The slopes of Deadwood's "Boot Hill" hold the graves of famous and not-so-famous frontier figures. Here are the final resting places of Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane and Preacher Smith. Beyond is the Chinese section, where every grave lies open and empty. Were the people of Deadwood's once thriving Chinatown the victims of a mass grave robbery? Here's the real story:

    Nineteen century Chinese immigrants to the American West retained much of their oriental lifestyle. One vital custom for the pigtailed laundrymen and laborers of Deadwood's Chinatown involved reburial in the homeland. Thus arrangements were always made for the eventual removal of Deadwood's Chinese dead to the land of the ancestors.

    The Chinese initially buried their deceased on Boot Hill, known locally as Mount Moriah. After sufficient passage of time the bones were disinterred. Then each bone was individually wrapped in muslin and placed in a narrow, metal-lined box. The box was afterwards shipped to mainland China. A guarantee for this reburial was often written into the contracts which initially brought the Chinese to America. That is why today all of that remains of the Chinese plots on Mount Moriah are caved-in spots in the ground.

10/01/03