Or should I once again (mis)quote: History is written by the ones in power?

Last week I visited a small historic town, Cathlamet, WA, located on a similarly named channel of the Columbia River. About an hour-and-a-half’s drive north west of Portland, through beautiful landscape once you hit the western edge of Washington State.

Old pilings from Douglas Fir trees used in the sorting and rafting process in 19th century logging.

It has a small marina for boating and fishing, some industrial tug boats still working in the harbor, and 19th century buildings that are well preserved.

The place was settled by early pioneers in 1846 and the Washington Territorial Legislature established Wahkiakum County in 1854, naming it after the native people who had for centuries lived along the river (some 6000 still by1820, the combined population of the Wahkiakums, Cathlamets, and Clatsops and Chinooks.) They had been decimated by the arrival of earlier explorers who brought small pox, observed by the Lewis&Clark expedition, but nothing like the epidemic to follow: in 1830 some 90 percent of the tribal populations got wiped out but what historians believe to be malaria.

Settlers arrived and took over the land, and, equally important, the river. Logging and fishing industries blossomed after 1870, with the majority of homesteaders now coming from Scandinavia, where hunger and poverty drove scores of people to emigrate. These settlers, and later large companies drawn by the riches of the temperate rain forest, cut millions of trees, and drained the wetlands, ignoring their importance for a flourishing ecosystem. The Nordic immigrants were expert fishermen, but also brought a lot of knowledge about dairy farming and organizing as cooperatives to stay in business that became quite competitive. Puget Island, in the middle of the river across from Cathlamet, was even called “little Norway.”

There is a lot written about these early settlers, their hardship, their skills. These days, the major companies who absorbed their labor, logging forests to make paper, have left the region. The fish are gone as well, at least in the numbers that sustained whole communities. Overfishing, environmental degradation in general, ever further pushes of the urban boundary into spawning grounds, and, most importantly, building endless dams upriver, have had severe impacts.

The small town now relies on tourism, providing a marina for fishing boats, or just generell water sports. Many people commute to larger cities to find work, or take on jobs as fishermen on trawlers that fish in Alaska, being gone for months on end.

When I say many people, let’s face that the entire population of the town is 520 people, as of the last census I could find. About 95 percent of them are White with a median annual income of $35.000 or so, a high poverty rate, and about 60% of them are voting for the Republican party.

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There is a lovingly preserved church, a courthouse, a few memorial markers for tribal populations, or citizens who were killed in world wars.

There is also a small museum, which has historical logging and farming equipment outside and a boat that served as a hub for decades, teaching young men to fish for salmon, sturgeon, silverbacks and all the other species running the Columbia River. (I did not venture inside, if it was open at all, since I forgot my mask in the car.)

Nowhere to be found was a trace of remembrance of the Chinese pioneers who contributed so much to the Pacific Northwest.

At least not what I saw, might have missed it?

We know that in Astoria, OR, some 45 minutes west of Cathlamet, they brought the railroad, they built the river walls and the jetties, they put in the sewer system and worked in the canneries or other fish processing jobs long before the Scandinavians arrived. Some 22% of the population was Chinese at the time. There they are remembered in The Garden of Surging Waves.

We know the cannery industry boomed in the 1870s along Wahkiakum’s Columbia River shoreline as well. We know that Chinese immigrants comprised a high percentage of the workforce. By 1880 there were 500 Chinese workers located in Wahkiakum County as well (today there are 5 (yes, five) Asians counted in the census of 520 inhabitants of Cathlamet.) They were first hired as butchering crews for the local canneries. In Cathlamet they lived in what was called The China House located next to the cannery. (Ref.)

And then? Wherever you look, you find sentences like: “few remained after that.”

Once again, you have to figure out history on your own, when it comes to dealing with violent parts of the evolution of this country. What happened is not just the racist treatment of Chinese migrants, their literal killing and maiming in so many townships on the West Coast across the centuries. There was specifically the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

“U.S. federal law that was the first and only major federal legislation to explicitly suspend immigration for a specific nationality. The basic exclusion law prohibited Chinese labourers—defined as “both skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining”—from entering the country. Subsequent amendments to the law prevented Chinese labourers who had left the United States from returning. The passage of the act represented the outcome of years of racial hostility and anti-immigrant agitation by white Americans, set the precedent for later restrictions against immigration of other nationalities, and started a new era in which the United States changed from a country that welcomed almost all immigrants to a gatekeeping one.”

If you read the entire entry on the act (in the link above) you’ll learn that it was repealed and amended in 1943. Here is the thing, though: two months ago, the Trump administration published a 162-page report in which it defended the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act as a necessary tool for protecting American workers and sovereignty. It did so in the context of trying to force our cultural institutions, like the Smithsonian and other museums, to revise their narratives about the supremacist bend of exclusion laws. It explicitly wants to eliminate all mention of historical oppression. I guess it has to order the Library of Congress as well… here is their entry on the plight of Chinese migrants:

“Even as they struggled to find work, Chinese immigrants were also fighting for their lives. During their first few decades in the United States, they endured an “epidemic of violent racist attacks, a campaign of persecution and murder that today seems shocking. From Seattle to Los Angeles, from Wyoming to the small towns of California, immigrants from China were forced out of business, run out of town, beaten, tortured, lynched, and massacred, usually with little hope of help from the law. Racial hatred, an uncertain economy, and weak government in the new territories all contributed to this climate of terror and bloodshed. The perpetrators of these crimes, which included Americans from many segments of society, largely went unpunished. Exact statistics for this period are difficult to come by, but a case can be made that Chinese immigrants suffered worse treatment than any other group that came voluntarily to the U.S.”

It is, of course, not just versions of history that can be shaped by those in power. It is the ongoing attempt to manipulate who gets to live and work in this country that was founded by immigrants. The Trump Administration has now floated a $100,000 fee for Optional Practical Training (OPT), aiming to deter international students from working in the U.S. post-graduation. As Forbes reported,

“This proposal faces opposition from educators, economists and businesses, who highlight students’ contributions to innovation and the economy. Critics also question its legality, especially after a federal judge recently struck down a similar $100,000 H-1B fee, deeming it an unconstitutional tax. Research shows international students on OPT do not harm American job prospects but rather boost employment and innovation. Such a fee would likely harm U.S. competitiveness and drive talent to other countries. The policy’s future remains uncertain.”

China, as of 2024, had the second highest number of International students, some 277.000, in the US, only topped by India. Think of all that talent, all that potential for scientific research lost, should the proposal gain traction and would be considered legal.

It is mind boggling.

So was the view along the river, the green once again soothing a brain boiling with irritation. The kingfisher did his tricks, the clouds slowly lifted. It was still warm, a hint of rain in the air.

We live in a spectacular place. Why on earth won’t we share it?

We live in a complicated world, and are, of course, not the only ones who have a complicated history. Music today is also complicated, but mesmerizing.

Front yard decoration in Cathlamet.