The homesteaders trad wives would rather forget about (Megan Kate Nelson, part 2)

Broad History - Isabelle Roughol

This episode explores overlooked female figures in American Western history, focusing on Chinese immigrant Polly Bemus and homesteader Ella Watson, revealing how systemic racism and gender norms shaped their lives. Megan

Key takeaways

• Polly Bemus survived trafficking to become a respected community leader in Idaho

Transcript preview

Hello and welcome to Broad History, a podcast about the history you think you know, with women in it this time. I'm your host Isabel Rogal. This episode is part two of a two-parter conversation with the historian of the American West, Megan Kate Nelson. So if you missed part one, go back in your feed to episode 8 and start there. Without further ado, we're going to jump into the rest of the conversation. Just a quick reminder that if you want to support this show, you can sign up for membership at Broad History. the second part of this conversation because members get early and add free access to every episode and can binge any multi-part series on day one. This show is entirely research produced, edited and hosted by me and it can only happen with your support. I am so grateful to people who've already signed up for membership. Again it's at Broad History. Com slash membership and there was a big series coming up this summer that you're going to want to be a member for because you will get to binge it on whatever road trip you're planning to be on. We're going to jump right into the second part of the conversation with Megan Kate Nelson as we get past the American Civil War and into the later half of the 19th century. Sorry, it's a bit abrupt I did not originally plan to cut this conversation into, but here we are. This is my conversation with Megan Kate Nelson. The thing that I think is maddening when you look at the Civil War is that it feels like it should be a victory for a free or more... liberal more progressive America because after all it is the defeat of slavery and yet everything that comes after feels more segregationist more racist more of all the things that we don't like about American history and so one of the characters her life really travels through that is Polly Bemus who is a Chinese woman she was trafficked her family which was somewhat common apparently to deal with extreme poverty and trafficked from southern China with a Guangzhou, Hong Kong area to California and then on. Do you want to take it from there? Yes, yes. So when she was sold, yeah, and this was something that I had not known that this was a rather common practice in 19th century China for very poor families to sell their girl children to traders. And these girls had a number there were a number of options they would either be sold as domestics, sometimes as prostitutes, sometimes as second wives, to powerful people. And we should emphasize slavery is abolished by now in America when this is happening to her. So there are still women being sold and traded after abolition. Yes, exactly. There are indigenous women being sold. Yes, exactly. There are indigenous women being sold. sold and then also Asian women, particularly Chinese women. And the path that she followed from Hong Kong to Idaho actually was a pretty well-traveled route because Chinese men had followed that route in the 1840s to work in the gold mines of California and then a little bit later in the 1860s to help to build the Central Pacific Railroad, which is the Western half of the the transcontinental railroad, which was completed in 1869. And after that was completed and after that work was done, a lot of these Chinese men migrated then to other towns in the American West. And so we see these rather significant large Chinese, like Chinatowns in all kinds of towns throughout the American West and in the Rocky Mountains. And we also see mining towns that are majority Chinese at this point, which is where. Polybimus ends up. She ends up in a little town called Warren, Idaho, which is a gold mining town. Gold had been discovered there in 1870. She arrives in 1872. And by that time, the town is 80% Chinese, which again, this is something we don't think about. Any depiction of the mining west is almost always white miners. Most of the history is later in the period with fighting. against capitalist mining companies, things like that. But this is a very early period of what they called Placer Mining, which did not take a lot of money or capital to engage in. You're kind of basically scraping gold from rivers and mountainsides. And so you didn't have to have heavy equipment, you didn't have to have a lot of capital. So this is what attracted a lot of poor people across the world, really, to California and then to the Rocky Mountains during this period. And so this is where she is where she should. ends up but she is one of the few women. Five women in town. I don't know how many men, but like hundreds and five women. And and most of them I think one is American born and the rest. One is indigenous, one is US East Coast born and the other three immigrants, which is quite representative right of what America looks like. Yes, absolutely. And we don't know much about her life between the moment she arrives and 1880. which is when we first see her in a census. So again, thank God for court records. Bureaucracks. Thank God for census takers, exactly. Because we then know that at this point she's living in the household of a man named Charlie Beamus who is white and she is helping to run his saloon and his boarding house. And it's unclear what their relationship is, but a little bit later people are referring to them as Mr and Mrs. Beamus, even though they do. don't get married until the 1890s. But she becomes a fixture in the town. As a boarding house manager, she is meeting and taking care of minors who are moving in and out of the region at a pretty fast rate. So she becomes someone that everyone, pretty much everyone meets on their way into town or out of town. And she and Charlie just kind of build these businesses together. And ultimately, and ultimately, and Charlie just kind of build these businesses together. And ultimately, and ultimately, and ultimately, ultimately by land a little bit further away to the south on the Salmon River and move there ultimately and live a life as kind of farmers, really subsistence farmers, make friends with the sheep farmers across the river who begin to take care of them, they trade goods, the guys across the river will go and get supplies for them as they're getting older. And she's really, I mean, her journey was obviously the long. because she traveled the farthest across the Pacific Ocean. It's easy to think of her maybe kind of standing still because she didn't really leave until later in her life. She stayed in Warren, Idaho. 30 years in one town before you know making a trip to the dentist at one point. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's crazy to think about. But I know it is. And but one of the contentions I make in the book is that even when people stop moving, like she and she and her. And she lives in Santa Fe for more than 15 years building her empire and she doesn't really leave. She makes some trips down to Mexico, but she doesn't leave all that much. But what both she and Polybemus have in common is that they are still kind of benefiting from and engaged in a network of again trade and kinship people moving back and forth. And the Beemus ranch was not only on a trail between gold mines, but it was on the Salmon River, which was increasingly filled with boat traffic. And they lived at a curve in the river, and that river, I have seen it, it is big and it is fast. And it had carved out by the Beamus Ranch this kind of rocky beach where you can put in and stay. And so people stayed with them. They would come in and they would spend the night and they would meet her and they would meet Charlie. And they would meet Charlie. And so they were not. not recluses. They knew exactly what was happening. The farmers across the way had a radio ultimately and they listened to the news. They knew what was happening. So they were connected. They were connected to a wider world even though they lived in this very remote place. That's what I love about her story why I find I think her story is the more charming and the less violent part of the book. There is such a strong sense of community. are German immigrants and white Americans and the help that