¹ Part of the research on which this article is based was financed by grants to Messrs. Lyman and Willmott by the Institute of Social and Economic Research and the President's Committee on Research, both of the University of British Columbia. The rules were originally translated by Mr. Ho, whose draft was then edited by Mr. Willmott and later by Dr. Lyman. The authors gratefully acknowledge assistance in the final revision by Miss Catherine L. Liu and Professor T'ung-tsu Ch'ü, both of the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, and by Mr. William S. Tong. Mr. Les Cooke, of the British Columbia Parks Service, kindly loaned the board to the University of British Columbia so that it could be photographed and studied. The book of codes, oaths, and rites of the Chih-kung T'ang, also found by Mr. Cooke, has been presented to the University of British Columbia Library through the courtesy of the British Columbia Parks Service.

The introductory statement has been prepared by Dr. Lyman.

² Police sergeant John J. Manion of the San Francisco Police Department turned over a typed manuscript entitled ‘Tongs and tong wars’ to police headquarters. A portion of this unpublished document is reprinted in Reynolds, C. N., ‘The Chinese tongs’, American Journal of Sociology, XL, 5, 1935, 612–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There is as yet no available history of Chinese society in the United States. Useful information can be found in Beck, Louis J., New York's Chinatown: an historical presentation of its people and places, New York, Bohemia Publishing Co., 1898Google Scholar ; Coolidge, Mary, Chinese immigration, New York, Henry Holt, 1909Google Scholar; Sandmeyer, Elmer, The anti-Chinese movement in California, Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1939Google Scholar; McLeod, Alexander, Pigtails and gold dust, Caldwell, Idaho, Caxton Printers, 1947Google Scholar; Lee, Rose Hum, The Chinese in the United States of America, Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 1960Google Scholar; Dillon, Richard H., The hatchet men: the story of the tong wars in San Francisco's Chinatown, New York, Coward-McCann, 1962Google Scholar; Kung, S. W., Chinese in American life: some aspects of their history, status, problems, and contributions, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1962Google Scholar. For a sociological analysis see Lyman, Stanford M., The structure of Chinese society in nineteenth century America, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1961Google Scholar.

³ ‘Letter of instructions to a highbinder or salaried soldier’, Exhibits attached to statement of Gardner, J. Endicott, Reports of the United States Industrial Commission …. Chinese and Japanese labor in the mountain and Pacific states, xv, Pt. iv, Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1901, 771Google Scholar.

⁴ Williams, B. Church, in the San Francisco Call, 9 01 1898Google Scholar; ‘Chinese masonry’, Canadian Craftsman, XXIV, 12, 1891, 366–7Google Scholar; Tandberg, E. A. Normann, ‘Chinese masonry vs.masonry in China’, Masonic Digest, IV, 12, 1925, 90Google Scholar; Jones, Carter Brooke, ‘Chinese masonry’, Masonic Tribune,I, 12, 1917, 1Google Scholar; , D., ‘Celestial masonry’, Trestle Board, XII, 10, 1898, 454–5Google Scholar; ‘Chinese celebrate’, Rossland Miner (British Columbia), 13 10 1903Google Scholar.

⁶ Culin, Stewart, ‘The I Hing or “Patriotic Rising”, a secret society among the Chinese in America’, Proceedings of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia for the years 1887–9, 3 11 1887, 51–7Google Scholar; ‘Chinese secret societies in the United States’, Journal of American Folk-Lore, III, 10, 1890, 191–200Google Scholar; ‘The gambling games of the Chinese in America’, Publications of the University of Pennsylvania, Series in Philology, Literature, and Archaeology, I, 4, 1891, 17 pp.Google Scholar; ‘Chinese games with dice and dominoes’, Report of the United States National Museum, Smithsonian Institute, 1893, 489–537.

⁶ Rossland Miner, 21 October 1897.

⁷ At the dedication of the ‘Gee Kong Tong’ building in Rossland, those present included the ‘local president’, the ‘Kootenay master’, and ‘the master of the Fraternity for British Columbia’, Rossland Miner, 27 October 1903.

⁸ Ormsby, Margaret, British Columbia, a history, Vancouver, Macmillan Co. of Canada, 1958, 303Google Scholar.

⁹ For the rural-urban distribution of the Chinese in nineteenth-century British Columbia see Pierre Lamoureaux, ‘Les premières années de l'immigration chinoise au Canada’, Revue Canadienne de Géographie, IX, 1, 1955, 9–28Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Ward, J. S. M. and Stirling, W. G., The Hung Society or the Society of Heaven and Earth, London, Baskerville Press, 1925–1926, 3 vols.Google Scholar; Wynne, Mervyn Llewelyn, Triad and Tabut: a survey of the origin and diffusion of Chinese and Mohammedan secret societies in the Malay Peninsula, A.D. 1800–1935, Singapore, Government Printing Office, 1941, xvii–lviiGoogle Scholar; Schlegel, Gustave, Thian tihwui, the Hung League or Heaven-Earth-League: a secret society with the Chinese in China and India, Batavia, Lange, 1866Google Scholar.

¹¹ Meadows, Thomas Taylor, The Chinese and their rebellions, London, Smith, Elder, 1856, 150–2Google Scholar; Stanton, William, The Triad Society or Heaven and Earth Association, Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 1900, 8–24Google Scholar.

¹² Comber, Leon, Chinese secret societies in Malaya: a survey of the Triad Society from 1800 to 1900, Locust Valley, N. Y., J. J. Augustin, 1959Google Scholar; Gullick, J. M., The story of early Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Donald Moore, 1956Google Scholar; Gullick, J. M., A history of Selangor, 1742–1957, Singapore,Eastern Universities Press, 1960, 41–90Google Scholar; Freedman, Maurice, ‘Immigrants and associations: Chinese in nineteenth-century Singapore’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, III, 1, 1960, 25–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ McLeod, , op. cit., 149–50Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Willmott, W. E., ‘Chinese communities in British Columbia towns’, unpublished MS.Google ScholarAccording to a recent study Sun Yat-sen ‘was a Triad official of long standing and is reported to have been a 426 “Fighter” official of the Kwok On Wui, as it was called in Cantonese, in Honolulu and Chicago; this society came under the general supervision of the Cantonese-named Chi Kung Tong, a mainly overseas section of the Triad Hung Mun’ (Morgan, W. P., Triad societies in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Government Press, 1960, 25)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Schlegel, , op. cit., xvii–xxviiiGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ The authors are indebted to Miss Liu for helpful comments on the preamble.

¹⁷ See Sprenkel, Sybille van der, Legal institutions in Manchu China (London School of Economics. Monographs on Social Anthropology, No. 24), London, Athlone Press, 1962, 80–111Google Scholar.

¹⁸ The calligrapher placed no title at the head of his work, but began immediately with the preamble.

¹⁹ Literally, ‘elder brother’. It is meant in this context as the executive officer of the society.

²⁰ Red and white are the customary colours used in connexion with the rites depassage in China; red for marriage, birth, or birthdays; white for death and funerals.

²¹ We have not been able to locate any town in nineteenth-century British Columbia for which this might be the transliteration. It may refer to the area of Barkerville, within the district termed Moose Heights (the term is no longer current except as the name of a small settlement north of Quesnel).

²² The Chung-i T'ang refers to the meeting-hall within the buildings of the Chih-kung T'ang.

²³ The Chih-kung T'ang considers itself a branch of the Hung-menSociety, another name for the Triad Society.