An Analysis of East Asian Coins Excavated in Tucson, Arizona
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JOHN W. OLSEN An important factor in recognizing ethnic subcultures archaeologically is the extent to which ethnicity was maintained through the An Analysis of EastAsian Coins preservation of traditional social and eco- Excavated in Tucson, Arizona nomic patterns (Schuyler 1980). In the case of the Chinese in 19th and early 20th century America, many aspects of material culture suggest the pervasiveness of traditional ABSTRACT Chinese lifeways in the face of continual con- The Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese low denomi- tact with the overwhelming presence of nation coins from late 19th and early 20th century Anglo-American society (Chare 1976; Olsen archaeological deposits in Tucson, Arizona, are ana- 1978; Jones 1980; Whitlow 1981). lyzed. Many authors have suggested the recovery of Recently, many archaeologists have East Asian coins in frontier American sites provides focused their attention on the investigation of evidence of their use as currency within Asian ethnic communities. Evidence for such utilization is dis- the processes by which ethnic enclaves cussed along with the contention that latrines may emerged and were maintained in frontier provide the most readily accessible corroborative data. America. East Asian immigrants brought a unique combination of traditions and lan- Introduction guages quite distinct from those of other American populations which were expressed The people of Guangxi province in southern within the framework of an equally distinctive China had suffered many decades of local un- material culture. The pervasive stereotype of rest and inept Manchu rule during the Qing 19th century East Asians (particularly Dynasty when, in 1850, Guangxi became the Chinese) as “coolie” laborer, opium mer- starting point of the Taiping Rebellion led by chant, or laundry operator, however, has the revolutionary Hong Xiuchuan. The social often resulted in a rather restricted view of the and economic upheavals which characterized interaction between these immigrants and the the Taiping Rebellion between 1850 and 1864 Anglo-American culture in which they found began the exodus of thousands of Chinese themselves immersed. from the southern provinces to foreign coun- The recognition of East Asian ethnic com- tries which held the promise of individual munities in frontier period archaeological freedom and the possibility for social and contexts has resulted in the accumulation of economic advancement. data which supplement the historical record California’s newly discovered gold fields and and provide valuable insight into aspects of the expanding railroad systems in the western Asian life in America which were not deemed United States lured a large percentage of the of sufficient importance at the time to warrant Chinese population displaced by the instabil- detailed chronicling. In particular, the ques- ity during the late Qing Dynasty. The plight of tion of the relative economic autonomy of Chinese and other East Asian immigrants in many aspects of commercial life within these America is well documented from ethnohis- enclaves has received attention due to the torical sources (Ch’en 1923; Chinn 1969; recovery of Chinese and other East Asian cur- Miller 1969; Nee and Nee 1972) and the rency in archaeological contexts in America. archaeological record, which has begun to provide relevant data for interpreting Asian Background lifestyles in frontier America (Briggs 1978a, 1978b; Ho 1978; Greenwood 1980; Jones This paper presents further evidence of the 1980). semi-autonomous nature of intracommunity 42 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, VOLUME 17 economics within one frontier East Asian other pastimes. As such, Tucson‘s tung community in Tucson, Arizona, occupied dur- organizations, such as the Ying On Associa- ing the latter half of the 19th and early 20th tion established locally during the 1930s, con- centuries. stituted the primary mechanism through The years between the beginning of the which social cohesiveness and ethnic identity Taiping Rebellion in 1850 and the passage of were maintained (Schweitzer 1952). the United States Chinese Exclusion Act of Throughout much of the history of Chinese 1882 witnessed the influx of large numbers of occupation in Tucson, the city block defined Chinese into the western states. The 1880 by Main, Jackson, Meyer Streets, and Broad- United States census states that over 75,000 way Boulevard formed the focus of the Asian Chinese were resident in California alone, community. In this area, both standing struc- while Oregon supported a population of some tures and archaeological features, such as 10,000 additional Chinese (Fong 1978:2). latrines and ovens, have produced East Asian Arizona does not seem to have drawn such artifacts, including 65% of the coins analyzed large populations of East Asian immigrants in here. spite of abundant employment opportunities A total of 91 East Asian coins were un- for unskilled laborers in agriculture, mining, covered between 1967 and 1973 during archae- and the territory’s expanding railroad system. ological investigations conducted by the The 1880 census records a total of only 1630 Arizona State Museum as part of the Tucson Chinese living in Arizona, of which all but 100 Urban Renewal (T.U.R.) project. Unfor- resided in Tucson and Pima county (Fong tunately, the analysis of the T.U.R. archae- 1978:5). By 1890, however, principally as a ological materials has not yet progressed to result of the passage of the Chinese Exclusion the point where detailed chronological inter- Act, Tucson’s Chinese population had pretation is possible. In contrast to many of dropped to only 215. The remaining 1300 souls the other recent finds of East Asian coins in were apparently induced to emigrate to the western United States that can be asso- Canada and Mexico or simply to return to ciated with temporally discrete features their homeland. Of course, only legal resi- (Kleeb 1976; Farris 1979), the T.U.R. remains dents of Arizona are included in these census are, at present, impossible to accurately artic- figures and there is reason to believe that a ulate with the chronology of the community’s substantial population of illegal Asian immi- habitation because no report has been pre- grants remained in southern Arizona (Ch’en pared on the excavation and the artifactual 1923; Schweitzer 1952). As a consequence, material recovered has not been fully ana- Chinese population statistics for the city of lyzed. For this reason, chronological ques- Tucson are unclear until the San Francisco tions relating to the deposition of these coins earthquake and fire of 1906 forced the recon- must, for the moment, be set aside in order to stitution of immigration and naturalization glean as much information as possible from records, including those of Arizona‘s Chinese the coins themselves. residents (Ch’en 1923; Fong 1978:4). Before turning to a detailed discussion of By the late 1870s, the Chinese had gained a the East Asian coins recovered during the foothold in Tucson and city records reflect T. U.R. investigations, a general consideration their activity in laundry, restaurant, and of basic strategems employed in the analysis various mercantile businesses. In spite of a of these currency systems is germane. As relatively small population, Tucson’s Chinese Farris (1979:48) and Keddie (1978) have community flourished during the late 1800s. pointed out, coins derived from archaeological Social activities focused on the tung, or deposits are rarely employed in roles other “benevolent association,” where Chinese than as terminus post quem dating devices. In men could gather for informal discussions and the case of Chinese and other East Asian coins AN ANALYSIS OF EAST ASIAN COINS 43 recovered from archaeological sites in the to local political instability and lack of avail- Western Hemisphere, this restricted use is able raw materials, particularly copper. Con- compounded in two principal ways by the sequently, various provincial mints occa- relative isolation of immigrant Asian popula- sionally gained dominance, in terms of num- tions from the mainstream of Anglo-European bers of coins issued, as neighboring mints society. closed down. First, the pervasiveness and tenacity of For example, during the Kang Xi regnal era traditional East Asian cultures in the face of all provincial mints in China except the overwhelming contact with foreign influences Jiangsu mint in Nanjing were closed from 1662 is well known. One only need examine the to 1667 (Wylie 1858:98). During this period of rapidity with which Mongol and Manchu rul- time, however, the national mints in Beijing ing houses were acculturated by the Chinese and the Jiangsu provincial mint continued to and the extent to which Chinese ethnic en- issue hundreds of millions of coins which were claves persist in such far-flung locations as distributed throughout the country. Conse- Singapore, San Francisco, and New York to quently, the frequent appearance of Kang Xi understand this phenomenon. coins minted in Nanjing, for example, in a This cultural tenacity resulted in the desire particular archaeological site should not be to maintain traditional economic patterns taken as evidence that the coin originally cir- within the ethnic community, perhaps through culated only in east-central China. BFals the use of currency from their original homes ( 1980:71) discusses the problem of equating as media of exchange. This hypothesis has mint location with area of circulation, and been suggested by Kleeb (I976), Farris (1979), detailed information on the history of minting and Hattori (1979) who have documented this in China may be found in Wylie (1858), phenomenon in California and Nevada Bushell (1880), and Kann (1939). Chinese settlements. The sheer quantity of small denomination The second important aspect of East Asian coins issued by the Chinese imperial mints currency to be considered, vis-a-vis its value must have been staggering and constitutes to the archaeologist, is that talismanic or another factor in analyzing the significance of divinatory properties supposedly inherent in coins bearing particular mint designations. many of these coins often led to their curation The relatively low monetary value of these over long periods of time.