Description

John Boyd was typical of his time, he was a good man, a good father and he was always fair in his dealings with everyone. There was however the overlying set of cultural attitudes that assumed that the European peoples were somehow superior. So at the same time we can see in the ledgers that the Chinese are treated as a stereotype ("China miner", "China travellers", "China packer" or "China cook") but also that he had many individual Chinese miners on his books and often gave small gifts of money to his cooks when they left his employ or travelled.

Take a look at the sheer amount of business provided by the Chinese to John Boyd. Keep in mind that the pattern in the interior gold rush was for the Europeans to come in at the height of the rush, frantically try to make a fortune and then scramble off to the next rush. Following behind them came the Chinese taking over mining claims that were assumed to be worked clean with no gold left worth the taking. This was the case around the Cottonwood and Swift River and to a large degree along Lightning Creek.

So, how much money did the Chinese spend at John Boyd's roadhouses? What were their typical purchases? How did they pay their bills? Was there any yearly pattern to their purchases? Going over the 30 or so years available at this point in time can any pattern be seen from year to year?

One possible though fairly difficult project might be to determine what percentage of John Boyd's business came from the Chinese in a given month over a number of years.