Under a Painted Sky

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses racism and suicide.

The year 1849, when this novel takes place, was a key moment in American social and historical history. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803—the United States’ acquisition of the territory of Louisiana—and the Land Act of 1820—which made public land available to purchase—had opened up vast amounts of new territory for immigrants and pioneers who were interested in moving West and obtaining new farmland. The beaver fur trade was beginning to die down, leaving adventurers and fortune seekers looking for their next opportunity. This came in 1848, when gold was discovered in California. The Gold Rush of 1849 led up to 30,000 men, women, and children to join the pioneers on the Oregon/California trail that year alone (“The Forty Niners”. The Library of Congress, n.d.). An estimated 300-500,000 people crossed by land between the years 1841 and 1884 in a journey that could take up to six months (“Basic Facts About the Oregon Trail.” National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, n.d.). As many as one in 10 emigrants died along the trail (“Life and Death on the Oregon Trail.” Oregon-California Trails Association, n.d.), primarily of disease but also of gun accidents, acts of nature, animal stampedes, murder, and suicide.

While many emigrants traveling on the Oregon Trail (whether pioneers or Argonauts, as the gold miners were called) were from Europe, three minoritized racial or ethnic groups were well-represented, as Under a Painted Sky explores. The first, exemplified by Annamae and her brother, were African Americans. While she and Isaac were enslaved, achieved self-liberation from their enslavers, and left for the free territories west of Missouri, many African Americans who joined the Westward Expansion were not enslaved at birth. Peety is a representative of the second group as a Mexican person from Texas. Texas until 1835 was part of Mexico, but the white settler population tried to secede, resulting in a war that ended in 1845 when Texas became part of the United States. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo gave Mexican people there the right to become US citizens (Margaret E. Montoya. “Latinos and the Law.” National Park Service, n.d.), but this did not end the discrimination that they experienced. Chinese people were the third largest population to join the Westward Expansion. Many were part of the building of the Transcontinental Railroad starting in 1864, while others arrived earlier during the Gold Rush (1848-1855). Most Chinese emigrants arrived by ship, but some, like Samantha, made the overland journey from the East Coast. Samantha speaks of there being only one other Chinese family in New York when she lived there. By 1850, the number of Chinese Americans on the US Census was 4,018 and grew to almost 35,000 a decade later (“Chinese-Americans 1785-: Demographics.” Southern Connecticut State University, n.d.).

Overt and systematic racism was inflicted on all three populations, including on the trail, but this novel focuses on the experience of Chinese and African American individuals. Chinese Americans were subjected to ethnically based taxes and were often denied access to housing and work. Because slavery still existed in the country, white people treated even Black Americans who were not enslaved with suspicion and upheld anti-Black racist views and policies. Those who had achieved self-liberation were still in danger of being returned to their enslavers. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had kept the “balance” of enslaving and free states by admitting Maine as a free state and Missouri as an enslaving state; it also mandated that land west of Missouri that had been part of the Louisiana Purchase remain free of slavery. The Compromise of 1850 strengthened the laws surrounding fugitive enslaved people, which required enslaved people who were caught in free territories or states to be returned to their enslaver. How Samantha (Sammy) and Annamae (Andy) negotiate their racial and ethnic identities as well as their gender are key themes in Under a Painted Sky.

The Chinese community experienced significant discrimination during the period in which the novel is set. The first documented cases occurred around the period of this novel, which was the first time that groups of Chinese people were amassing in the United States, either as workers on the Transcontinental Railroad or as miners in the California Gold Rush. While most Chinese people arrived by boat to the West Coast, some did come to the East Coast and then travel overland like Samantha in the novel. Laws were enacted that specifically targeted the Chinese population, such as the Anti-Coolie Act of 1862 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Other acts targeted Chinese women expressly, such as the Page Act of 1875, which stereotyped women of the community as sex workers.