People love a good story. That's probably why the life of Idaho's most famous Chinese woman, Polly Bemis, has been so richly embellished.
But Polly's true story needs no coloring to make it legend, said historical archaeologist Priscilla Wegars of Moscow, who has just been awarded two grants to dig into the lives of Polly and her husband, Charlie Bemis, and sift the facts from the fiction.It's accepted as fact that Polly was purchased by a Chinese saloonkeeper in Warren, that she later was won in a poker game by Bemis and that they fell in love while she nursed him back to health after he was shot in the head.
Ruth Lum McCann's fictional biography "A Thousand Pieces of Gold" and the 1991 movie of the same name offered that romanticized version of Polly's life. So have other books and articles.
"It just seems unnecessary to perpetuate this if it didn't happen," Wegars said. Polly's "real life was interesting enough . . . People initially are intrigued by her story and the legend, and once they get to know her, then they appreciate her for herself."
A $3,500 grant from the Idaho Humanities Council will finance a project titled "Polly Bemis Demythified." Her work will include collecting oral histories and an illustrated presentation of her findings. A children's book on Polly also is part of the plan.
The second grant of $5,000 from the University of Idaho's John Calhoun Memorial Fund will enable Wegars to explore "Charlie Bemis: Idaho's Most Significant Other."
In researching Bemis, Wegars said she hopes to learn more about Polly.
She probably was sold at age 19 by her parents in China and brought to America to be purchased as a concubine. Polly was never a prostitute.
She was feisty and independent and adapted well to the strange, rough land where there were few other women, much less Chinese women. She was both tough and cheerful, and became much-loved in central Idaho's Salmon River country.
Wegars is not sure where the myth of Polly as a "poker bride" originated. For most of her life, Polly didn't deny the story. But Wegars uncovered a 1933 Portland newspaper article in which Polly said it wasn't true.
Polly also said in another interview that there was no young, handsome Chinese man named Jim who brought her to Warren and with whom she fell in love. She actually made the journey with "an old Chinese man."
Wegars has other evidence that the poker bride story was made up or confused or borrowed from the story of an Indian woman named Molly, who apparently was won in a card game by a man she later married.
An 1880 census of Warren shows Polly living with Bemis but not married to him. She is listed as a widow. The man who purchased her in the first place apparently was out of the picture, but Wegars has not yet discovered his name.
"My guess is that he died or went back to China and never returned," she said.
The celebrated shooting of Charlie Bemis, after which Polly nursed him back to health, actually happened in 1890 - long after they were a couple.
Wegars found that information in a Sept. 25, 1890, article in the Lewiston Teller. The shooting happened during a dispute over a card game, the newspaper reported.
She has much digging left to do to uncover the complete story of Polly and Charlie. For instance, was "Lalu Nathoy" Polly's real name? And if so, why was she called Polly instead of the easy English version of her name, Lulu?
And what was Charlie's background? Wegars knows he came west from Connecticut with his father and that he found running a saloon easier than being a gold miner.
"If he owned a saloon, he might have been a gambler," she said.
Wegars hopes exploring property records in Idaho County will give her more clues.
As for the love story of Polly and Charlie, Wegars said she may never know the truth. They married on Aug. 13, 1894, not long after a Chinese exclusion law was passed that might have put Polly's U.S. residency in jeopardy.
"I hesitate to say it was an arrangement of convenience," Wegars said. "I think she was too independent to stay that long with someone she didn't care about."
Charlie Bemis died in 1922 at their remote cabin on the Salmon River. For the last four years of his life, he was bedridden and Polly again nursed him.
Asian immigrants have been Wegars' research specialty for many years. Her doctoral thesis at the University of Idaho was on the history of the Chinese in northern Idaho.
Historical archaeology can be "a really hard slog," Wegars said. But often enough there are a "few gold nuggets."
In her Bemis research, those nuggets have included a photograph of tiny Polly with a statuesque visitor that appeared in a 1933 edition of Field and Stream. The picture may help once and for all measure Polly's height, which has been described as somewhere between 4 and 5 feet.