1885 Pierce City lynching

November 2025 November 2025 1885 Pierce City lynching Near Pierce, Idaho, United Statesnote City_name In 1885, the name of the municipality was "Pierce City". However, according to journalist William E. Burrows, the name was eventually shortened to Pierce.Burrows 1976 235 September 18, 1885 Lynching 46 28.284 N 115 49.08 W type:event_region:US-ID 5 people, including Lee Kee Nam Anti-Chinese sentiment None1885 lynching in Idaho Territory On September 18, 1885, five Chinese people in the United States were lynched by a mob outside of Pierce City in the Idaho Territory.note City_name The individuals had been arrested by a vigilance committee formed in the city after the killing of a local businessman. In 1885, Pierce City was a mining community in the Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho, in a region where vigilantism and extrajudicial killings were commonplace. On September 10, D. M. Fraser, a White American store operator, was found dead in an apparent killing. Residents of the city largely suspected that a local Chinese store operator, Lee Kee Nam, had committed the killing. A vigilance committee arrested Nam and four other Chinese people in the city and produced forced confessions from them regarding their involvement in Fraser's death. Following this, the five individuals were turned over to the sheriff's deputy of Pierce City. On September 18, the deputy and six deputized men were transporting the five individuals to Murray, the county seat of Shoshone County, for a trial when, a short distance outside of Pierce City, they were stopped by a mob of masked men. The men ordered the deputies to return to the city and lynched the five Chinese people, killing them via hanging. Following their deaths, Chinese ambassadors requested an investigation into the matter, with U.S. Secretary of State Thomas F. Bayard appointing Idaho Territorial Governor Edward A. Stevenson to conduct this. Stevenson harbored strong anti-Chinese sentiments and, according to historian W. Eugene Hollon, only interviewed individuals who were "known to be unfriendly towards the Chinese".Hollon 1974 104 In Stevenson's report to Bayard, he expressed concern over the vigilantism but opined that the five individuals had been guilty of Fraser's death. No charges were filed in relation to the killings. The lynching came during a period of heightened anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States and both followed and preceded other incidents of ethnic violence committed by White Americans against Chinese people in the Western United States. By 1886, both the Democratic and Republican state affiliates had embraced anti-immigration platforms with regards to Chinese people. By the end of the 1880s, several other incidents of violence against Chinese people had occurred in Idaho. The lynching has been covered in a publication by the Idaho State Historical Society, and a state historical marker detailing the event and the broader topic of Chinese expulsion in Idaho stands near the scene of the killings. Background Anti-Chinese sentiment Anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States History of Chinese Americans in the Pacific Northwest From the mid- to late-19th century, a large number of Chinese people immigrated to the United States, primarily seeking work in the mining industry and in railroad construction in the Western United States.Cusic 1994 65 Around the 1870s, ethnic violence by White Americans against the Chinese became more common, with examples of specific incidents including the Los Angeles Chinese massacre of 1871 and the 1885 Rock Springs massacre in Wyoming.Nash 1992 73 With regards to the latter incident, which resulted in the death of 28 Chinese people, the federal government of the United States paid a restitution of $147,748.74 (equivalent to $US 147748.74 1887 2 c in US) in 1887.Nash 1992 73 By 1882, there were roughly 105,000 Chinese people in the country.Cusic 1994 65 However, that year, the federal government enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting immigration from China and causing a subsequent decline in the Chinese population in the United States.Cusic 1994 65 Pierce City, Idaho Territory thumb|Pierce City in 1860note City_name Pierce City was a city in the Idaho Territory that, in the 1880s, was a mining community and regional supply center.Hollon 1974 103note City_name It was situated in the Bitterroot Mountains, to the east of Lewiston and west of Bannack and Virginia City.Burrows 1976 235 According to author William E. Burrows, this area was the site of largescale vigilante activities, with several vigilance committees in the region having been responsible for several dozen instances of extrajudicial killings.Burrows 1976 235 Per Burrows, the people of Pierce City "were very well versed in the theory and practice of vigilantism".Burrows 1976 235 While the city had been an early center for gold mining in Idaho, by 1885, many of the White American miners had left for other parts of the territory.Owens 2001 259–260 By that time, a large Chinese community had been established in the city, with Chinese miners working in areas that had previously been mined by White workers.Owens 2001 259–260 Killing of D. M. Fraser On September 10, 1885, Pierce City resident D. M. Fraser was found dead.Chen 2012note Person_name Multiple sources report this individual's surname as "Fraser".Chen 2012Burrows 1976 235 However, in a 1974 book, author W. Eugene Hollon gives the spelling as "Frazier".Hollon 1974 103 Fraser, a White American,Fisher 2024 221 was an older member of the community who had been the operator of one of the municipality's main stores.Hollon 1974 103 Fraser's body had been discovered in his shop, with witnesses saying it had been "chopped to pieces".Hollon 1974 103Burrows 1976 235note Multiple sources attribute this quote to a 1959 article by Kenneth Owens in Idaho Yesterdays that discussed the killing.Hollon 1974 103Burrows 1976 235 Near his body were a hatchet and a knife, as well as bloody footprints.Burrows 1976 235 Residents largely suspected that the killing had been committed by Lee Kee Nam, a Chinese man who operated a competing store in Pierce City.Chen 2012 According to Burrows, Nam had been the "other leading merchant" in the city after Fraser.Burrows 1976 235 Shortly after the killing, a group of men, including about 20 to 25 who had come to Pierce City from Lewiston, organized a vigilance committee, which the sheriff's deputy of Pierce City allowed to operate unimpeded.Burrows 1976 236 The vigilantes arrested Nam and his business partner,Chen 2012 who they proceeded to torture until they both confessed against each other as Fraser's killer.Hollon 1974 103 Per Burrows, the committee choked Nam with a noose until he passed out, after which his business partner told the committee that Nam had been the sole murderer.Burrows 1976 236 However, after reviving and learning of this, Nam then accused his partner of being Fraser's sole murderer.Burrows 1976 236 In addition to these two individuals, the vigilantes arrested three other Chinese people, which included a barber, a gambler, and an individual who was engaged in prostitution.note Sources vary on the identity of the additional three Chinese people who were arrested. Concerning the gender of the arrested, a 2012 article by David W. Chen of The New York Times states that the vigilantes had arrested "five Chinese men",Chen 2012 while historian Helen McLure stated in a 2013 book that one of the five arrested individuals was a woman.McLure 2013 36 Concerning the individual engaged in prostitution, sources vary between identifying them as either a "prostitute"Hollon 1974 103McLure 2013 36 or a "pimp".Burrows 1976 236 Historian W. Eugene Hollon, who stated in a 1976 work that the individual was a prostitute, cites a 1959 article in Idaho Yesterdays by historian Kenneth Owens that identified the individual as a "parasite".Hollon 1974 103 Owens himself cited a report of the lynching written by Governor Edward A. Stevenson that called the individual "a parasite of one of the Chinese prostitutes of the camp".Owens 2001 260 Per Burrows, the committee used intimidation in order to get these other individuals to confess to criminal activity.Burrows 1976 236 Historian Kenneth Owens stated that the committee accused these three other individuals of committing the murder which the two business partners had planned.Owens 2001 260 Concerning these additional arrests, multiple sources state that the vigilantes used Fraser's killing as a rationale for targeting "undesirables" of the city's Chinese population.Hollon 1974 103 "the vigilantes agreed that they might as well get rid of three other "undesirables" of the Chinese community" McLure 2013 36 "vigilantes in Pierce City, Idaho, decided to rid their town of two Chinese men accused of murder and three other Chinese residents considered undesirables" Lynching Following the forced confessions, the vigilantes handed over the five Chinese individuals to the sheriff's deputy, who said that he would take them to Murray, the county seat of Shoshone County,Burrows 1976 236 in order for a formal trial to take place.Hollon 1974 103 For this prisoner transport, the deputy deputized six other men to assist him.Hollon 1974 103 The deputy, his deputized officers, and the five prisoners departed from Pierce City on September 18,Burrows 1976 236 with the trip to Murray expected to take five days due to the mountainous terrain.Hollon 1974 104Owens 2001 261 However, only a few miles outside of Pierce City, the deputies were stopped by a gang of masked individuals.Hollon 1974 104 These individuals were heavily armed and ordered the officers to give up their arms, return to Pierce City, and hand over the prisoners, which the officers did.Burrows 1976 236 This mob tied nooses around each of the prisoners' necks and attached the ropes to a pole that was suspended between two pine trees.Hollon 1974 104 The sheriff's deputy and his group returned to the scene later that day and found that the five individuals had been killed via hanging.Burrows 1976 236–237Owens 2001 261 According to later reporting from the Nez Perce News, the pole was broken in the middle and supported by a center post, leading them to believe that the lynching attempt had been tried twice, with the pole breaking the first time.Burrows 1976 236–237 Aftermath Government investigation Local newspapers reported on the lynching shortly after they occurred.Burrows 1976 238 After hearing of the incident, the Chinese merchant community in Portland, Oregon, dispatched several agents to the Idaho panhandle to investigate the killings.Burrows 1976 237 According to Burrows, these investigators reported that they believed that the five who had been killed had been responsible for Fraser's death.Owens 2001 262Burrows 1976 237 In a letter sent to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, the investigators said that the killings had been racially motivated and baseless.Burrows 1976 237 The consulate sent a note to the Chinese minister in Washington, D.C., who asked the United States Secretary of State, Thomas F. Bayard, to conduct an official government investigation into the matter.Burrows 1976 237 Bayard forwarded this request to Edward A. Stevenson, the governor of the Idaho Territory.Burrows 1976 237 Stevenson was notified in April 1886, though he did not initiate an investigation until three months later due to poor road conditions in the region.Burrows 1976 238 Stevenson first visited Lewiston, where a lawyer in the city prepared a letter for him to give to the justice of the peace in Pierce City.Burrows 1976 238 Concerning the investigation, the lawyer requested to the justice of the peace, "let it Clearly appear that the Chinamen who were hung [sic] were the real murders [sic] of Mr. Fraser, and that they were hung [sic] for committing the Act, and for that only".Burrows 1976 238 Additionally, the lawyer provided Stevenson a list of Chinese residents of Pierce City who were expected to say that the five killed had been guilty of Fraser's murder.Burrows 1976 238–239 In Pierce City, Stevenson spoke to the deputy, who was unable to identify the individuals who had committed the lynching.Burrows 1976 239 According to historian W. Eugene Hollon, the only individuals Stevenson spoke to during his investigation were individuals "known to be unfriendly towards the Chinese".Hollon 1974 104 In his official report sent to Bayard, Stevenson expressed concern over the vigilantism of those who had been involved in the lynching, but stated that he was convinced that the five people who had been killed had been the ones who had murdered Fraser, who he called "one of the best citizens of Idaho".Hollon 1974 104Burrows 1976 239 Ultimately, no charges were filed concerning the lynching.Chen 2012McLure 2013 36 Later events Following the lynching, anti-Chinese conventions were held in several places around Idaho, with the attendees expressing support for the expulsion of Chinese people.Fisher 2024 221 Groups in several municipalities in Idaho began to set deadlines for Chinese people living there to leave,Hollon 1974 104 and Chinese expulsion efforts were undertook in places outside of Idaho, such as Oregon and Washington.Daniels 1992 62–63 Stevenson was also supportive of Chinese expulsion, believing that they should be deported.Hollon 1974 104–105 In his report to Bayard, Stevenson stated that, while he would guarantee Chinese people in Idaho protection under the law, he hoped that "the day is not far distant when Congress will relieve us of their presence".Burrows 1976 239 By 1886, both the Idaho Democratic Party and the Idaho Republican Party had both taken stances against Chinese immigration.Fisher 2024 221 1886 and 1887 saw several largescale instances of violence by White Americans against Chinese people, including a weeklong riot in Salmon and the Snake River massacre, which saw 31 Chinese people killed.Fisher 2024 221 Legacy In 1959, the lynching was the subject of an article in Idaho Yesterdays, a publication of the Idaho State Historical Society.Hollon 1974 227 In 2005, historian James W. Loewen said that there is a state historical marker at the site of the lynching that describes both the incident as well as the broader topic of Chinese expulsion efforts during that time.Loewen 2005 201–202 Around 2012, the site of the lynching was documented by Seattle-based photojournalist Tim Greyhavens as part of a project to document sites of anti-Chinese violence in the Western United States.Chen 2012 The project was covered in a 2012 article in The New York Times, which also published an image of the site.Chen 2012 See also History of Chinese Americans in Idaho List of lynching victims in the United States Lynching in the United States Lynching of Asian Americans Mass racial violence in the United States Notes note References Sources 30em yes Burrows William E. William E. Burrows http://archive.org/details/vigilante00burr Vigilante! Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1976 978-0-15-193655-7 New York City 224–246 The Compleat Vigilante 2035082 Chen David W. August 13, 2012 Picturing the Remnants of Anti-Chinese Violence https://archive.nytimes.com/lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/remnants-of-anti-chinese-violence/ live https://web.archive.org/web/20221106205700/https://archive.nytimes.com/lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/remnants-of-anti-chinese-violence/ November 6, 2022 November 9, 2025 The New York Times Lens: Photography, Video and Visual Journalism 1553-8095 1645522 Cusic Don Don Cusic http://archive.org/details/cowboyswildwesta0000cusi Cowboys and the Wild West: An A-Z Guide from the Chisholm Trail to the Silver Screen Facts On File 1994 978-0-8160-2783-5 New York City 65 Chinese in the West 29520687 Daniels Roger https://books.google.com/books?id=DSXiCgAAQBAJ Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850 University of Washington Press 1992 978-0-295-80118-6 Paperback Seattle 928997752 1988 Fisher George https://books.google.com/books?id=YVfrEAAAQBAJ Beware Euphoria: The Moral Roots and Racial Myths of America's War on Drugs Oxford University Press 2024 978-0-19-768848-9 Oxford 2023030162 1401671495 Hollon W. Eugene http://archive.org/details/frontierviolence0000unse Frontier Violence: Another Look Oxford University Press 1974 978-0-19-501750-2 New York City 902514 Loewen James W. James W. Loewen https://archive.org/details/sundowntownshidd0000loew Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism The New Press 2005 978-1-62097-454-4 New York City 1097974044 McLure Helen https://books.google.com/books?id=nAckynGEyCkC Lynching Beyond Dixie: American Mob Violence Outside the South University of Illinois Press 2013 978-0-252-03746-7 Pfeifer Michael J. Urbana, Illinois 21–53 "Who Dares to Style This Female a Woman?": Lynching, Gender, and Culture in the Nineteenth-Century U.S. West 2012028687 1503857878 Nash Jay Robert Jay Robert Nash http://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofwe0000unse_k4u0 Encyclopedia of Western Lawmen & Outlaws Paragon House 1992 978-1-55778-507-7 First Paragon House Trade New York City 73 Chinese Riots 25131018 1989 Owens Kenneth http://archive.org/details/chineseonamerica0000unse Chinese on the American Frontier Rowman & Littlefield 2001 978-0-8476-8532-5 Dirlik Arif Arif Dirlik Pacific Formations: Global Relations in Asian and Pacific Perspectives Lanham, Maryland 259–266 Pierce City Incident, 1885–1886 44019568 Yeung Malcolm Further reading Owens Kenneth 1959 Pierce City Incident https://nic.libguides.com/c.php?g=601102&p=4162443 Idaho Yesterdays Idaho State Historical Society 3 3 External links https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=121442 Chinese Hanging The Historical Marker Database https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=121515 Murder & Vigilantes The Historical Marker Database Category:1885 in Idaho Territory Category:1885 murders in the United States Category:Massacres in 1885 Category:19th-century mass murders in the United States Category:Anti-Chinese violence in the United States Category:Asian-American lynching victims Category:Chinese-American culture in Idaho Category:Clearwater County, Idaho Category:History of racism in Idaho Category:Massacres of Chinese people Category:September 1885 in the United States Category:Mass lynchings