The Frontiersman

This exhibit looks at the Pacific Northwest, especially the Puget Sound country, and asks, what kind of Euro-American settlers came here? Why did they come? Were their motives similar to those who settled in the trans-Missouri West? Why did the Pacific Coast develop as a basically urban society, when the West was rural? Did settlers here think of themselves as being on a frontier? When they thought of the West, did they actually look east of the Cascades and the Sierras, rather than at themselves? Did Puget Sound country settlers make use of the icons of the frontier story: the log cabin and the covered wagon, the intrepid pioneers who carved a living from the wilderness, the virtues of self-reliance, the dangers of Indians and the forces of Nature? The following is one such story of the hardened men and women who forged ahead into the wilderness and made a place for themselves. Their life however, was full of hardships and not without the shedding of blood.