The True Story of Ah Jake

This chapter examines how the issues of language, labor, and justice intertwined in the murder trial of Ah Jake, a Chinese gold miner in nineteenth-century California. The focus is on the transcript of the Sierra County court's hearing in October 1887, on whether to bring the charge of murder against Ah Jake for the killing of another miner, Wah Chuck. Much of the hearing took place in pidgin, or Chinglish. The chapter first tells the story of Ah Jake and how he came to stand trial for murder before discussing the cross-cultural relations between Anglo, Mexican, and Chinese workers in the gold fields of nineteenth-century California. It suggests that the traces of history that can be gleaned from Ah Jake's trial and pardon, when considered within the frame of transpacific circulations of people, language, and organization, produce new knowledge about social relations in the late-nineteenth-century California interior.