Scandinavians on the Pacific, Puget Sound — John Shaqi
Scandinavians on the Pacific, Puget SoundStine, Thomas Ostenson
History
Scandinavians on the Pacific, Puget Sound
Stine, Thomas Ostenson
Scandinavian Americans; Washington (State) -- Emigration and immigration
No class of people or nation deserves the title, cosmopolitan, better
than the Vikings. Their names mingle with the history of England,
France, Russia and Italy, and in the Western Hemisphere we find them all
over. To trace up the first Scandinavian that touched the shore of
Washington is difficult, if not impossible. No doubt but Scandinavians
made stoppings along the coast on their fishing expeditions to the north
before any white man had dreamt to pin his hopes to the North Pacific.
And it is probable, too, that some adventurous spirit of Viking blood
had been washed with American polish, and passed as a Yankee in the
Lewis and Clark expedition. It is safe to conjecture, however, that
some straggler from the sea-beaten shores of Scandinavia shared the
sufferings with the trappers of the Hudson Bay Company, or partook
of the hardships in John Jacob Astor's expeditions for the mouth of
Columbia river. These companies were made up of heterogeneous crews. The
mercurial French Canadian, the acute Yankee, the jolly Englishman, the
stern German, joined hands for the furfields, and it seems reasonable
that some hardy Scandinavian, too, was likely to abandon his fireside,
turn his back on civilization, and yield consent to a more romantic
life.
A motley combine known as the Russian Fur Company had established an
emporium on the Pacific coast, and a number of trading posts in
the interior, ere the close of the eighteenth century, and it is
authentically evidenced that Scandinavians and Finlanders constituted
the minor force of the regiment of trappers and navigators. Let it
suffice to say, however, that these brave adventurers regardless of
genealogical type did much to sow information in the Old World of the
evergreen land west of the Rocky; and suffer it to be known that the
probability is that some intrepid Scandinavian sacrificed his life in
search for peltry, and that his bones rest in peace beneath the green
turf in the Pacific forest. This brings us to the influx of permanent
settlers.
MRS. FREDERIC MEYER.--One of the first white women that breathed the air
of Pierce county was Mrs. Frederic Meyer, a Norwegian by birth. She left
her mother's hearth in Toten while a tender bud, fresh as a rose with
blooms of white and purple blushing on her cheeks. Few women are of
true romantic nature, their hearts, as a rule, are attached to social
affiliation around the fireside, but Mrs. Meyer figures as a typical
exception. Those that have known her well speak with kind tongues,
pronouncing her a model of her sex, chivalric in spirit, and brave, but
warm at heart. According to reliable information obtained in Tacoma, she
lit her feet on the green-trimmed shore, where the City of Destiny now
looms, forty odd years ago. She was married to an estimable German.
[Illustration: A SCENE OF PIONEER LIFE.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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