Polly Bemis
Polly Bemis was a famous Chinese American pioneer woman who lived in the Pacific Northwest in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth century.
Life
Polly Bemis was born Lalu Nathoy in China in 1853. When she was a child a group of bandits raided her village and she was forcefully sold by her father for two much needed bags of seed. Lalu was later smuggled into the U.S. and sold as a slave in San Francisco for $2,500 in 1872.[1] Her buyer, Hong King, ran a saloon in a mining camp in Warrens (now Warren, Idaho), Idaho.
Polly worked for many years and by the mid 1880s was able to buy her freedom. She later ran a popular boarding house in Warren. In 1894 she married Charlie Bemis, whom she had befriended when she first arrived in Warrens. Together, they were among the first pioneers to help settle the Idaho Territory, especially along the Salmon River (The River of No Return).
The couple had no children - Polly was 40 when they married - however, they were known to care for a number of animals, including horses and even a cougar. A fire later gutted their beloved home on the Salmon River in 1922, possibly caused by an untended or overheated woodstove; Charlie died soon aftward. He had been ill in the last several years, reportedly due to a lung ailment (probably tuberculosis).
Death and legacy
Friends helped Polly to rebuild a new home, and she lived another ten years, dying of a stroke in 1933 at the age of 80.[2]
Her final cabin is now a museum and in the National Register of Historic Places. At the dedication ceremonies in 1987, Idaho Governor Cecil Andrus stated, "The history of Polly Bemis is a great part of the legacy of central Idaho. She is the foremost pioneer on the rugged Salmon River." [3]
Current biographers continue to debate the details of Polly Bemis' life. For example, there is little evidence that she was ever actually known as "Lalu" or that "Hong King" was really her owner's name. Also, there is no evidence that Polly was actually a prostitute; from a cultural standpoint, it is more likely that Polly was a concubine. Finally, close friends reported that as she neared death, Polly denied the long-standing public belief that she was "won in a poker game."[4]
Polly Bemis is the subject of an extensive and ongoing series of paintings by Chinese-American artist Hung Liu.
Books and films about her life
- Thousand Pieces of Gold is a biographical novel about Lalu Nathoy/Polly Bemis and includes an essay in which the author, Ruthanne Lum McCunn, documents her research for the book and her discoveries in the years since Polly's death.
- Polly Bemis' life was fictionalized in the 1991 film A Thousand Pieces of Gold, starring Rosalind Chao (as Polly) and Chris Cooper (as Charlie).
- Polly Bemis: A Chinese American Pioneer, written by Priscilla Wegars and published in 2003, is a noted elementary classroom history book.[5]
- The Poker Bride: The First Chinese in the Wild West, by Christopher Corbett (2010)