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Lewiston's Beuk Aie Temple
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This project is supported in part by a grant from the Idaho State Historical Society
and National Endowment for the Humanities.
Special thanks also to Dr. Lee and Mrs. Deanna Vickers
for their ongoing support of the Beuk Aie Temple.
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The Temple Exhibition is being
redesigned and is estimated to reopen in 2013.
Specialty supervised individual tours may be available with
advanced notice, depending on design phase and reasoning.
Planning committee: Bennet Bronson, Fred Fritchman, Jim Hepworth, Chuimei Ho, Lisa Jones, Kathy Martin, Alice Parman, Keith Peterson, and Lyle Wirtanen |
 Following
the 1860 discovery of gold at what would become Pierce,
Idaho, thousands of miners rushed to the area. By 1865
Chinese miners were allowed in the Pierce mining
district. Once the Chinese were permitted, they were
quick to arrive.
Situated at the confluence of
the Snake and Clearwater rivers, and accessible to the
Pacific Ocean via the Columbia River, Lewiston, Idaho,
became a point of destination for miners and mining
supplies. As Idaho's only seaport, Lewiston saw a boom
in its economy and growth due to the
discovery of gold
seventy-five miles northwest of
its river location at
Pierce, Idaho. As was often the case with such 19th
century discoveries of gold, both Chinese miners and
support personnel flocked to the area. Although the 1870
census showed only 71 within Lewiston's boundaries, an
additional 675 Chinese people were counted in nearby
mining areas. Almost all were men.
Most of
the Chinese who came to Lewiston during
the late nineteenth century were from the Toishan
district of southern China's Guangdong Province, a rural
area of the Chu Jiang (Pearl River) delta. These
immigrants brought their religion with them and
practiced it here until the latter part of the twentieth
century. Their religious belief system, a form of
Taoism, combined elements of Confucianism and Buddhism
with traditional folk practices and mythology.
The
earliest known area temple was destroyed by fire in
March 1875, only ten years after the first Chinese
arrived in Lewiston. Its successor was
 probably built by
mid-November of that year. About 1888 Lewiston's Chinese
community began to collect money to build a new temple,
and in 1890 purchased property on C Street in what is
now Lewiston's historic downtown. The new temple
remained
there until 1959.
The Hip Sing Tong
Exhibit
In
their homeland, the Chinese had a long tradition of
clan, district, and fraternal organizations. The vast
majority of such Chinese men's tongs, or associations,
were law-abiding bodies that existed mainly to provide
social interaction and benevolent services to their
members.
As a
secret society, there is much we do not know about its
organization and practices, though a 1948 newspaper
article and photograph give clues to many of the Hip
Sing Tong's furnishing, some of which are displayed in
the exhibit
Funding
for the restoration, conservation and installation of
this exhibit was provided, in part, by the Idaho
Humanities Council, the Idaho Heritage Trust, the
Lewis-Clark State College Educational Assistance &
Development Foundation, and the Idaho Commission on the
Arts.
Additional resources:
Chinese in Northwest America Research Committee
Chinese Remembering
Chinese at the confluence: Lewiston's beuk aie temple
Priscilla Wegars (Author) [2000, Confluence Press]
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