The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-09-22
Between Three and Four Thousand
Natives Hurriediy Forced on
Rats and Drowned.
RIVER BLACK WITH BODIES
HUNDREDS OF CORPsEs COUNTED
THREE DAYS AFTERWARDS.
Thirty villages Burned and 10000
Pcaceable Chinese Made Home
Iess-Many of Them Shot.

NEW YORK, Sept. M-Concerning the
massacre of five thousand Chinese at Bla-
govestchensk by Russians, local paper
publishes an account from G.. Frederick
Wright, one of the faculty of Oberlin (O)
College. who was enormously reported
killed at Picking. The letter is written from
Stretinsk, Siberia, under date of Aug. 6. Up
to July i relations between Russians and
Chinese were cordial. Guards which pro-
tected the Chinese Eastern Railway
through Manchuria were Cossacks and
Chinese, and there was no intimation of
trouble until about the middle of June,
when the engineers at Telling received a
telegram that no more laborers could be
procured on account of the revolution.
There was considerable feeling against the
railroad. Many said it would never be
completed, consequently many Manchuri-
ans were reluctant to work. The work of
grading was let out to Chinese middlcmen,
who hired coolies. whom they cheated.
About two hundred thousand coolies, i'm
ported from Che-Foo and Tien-Tsin. were
at work on the line.
All was going well until about the last Of
June. when the families of the engineers
at Hardin were forced to flee for safety.
protect Hardin. Blagovestchensk, left de-
fenseless. was besieged. Chinese in large
numbers were in settlements i'm the valley
of Nonvi from the center of Manchuria
we'll UP to the vicinity of Blagovestchensk.
The Russians were largely dependent on
the Chinese for labor and vegetables. The
Russians seemed to be oblivious to danger
in their relations with the Chinese.
AS soon as the Russian troops went down
the river on transports July I'D the fort
at Aygun began without warning to fire
upon passing steamboats,, and on the 18th
fire was opened upon Blagovestchensk and
some Russian vilIises were burned opposite
the fort. The actual injury inflicted by the
Chinese was slight, but the terror caused
by il was indescribable and it drove the
Cossacks into frenzy of rage. The peace
able Chinese to the number of 5000 or 1000
ir the city were expelled in great haste,
and being forced upon RATS entirely in
adequate, were, most of them drowned In
attempting TO cross the river. The stream
was fairly black with bodies. Three days
after hundreds of the corpses were counted
in the water. Mr. Wright says:
In our ride through the country to reach
the city on Thursday, the 18th, we saw as
many as thirty villages and hamlets of the
Chinese In flames. One of them was city
of 5000 or 10000 inhabitants. We estimated
that we saw the dwellings OF 10000 peace
able Chinese in flames that awful day,
while parties of Cossacks were securing the
fields TO find Chinese and shooting them
women and children no one knew; but
there was apparently no way for them TO
escape TO place of safety. On our way up
the river for 800 miles above the city every
Chinese hamlet was a charred mass
of ruins. The large village of Molcha
was still smoking, and we were told
that 1900 Chinese had been killed. The
wholesale destruction both of property and
of life thought to be military neces-
sity. / shall never forget the night spent
in one of these villages few miles below
Aygun three or four days after hostilities
began. Every household was packed up in
carts and removed in the middle of the
night to the prairies in the interior. The
guards were insufficient, and the only way,
as they thought, to protect their own fami--
lies was to strike terror into the hearts of
all the Chinese. And so the work of de-
struction has gone on. Since We left We
hear that Aygun has been taken amid a
great loss of life to the Chinese. Work
in the mines is paralyZed and the laborers
driven out. Peace between the Russians
and the Chinese has come to an end. Years
cannot wipe out the enmity engendered."