Deadwood’s Chinese Community
The Chinese were one of the largest and most dominant ethnic populations in Deadwood’s early years. Estimates of up to 400 Chinese lived in a strategic section of the gulch, often called Deadwood’s Badlands. The Chinese came to Deadwood in the 1870s to take advantage of the great economic opportunities afforded by the gold rush. They reworked abandoned placer mines extracting enough gold to make a living. For the most part the Chinese viewed their tenure in America as a temporary economic opportunity. It was written into their contracts that if they should die here, their bodies would be returned to the ancestral land for burial before ten years had passed. It was their belief that only bodies buried in ancestral ground within ten years of death would be at peace.

As in other towns, Chinese citizens formed their own neighborhood, elected their own mayor and council, and established their own police force and fire department. The Chinese opened retail shops and laundries and worked as domestic servants in the white community. A minority of the population engaged in other occupations such as prostitution and selling opium. In Deadwood’s Chinatown there were fewer than twenty Chinese women and of these approximately one-third were wives.

The Chinese preserved and celebrated their customs and traditions in Deadwood, adding much to the rich tapestry of life in the frontier mining town. The Chinese New Year celebration was especially festive, according to the memoirs of early day resident Violet Gorum. Lanterns were hung in the streets and thousands of firecrackers were lit at one time. Burials were important events. The gong at the Joss House would be rung, signifying that a Chinese person had died. A band would accompany the funeral procession to Mt. Moriah Cemetery, and mourners would carpet the path with hundreds of pieces of red paper punched with holes. They believed that the devil had to crawl through each hole before he could reach the soul of the departed, and by that time the body would be safely buried. An oven was erected in the Chinese section of Mt. Moriah for a ceremonial feast, and plates of food were left on the grave. After a sufficient length of time to allow for decomposition of the body, a Chinese undertaker would arrive at the cemetery to disinter the bodies, separate the bones, and wrap each one in newspaper and muslin. He would then put each carefully labeled package into a zinc-lined box for shipment, first to San Francisco and then to China for final burial.

Most of Deadwood’s Chinese population had left the Black Hills by 1910. Some returned to their homeland while others pursued opportunities in cities with larger Asian populations.