86 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY zy 32( 1) ADRIAN PRAETZELLIS MARY PRAETZELLIS A Connecticut Merchant in Chinadom: A Play in One Act ABSTRACT By 1855 four of the five Chinese District Associations in California had offices and boardinghouses in Sacramento on I Street between Fifth and Sixth. Agents of these Chinese Associations nurtured important reciprocal relationshipswith Sacramento businessmen, including Josiah Gallup, a mer- chant from Connecticut. Gallup discovered his niche as a translator and middleman for the Chinese merchants of San Francisco and Sacramento. He helped them purchase real estate and supplies, transport miners and prostitutes zyxwvuts to the gold fields, and negotiate with City officials. This is the story of Joshua Gallup and how he helped the Chinese get started in Sacramento. Act 1 zyxwvutsr Dramatis Personae: THE ARCHAEOLOGIST, an earnest, late 20th-century social scientist. FIGURE 1. Josiah Gallup, 1826-1858. Connecticut-born, Gallup moved to Sacramento in 1849 where he acted as JOSIAH GALLUP, a Gold Rush-era merchant and lawyer (Figure 1). The Scene: commission agent, translator, legal representative, and labor broker for several Chinese District Associations and companies in their dealings with local businesses and A meeting at The zyxwvuts society for ~~~~~~~~~l and un- authorities. In letters to his fiancee, Gallup wrote of trans- porting Chinese immigrants from San Francisco to Sacra- mento where they would stay in boardinghouses until work derwater ArchaeologY corpus Christi Texas was found for them in the goldfields. "About 300 Chinamen Conference On (1997). A young woman stands at the podium. came up last night[and];he old dump is full. . ."(Gallup, She fiddles with her papers, coughs, and scans the audience in an appeal for quiet. The Dialogue: ARCHAEOLOGIST (stiffly and zyxwvu in a mono- tone): In December 1995, personnel from the Anthropological Studies Center at Sonoma State University undertook archaeological data recovery of a portion of Sacramento's historic Chinese District. This work was performed at the request 30 June 1854). Nearly 150 years later, archaeologists excavated the remains of "the old dump" and revealed a mixture of Chinese, American, and European artifacts that reflect both the milieu of the Gold Rush and Gallup's efforts as purchasing agent. (Courtesy of the California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento, CA.) of the U.S. General Services Administration in accordance with the mandates of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. Imple- menting a research design based on Historical Archaeology, 1998, 32(1):86-93. Permission to reprint required.