The Attack on Squak Valley Chinese laborers took place on September 7, 1885, in Squak Valley (now called Issaquah), Washington Territory, when a group of men fired their guns into several tents where a group of Chinese hop pickers were sleeping.
The attack was part of a widespread pattern of racially motivated violence against Chinese immigrants in the United States.
During the latter half of the 19th century, there were more than 150 documented group attacks against Chinese communities and settlers throughout North America.
Ingebright and Lars Wold were two brothers who owned a large hop farm in the Squak Valley,[2] about 15 miles east of Seattle, in the 1880s.
After failing to negotiate lower wages with the Indians, in late August the Wold brothers contracted with the firm of Quong Chong & Company in Seattle to bring Chinese laborers to pick the hops for a reduced rate.
[3] On Saturday afternoon, September 5, 1885, a group of 37 Chinese laborers arrived at the Wold brothers' farm.
[3] On Sunday, September 6, news of the Wyoming Rock Springs Massacre of Chinese miners was on the front page of the Seattle newspaper.
Somewhere around 10 p.m. that same day, a group of at least five white men and two Indians went to the Chinese camp on the Wold brothers' farm.
The jury found that the Chinese were killed "by gun and pistol wounds initiated by M. DeWitt Rumsey, Joseph Day, Perry Bayne, David Hughes, Samuel Robertson, Indian Curley, Indian Johnny and other persons to us unknown.
The defendants appealed their conviction to the territorial supreme court on the grounds that women had been wrongly included on the grand jury that had handed down the indictments.
In January 1888, the court agreed with the defendants, saying that the law required all members of grand juries to be qualified voters, and women at that time did not have the right to vote in Washington Territory.