Chinese Laborers Were Killed in a Regional Anti-Chinese Purge

In September 1885, Chinese laborers in the Squak Valley (Gilman district) were attacked as anti-Chinese vigilantes across Puget Sound moved from boycott to expulsion and terror. Coverage in Chicago Tribune and The Times described masked mobs burning Chinese quarters and acting “to set an example for other Chinese and for whites who might employ them,” showing the purge climate in which the Gilman attack occurred. The project record associates the event with the deaths of five Chinese laborers, including Mong Gow, Yeng San, and Fung Woey, but the surviving newspaper coverage is tangled with nearby Black Diamond expulsions and does not cleanly reconstruct the full attack. The Chicago Tribune offered evidence in a detailed article with the tagline: “Five Mongolians, Implicated in Crimes, Are Taken from Jail and Hanged."