100 years ago in Spokane: Hysteria mounted over the arrival of two newcomers to the city’s Chinese community

The Spokane Daily Chronicle led with a huge, exaggerated headline: “Tong War Looms in Spokane.”

The story claimed, using the language of the era, that local Asians – only the story used an outdated word instead – “are barricaded in their retreats, refusing admission to all.”

This alarming story was based almost entirely on the presence in Spokane of two out-of-town Chinese men. “Members of the colony here fear that these men are tong gunmen,” the Chronicle wrote.

Tongs were clubs, occasionally with fierce rivalries, and tong “wars” had broken out recently in cities along the West Coast.

There seemed to be little actual evidence that these two men were fomenting a tong war, but police were taking it seriously and had begun an investigation. A detective claimed that all members of the Chinese community were so “terrorized” that they had “placed themselves in seclusion, behind barred doors.”

Yet the detective also admitted that they were mostly refusing to talk to him, either.

However, by the next day, Spokane’s Chinese community had refuted most of these exaggerated reports.

The Chinese out-of-towners were affiliated with “friendly tongs.” In fact, Spokane had only one tong, the Hop Sing, “so there is no chance for quarrels here,” said Lock Yue, a community leader.

He said that “our people here are peaceful and law-abiding” and “there is no trouble in Spokane’s Chinese colony.”

The Chronicle noted that most of Spokane’s Chinese residents lived along the alley between Trent and Main avenues, from Washington Street east.