Above is a picture of a gravel bar south of the tributary confluence of the Pend d' Oreille River with the Columbia River.  Note that while the Columbia River can be seen flowing along through the trees in the picture's background, every rock has been turned.  This was done arduously by American prospectors of Chinese ethnicity seeking the fines which comprised the gold minerals to be found in the Colville Gold Fields of the mid-Nineteenth Century, a day-and-a-half journey north of Fort Colvile, Hudson's Bay Company.  Prospectors of Chinese descent oft-times would acquire a "worked out claim" from Euro-US Americans and through their patient toil, still find gold fines by turning over every rock.

  During the U.S. Civil War, the area correspondent to the Walla Walla (W.T.*) Union-Bulletin newspaper, John Hofstetter, the local  brewery master [who later became a founder of the town of Colville], reported that Sino-American prospectors out-numbered by 2:1 the Euro-US American prospectors on the upper Columbia River about there.  Their unique ethnic customer service needs such as laundry, house-keeping and Chinese cuisine-cooking created cash-flow in the local economy.  Also, by then, the local commercial retail supply interests of the Hudson's Bay Company had been moved north of the new international border into Canada.  But the territorial county's quarterly taxation (as they could not own land to be property-taxed) was enforced to pay for protection from their mistreatment by its Sheriff and his deputies.  This only served to discourage many of them to pursue livelihoods elsewhere [a likely candidate: transcontinental rail construction) and the local economy's cash flow "tanked" accordingly.