coolie, coulee

Coolie or coolie means an unskilled laborer or a gang laborer, most commonly used  in the United States to mean an immigrant from China --
His grandfather was a coolie who worked on the railroad; his story is very interesting.
She showed us an old photograph of an ancestor who came here as a coolie.

Coulee or coulee ( rhymes with coolie ) means a ravine or gulch --
At the bottom of the hill there's a coulee that's usually dry; you can walk across it.
The cattle wandered as far as the coulee, looking for water.

Now that you know that, you can say --
"He came here in 1890 as a coolie, and eventually owned land from here to the coulee."