As part of the Butte-Silverbow Public Archives Brown Bag Lunch Series, this session “The War of the Woods: Chinese Wood Choppers and Unlikely Allies, Montana 1880-1900” focuses on new scholarship on the experiences of Chinese Montanans. This presentation examines tensions in wood harvesting around Butte, Montana in the early 1880s. Wood was crucial fuel for the residents’ warmth, but more so for the process of “heap roasting,” an early smelting technique used to process ore. Wood crews provided key labor for the city; however, when a Chinese crew took a contract to deliver 10,000 cords, some white workers objected. A mob of more than 200 angry woodsmen harassed the Chinese workers, threatening violence if they didn’t withdraw. This mob was stood down by a lone constable from Butte, who later formed a posse and arrested the mob’s ring leaders. Would a crime against non-citizen Chinese Montanans be prosecuted? Find out at this session, which features early environmental issues in Montana, labor rights, legal questions, and the pressures on Montana’s early Chinese community.