“Your Hands Are Bathed in Gold”: Pressures on Butte’s Chinese Residents, 1880s–1920s

MontanaHistoricalSociety

Mark Johnson, a fellow with the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives, examines connections between Butte’s Chinese community and their relatives in southern China, a region beset by natural disasters and political upheavals that caused many to seek opportunities abroad. With these pressures from home combined with restrictions in Montana from certain professions, life was not easy for these Chinese Montanans.