Toward the end of the Qing dynasty, Inner Mongolia became the main destination for bankrupt Chinese peasants from interior China. With the increase in numbers of Chinese immigrants, conflicts between Mongols and Chinese intensified as Chinese struggled for more benefits and Mongols tried to maintain their traditional social order. In 1891 a Chinese secret society called Jindandao massacred tens of thousands of Mongols in the mixed Mongol-Chinese regions of eastern Inner Mongolia. The survivors fled to the pastoral areas south of the Hingan mountains, propelling the agriculturalisation of these regions and the refiguration of the local societies. In China, this massacre has been appraised as an 'anti-imperialist, anti-feudal peasant uprising', disguising the nature of ethnic conflict between Mongols and Chinese. In the 1990s, however, Mongol victims of the 'Jindandao Incident' began to demand re-evaluation of the incident, thereby setting off a heated debate around the issue. Up to now, most studies of the 'Jindandao Incident' have relied on memorials prepared by Chinese county and prefectual magistrates, ignoring the memorials presented by Mongol victims. Based on new data published in the 1980s and fieldwork in recent years, this study intends to re-examine the incident and to discuss historical circumstances and the consequences of this massacre for social change in Inner Mongolia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.