A Chinese Encampment in California

The objectphotographed as held, uncropped

Catalogue description

A settlement of low structures and canvas among scattered trees on open hillside ground, with figures standing near the buildings and a fenced enclosure at the right. The print is light and the detail is soft, which is typical of a view sold well after its negative was made.

The word chosen in the caption is “encampment”, not town, settlement or village. A camp is temporary by definition, and the vocabulary of the caption quietly does the work of saying that the people in it are passing through — whatever the buildings and the fences in the picture suggest.

The verso is a pure piece of commerce: an advertisement for a book about Arizona, sold to the same audience by the same publisher. It is a reminder of what these cards were. Chinese California was one line in a New York publisher’s catalogue of continental attractions, printed on the back of a sales pitch.

Transcriptiontext on the object, as printed

FACE:
CONTINENT STEREOSCOPIC COMPANY   PUBLISHERS.
REPRESENTATIVE VIEWS OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT.
631—A Chinese Encampment in California.

VERSO:
READ!  Conklin’s “Picturesque Arizona.”
The Most Thoroughly Descriptive Book on Arizona, in Existence.
INDIANS!  FRONTIER LIFE!  ANCIENT RUINS!  SCENERY!  AND THE RICH SILVER MINING INTERESTS.
PRICE $2.00.
CONTINENT STEREOSCOPIC CO.    60 NASSAU ST., N. Y., PUBLISHERS.

Historical context

By the late 1870s and 1880s the stereograph trade was consolidating in the hands of large eastern publishers who bought, copied and reissued negatives from many sources. Views of Chinese life in the West continued to sell throughout the period of the anti-Chinese campaigns in California.

What is not known

• No location beyond “in California” is stated on the object.
• Date inferred from publisher and mount style; the negative may be considerably earlier than the card.
• The original photographer is not named on the object.