These, and the long list of the Here Unnamed, waged the warfare of beginnings, which required such large courage, independence, persistence, faith and uncompromising toil, as the velvet-shod aftercomers can scarcely conceive of.
Simultaneously with the early subjugation of the country, the political, educational, commercial and social initiatory movements were made of whose present development the people of Puget Sound may well be proud.
Since the organization of the Washington Pioneer Association in October, 1883, the old pioneers and their children have met year by year in the lavish month of June to recount their adventures, toils and privations, and enjoy the sympathy begotten of similar experiences, in the midst of modern ease and plenty.
A concourse of this kind in Seattle evoked the following words of appreciation:
“No organization, no matter what its nature might be, could afford the people of Seattle more gratification by holding its assemblage in their midst than is afforded them by the action of the Pioneers’ Association of Washington Territory in holding its annual gathering in this city. Unlike conventions and gatherings in which only a portion of the community is interested, the meeting of the pioneers is interesting to all. To some, of course, the event is of more importance than to others, but all have an interest in the Pioneers’ Association, all have a pride in the achievement of its members, and all can feel that they are the beneficiaries of the struggle and hardships of which the pioneers tell.
“The reminiscences of the pioneers from the history of the first life breathings of our commonwealth—of a commonwealth which, though in its infancy, is grand indeed, and which gives promise of attaining greatness in the full maturity of its powers of which those who laid the foundations of the state scarcely dreamed. The pioneers are the fathers of the commonwealth; their struggles and their hardships were the struggles and the hardships of a state coming into being. They cleared the forests, not for themselves alone, but for posterity and for all time. As they subdued a wild and rugged land and prepared it to sustain and support its share of the people of the earth, each blow of their ax was a blow destined to resound through all time, each furrow turned by their ploughshares that the earth might yield again and again to their children’s children so long as man shall inhabit the earth. No stroke of work done in the progress of that great labor was done in vain. None of the mighty energy was lost. Each tree that fell, fell never to rise. Each nail driven in a settler’s hut was a nail helping to bind together the fabric of the community. Each day’s labor was given to posterity more surely than if it had been sold for gold to be buried in the earth and brought forth by delighted searchers centuries hence.
“It is for this that we honor the pioneers. It is for this that we are proud and happy to have them meet among us. We are their heirs. Our inheritance is the fruit of their labor, the reward of their fortitude, the recompense of their hardships. The home of today, the center of comfort and contentment, the very soul of the state, could not have been but for the log cabins of forty years ago. The imposing edifice of learning, the complete system of education, could not have been but for the crude school house of the past. The churches and religious institutions of today are the result of the untiring and unselfish labors of the itinerant preacher who wandered back and forth, now painfully picking his way through the forest, now threading with his frail canoe the silver streams, now gliding over the calm waters of the Sound, ever laying broad and deep the true foundations of the grand civilization that was to be. The flourishing cities, the steel rails that bind us to the world, the stately steamers that, behemoth-like, journey to and fro in our waters,—these things could not be but for the rude straggling hamlets, the bridle path cut with infinite labor through the most impenetrable of forests, and the canoe which darted arrow-like through gloomy passages, over bright bays and up laughing waters.
“All honor to the pioneers—all honor and welcome. We say it who are their heirs, we whose homes are on the land which they reclaimed from the forests, we who till the fields that they first tilled, we whose pride and glory is the grand land-locked sea on which they gazed delighted so many years ago. Welcome to them, and may they come together again and again as the years pass away. When their eyes are dim with age and their hair is as white as the snows that cover the mountains they love, may they still see the land which they created the home of a great, proud people, a people loving the land they love, a people honoring and obeying the laws that they have honored and obeyed so long, a people honoring, glorying in, the flag which they bore over treeless plains, over lofty mountains, over raging torrents, through suffering and danger, always proudly, always confidently, always hopefully, until they planted it by the shore of the Western sea in the most beautiful of all lands. May each old settler, as he journeys year by year toward the shoreless sea, over whose waters he must journey away, feel that the flag which he carried so far and so bravely will wave forever in the soft southwestern breeze, which kisses his furrowed brow and toys with his silvery hair. May he feel, too, that the love of the people is with him, that they watch him, lovingly, tenderly, as he journeys down the pathway, and the story of his deeds is graven forever on their minds, and love and honor forever on their hearts.”
And so do I, a descendent of a long line of pioneers in America, reiterate, “Honor the Pioneers.”
MRS. LYDIA D. LOW
LYDIA C. LOW.