Desert 

Chinese and Native peoples in the American West had a close and complicated relationship. Records show more than twenty incidents in which Native Americans attacked and killed Chinese miners in the California gold country in the 1850s. When the railroad entered central Nevada, local Shoshones reportedly took potshots at the Chinese, and Charles Crocker also circulated a story about efforts by Piutes to scare Railroad Chinese from working. He said that Native people had told the Chinese about enormous reptiles or human monsters that hid in the desert and were so large they could devour a human in a single bite. Frightened by the stories springing from the Nevada desert, a thousand Chinese supposedly deserted the line and had to be wooed back by the company. Crocker seemed to relish the story as it simultaneously highlighted Chinese ignorance and gullibility as well as Indian maliciousness.

 

--- Chang, Gordon H., Ghosts of Gold Mountain, 2019, p. 141-142.