Polly Bemis, Woman of the West
Still not hot dogs!
Hi Bestie!!
I have a fascination with women of the Old West. Not women on horses with guns, though these women did ride horses and most likely shot guns. But women who made the best they could and survived the annals of history (hellbent on erasing their names).
Jenny Leigh, for example, whose name has been lost to time. Called Jenny because her husband thought her Shoshone name was too hard to pronounce. (How many of us know women in the 80s named Jenny Leigh Last Name?) I believed he loved her, though. Maybe the name was a gift. (Maybe he sucked.) Jenny and her husband "Beaver Dick" guided people through the Tetons. They built and managed a ferry that operated near the Snake River. Jenny and her five children died of smallpox. (Beaver Dick later married a Bannock woman, Susan Tadpole.) Jenny Lake, which is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, is the only feature in a national park named after a woman. (I think. I read this when I visited GNP and I can't confirm it now. If you know an NPS feature named after a woman let me know. 76 sites, monuments, and parks are named after women. Out of 429.)
In Idaho, a site is named after another woman, Polly Bemis. Bemis is the subject of the 1981 novel and 1991 film A Thousand Pieces of Gold, playing at BAM Monday night. Unless you're planning to eat chicken tenders with me at trivia, you should see it. (You should still see it, either way!) Much of her life is up for debate, which is going to make this much less interesting for you.
(The movie stars Rosalind Chao. I love her. There's also a thing about apple pie.)
Bemis was born in rural China in 1853. (She may have been named Lalu Nathoy.) Her father sold her to men for seed; she was smuggled to America and lived as an enslaved person or indentured servant (which is the same thing, really, for Bemis). First, she was sold in San Francisco. Then she was taken to Warrens, Idaho by way of Oregon, where she arrived in 1872. Warrens had a thriving Chinatown (low-key my favorite part of the movie). She was purchased by a saloon owner, Hong King (maybe). She was a housekeeper and likely miserable and at some point purchased her freedom (or possibly Charles Bemis purchased it or possibly Hong King did) and eventually married Charles in 1894. They then lived and worked on a ranch in Salmon River Canyon. (They allegedly had a pet cougar!)
The 1880 census listed her as living with saloon owner and fiddler Charles Bemis. Charlie had befriended Polly when she arrived in Warrens. When the saloon got out of hand and Polly couldn't contain it, she would walk into Charlie's and have him handle it. "He never failed her." Before they moved to the ranch Charlie built Polly a boarding house next to his saloon, which she ran independently. In the boarding house, she brandished a knife when miners got out of hand and the complaints ended.
There is speculation that they married because Charles needed someone to care for him, and Polly needed to marry to stay in the country as a result of the Chinese Exclusion Act and subsequent legal acts of racism. They had to go to court for her permanent residency, first to Moscow, and finally to Montana in 1896. Polly cared for Charles, first when he was shot in the face in Warrens, and again in 1922 when their cabin burned down. Maybe the love wasn't romantic, maybe it's the love you feel for your coworkers when you work together through retail hell. (Love isn't the right word for the bonds you forge.)
On the Salmon River, then known as the River of No Return, the Bemis Point and Polly Place was several yards from the river. The two filed a mining claim and raised animals and grew produce, including apples, cherries, peaches, gooseberries, corn, peas, potatoes, and much more. Already an accomplished fisher, Bemis would save fat worms from her garden to catch trout. In 2023 an apple variety was re-discovered at the ranch and named after Bemis. Reportedly the apples are sweet and favored by area bears in the fall.
Charlie died in 1922. (Probably tuberculosis!) The two had moved across the river to live with two German miners, Peter Klinkhammer and Charlie Shepp. Shepp and Kinkhammer built Bemis a new cabin where the old one stood, and she moved back to her claim on the river IN 1924, where she lived alone for ten more years. Wikipedia (and probably Ruthanne Lum McCunn's book!) says they built this in exchange for inheriting the land after her death. They also agreed to care for her in her remaining years. I don't think this is a heartless act, to build the cabin, even if you plan to take the land later.
Shepp found Bemis prone and outside of her cabin in 1933. She had likely suffered from a stroke. He took her to Grangeville, where she lived in a hospital for three months, before she died. During her stay she was "loquacious," with a lot to say about her life story. Her stories were reported in the local paper and she died the day after it was published. She was buried in Grangeville. Kinkhammer's sister purchased a headstone for Bemis after his death.
Her cabin was restored in 1987 and turned into a museum. The 25-acre site was added to the list of National Register of Historic Places a year later. I desperately want to go there. There are no roads and the easiest way to get there is by boat. In the meantime, we can settle for a video from Idaho's tourism council. (The video says she was "won in a card game" but Bemis was emphatic that this is not true.)
I am sort of torn. I haven't read the book (I will!) but I wonder how much speculation is because McCunn wrote the seminal novel about Bemis's life, and there is nothing people love more than discrediting a woman.
Always your friend,
Katherine
Sources (unformatted!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_Lake
https://jacksonholehistory.org/wp-content/uploads/Newsletter-Winter-2014.pdf
https://www.nps.gov/places/000/jenny-lake-overlook.htm
https://savingplaces.org/stories/womens-history-national-park-service
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polly_Bemis
https://www.mccunn.com/PollyBemis.html
http://www.asianreporter.com/reviews/2004/19-04pollybemis.htm
https://www.nps.gov/resources/site.htm?id=18647
https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd1002687.pdf
https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/environment/2023-06-26/idaho-polly-bemis-apple