Chinese Cemetery

Chinese cemetery altar at Wild Horse Creek. Image courtesy of Fort Steele Heritage Town Archives, FS.5.374

Many Chinese placer miners found their final rest on a hillside above the town of Fisherville. The bodies of Chinese were buried here and an altar was constructed for the performance of Qing Ming - Chinese rituals for the dead. The site while inaccessible and odd to a western observer, was probably chosen due to its fulfilment of Feng Shui (the Chinese ideal of tapping into the energy and harmony of nature) important even after death. Feng Shui stated that the best place to bury the dead is on the slope having the tomb facing a valley and the back towards a mountain.

However, no bodies remain in the Chinese cemetery today, only empty graves. In keeping with Chinese tradition, after seven years had passed, the bodies of the Chinese were exhumed and cleaned. They were then shipped to the coast and stored in a warehouse known as a "bonehouse." When enough bodies accumulated to fill a ship, one was chartered in order to return these men to China for their final internment. Tradition dictated that Chinese people had to be buried in their homeland in order to take their place in the grand scheme of the Chinese belief and worship.

Wild Horse Cemetery		Victoria Ditch