may have accelerated, they certainly facilitated it. I wouldnt argue with that a bit but in a sense, they were just part and parcel of this longer process in larger struggle that wouldve taken place whether or not the railroads were ever built if you look at your map in 1870 and in 1890, there were still large tracts of land owned by the plains indians and others in the hope that they made keep large parts of the land and the railroad in 1890 was bisecting the land. I agree, im not putting it out but its an important factor. There was a series of treaties and the most important person was fort laramie in 1851 that established the large tracts of land to the north but as time went on and as you have more people moving out to the planes on wagon trains and not on the railroad, but as you have more and more people out there settling on the land thats what brought it forth initially to protect the settlement and prevent them from being attacked by the tribes that after the railroad came to the areas that they begin the business of protecting the railroad, correct, the tribes did attack the railroad but its important to understand also that a number of the tribes, the navajo were working on the railroad. Then, going into the 1920s, the tribes that once attacked the railroad the sioux, or actually becoming Railroad Workers as well. Yes. Can you hear me okay . Wonderful, i cant hear myself. The question i have is kind of related to the railways in particular because im just wondering, between the two of you, do you know of instances where the native americans and the chinese actually cooperated. I asked this because i had the pleasure of seeing some of the blackfeet in the reservations on the area and one of the things i noticed there is that a number of the native americans there actually have very chinese features. I asked them about that and they told me that, or one particular young woman told me that her ancestors were actually chinese. They married in with the native americans, blackfeet in particular and she said the reason that happened is because her understanding is that her family down the line told her that instead of being paid they were killing the chinese. So the chinese were escaping and the native americans were providing shelter and giving them a respite from this awful fate and i actually know of other situations where that happens with native americans and in particular, the mardi gras festival, most people probably dont know this but the origins of the festival is the black celebrating the native americans that save them from slavery, can you address that and you know of anything . Yes. One of the essays in the book thats coming out, the chinese, the i am road, it describes the relationship and the documents and oral history of some of the tribes and theres also been Research Like you said, intermarriage. We know in nevada for example that, some tribes married with native people and its kind of an uncomfortable thing to talk about because of the whole Blood Quantum business of the bia and who really is native american. How much blood do you have. So they dont want to talk about it that much. Understandably. So, yes, there was this kind of interaction that did happen and one of the oral histories is not there was a young man working on the railroad. Im not sure if it was Central Pacific where it mightve been the Northern Pacific or some of the railroads and they had an encounter with the header the chief and they thought this man looked like his recently deceased son. So, they adopted him. And he lived with them for two years and learn the language and was then able to return to china, did he escape and say oh you can go home now. So, this kind of narrative, this kind of images part of the story. I wouldnt say its major but in nevada thousand native people will this is something that cannot be officially documented because of the bia . It can be and we talk about oral history. Talking about intermarriage but that they did have a lot of contact at a certain point. Is this working okay . Can you hear me now . Somewhat a man comes to the rescue. What i wanted to say is, let me hold this. Having listened to the talk for 2 1 2 or three hours, there has almost been not one mention of women. There were a few mentioning the wives in some cases and in particular a number of them have remarried interior decorators, thats interesting. Im curious, i dont just want to get up here and say we have all this stuff but what about women but id like to know, on the chinese question, can any Chinese Women come along with this as they stayed and worked on the railroads . Were any of them involve in preparing the food. I heard somebody said something about that and you mentioned something about intermarriage on the indians. We certainly know that the indians in america were parts of families and women were very important, they might not of been the ones that went out and shot the buffalo or the bison but they clearly played some kind of role in this, a very central role and i just wonder if this kind of story doesnt really need to account for half the people who were here. We know for example that this university was tremendously affected by Jane Stanford, it happen that her husband had died but clearly theres no question that Jane Stanford was for this university. I dont know what will women played in huntington but i do think its important somewhere in here that we need to even if its specific women by name, at least the goal of women in this enormous effort, you cannot ignore that women had a lot to do with the development of the western part of the United States. Can you address the labor force was allmale. There is a tv series, on wheels and another one about the Canadian Railroad and the use a device, a young woman making believe man, her family or whatever it might be, that mightve happened but probably not. Not very many. And it was a backward society. San francisco during this time was overwhelmingly male. Really until the earliest 20th century that it became balanced in a way. So, now, there were some women brought over, wealthy merchants to marry and establish families the part of the story of the descendents of the Railroad Work theres but the other women were brought over to be prostitutes. The role of some women were the missionaries who tried to get women out of the prostitution and women who tried to aid and convert the Chinese Workers. But, until society becomes more realistic theres a sense of balance apparently there were no chinese. Well yes, there were legal restrictions as time went on as well as other restrictions. They didnt want chinese american families, that was not the goal. So, i just wanted to say, you did mention that the chinese men and so many men on their own could go into San Francisco and they would need to have sexual services. There were women as prostitutes clear out in the west in many places, thats very important to the roles of the development of the west. That should not be hidden in the history of the west. We are not hiding it. It just cant be a major factor for building the railroad. Now on the Union Pacific side, the notion of on wheels, easier to get people from the east, there were towns set up, temporary towns set up with solutions and gambling and prostitution and when the railroad got further they moved them and thats why they called them on wheels. So, that was definitely a fact or. There has been some research on Chinese Women and chinese prostitutes but it was very difficult to get data on that. Unfortunately. As it is with Railroad Workers, maybe even more difficult. You raise a good point, the Northern Plains tribes as well as the apache and the southwest , were by and large patriarchal societies. But i when they went to war, they went to war as entire villages. So, the women basically produce the food and the goods that they use and they obtained rifles and firearms by trading goods. So, native women played a role but the chiefs who led the tribes, who planned the military campaign and carried out the attacks on the trains and the settlers, werent in. So, that is sort of the narrative but i would agree wholeheartedly that the men that never kept on into battle without women basically provisioning them. It was the women, the women who tanned the hides and prepare the meat and native women that basically help the village together while the men were out rating and warring against the United States. Is there some kind of historic evidence for some of those women . There is some evidence, you have to remember that lewis and clark probably wouldve never made it to the Pacific Northwest without katana way a and she was pregnant at the time with the child of a french bird trader. Okay. I want to thank our two presenters once again for the presentation. [ applause ] this is a special edition of American History tv, a sample of the compelling history programs that air every weekend on American History tv like lectures in history, american artifacts, real america of the civil war, oral history, the presidency and special event coverage about our nations history. Enjoy American History tv now and every weekend on cspan3. Next month marks 100 years since Congress Took the first steps in granting women the right to vote passing the 19th amendment to the u. S. Constitution and sending it to the states for ratification. Thursday we bring you an event with historian susan ware who talks about some of the lesser known leaders of the Suffrage Movement in her book why they marched at 8 p. M. Eastern here on cspan3. The reviews are in for c span the president s book that recently topped the new column calling it a milepost and from the new york journal of books the president makes a fast engrossing read. Graduations and fathers day fast approaching, the president s makes a great gift, read about how noted president ial historians rank to the best and worst chief executive from George Washington to barack obama. Explore the life events that shapes our leaders and the legacies they left behind. C spans the president is now available as a hardcover or e book today cspan. Org the president or wherever books are sold. Next, Stanford University history Professor James campbell describes how the Transcontinental Railroad transformed American Culture by looking at nathaniel hawthornes 1843 short story the Celestial Railroad from the Stanford Historical society, this is just under one hour. The Transcontinental Railroad was no doubt a major disruptive form of transportation, truly changing the face of the nation. It was a longheld dream that may or may not have reached its potential but for many years was talk about and then, as we learned this morning may have had less of an impact initially upon its completion, then we thought. To really get an overview of how it affected the