Silver and Gold at the Big Ditch

My first journey into what was. An ancient Chinese curse goes…”May you get what you wish for”, I never fully understood what that phrase meant until now…

Day 6

This is my sixth day of traveling on this wooden ship towards my new destination. Although I was sick for the first 2 days, I find myself regaining the enthusiasm that originally started me on this ocean voyage. An enthusiasm that began weeks ago when the “Panama Man” arrived in my village. This strange man carried a message that spoke directly to me alone.

In the village, the whispers from those that viewed this spectacle grew to shouts. Who was this stranger that seemed to have it all?..A nice clean white linen suit with a new straw hat….money in his pocket. To the others, a catalyst for questions….for me, my destiny.

To collect new workers for the Panama Canal project after the French had abandoned their work after 10 years, men were sent out as walking “advertisements” to Barbados, West Indies in the Caribbean. They would be given the uniform of a white linen suit, straw panama hat, and a small sum of money to flash. A very effective recruiting tool for men wanting to improve their circumstance. Ships would carry the men, usually a 8 day journey, to Panama for labor on what was called the “Big Ditch”

Day 9

I have arrived at my new employer and all sense of eagerness is quickly dashed. After roll at the commissary of the U. S. Isthmian Canal Commission, I’m assigned on dynamite detail for a section of excavation known as the Culebra Cut. I cannot describe the horrors of this task. It is pointless to try to know the person to either side of you, because they may be gone the next hour. One person mentions the birds that fly in the air until I realize that it’s pieces of flesh that he speaks of.

More than 61 million pounds of dynamite would go into the construction of the canal. As the dynamite ships would arrive, they would be off loaded in fifty pound wooden boxes and carried away for storage in concrete sheds for future use. From the storage sheds, they would be carried by long lines of West Indian laborers to the site that needed blasting. Premature explosions were common, along with deaths caused by flying rock and landslides.

Day 12

My first paycheck for my labors. Since we make much lower wages than the American white workers, I quickly learn of the Silver and Gold system. White workers get paid in gold and workers such as I are paid in silver. Strange as this may seem, the difference is not just the metal used for payment of wages, but a “color” method of keeping the black laborers completely separate. We truly have become beasts of burden.



The system during the construction of the canal was completely segregated by the terms of Silver or Gold. The store to buy supplies had one entrance marked Silver and another with better supplies marked Gold. The food served is separated into food for the Silvers, barely meant for consumption, and food for the Golds. Housing is quite adequate for the Golds, cramped and shoddy for the Silvers with cloth bunk beds makeshift stacked 3 high, row after row. Slavery for the West Indies was abolished by the British by the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 but the conditions during the construction of the Panama Canal and the treatment of the “Silver People” made them into black slaves nonetheless, segregated from birth to the grave.

Day 16

Today is the day that I am driven into madness. An explosion causes a landslide of mud and rock that buries men by the hundreds. The dead ones that can be lifted out of the mud pit are loaded onto the death trains. The ones that cannot are left to their muddy graves. The trains run constantly, day in and day out, loading the dead and carrying them to a place known only as Monkey Hill. Not a word is spoken, just bodies stacked up like firewood for their final destination. Suddenly my journey ends….



During the construction of the Panama Canal, roughly 21,000 died during the French attempt and another 8000 died during the American completion. Railroad cars, known as Funerary cars, were used specifically for carrying the dead to Monkey Hill later known as Mt. Hope or Monte Esperanza Cemetery in Colon, Republic of Panama. This was historically the “Silver Roll” cemetery during the American construction era of the Panama Rail Road and the Panama Canal. It is located right next to Bethany Baptist Church, the rail road tracks entering the City of Colon just behind Rainbow City on the road to Margarita.



Later photograph of Mt. Hope cemetery

The Panama Canal was only made possible by more than 60,000 black West Indian laborers before, during, and after its construction period (1904–1914). My journey was but a brief taste of that hardship and accomplishment.

> Excellent Blog on the history of the Silver People

> Another site for further interest in the Silver People