You have Died of Dysentery

Just as school children have been learning since 1974 The Oregon Trail was a tough slog.

Disease was by far the most common cause of death, cholera being the most frequent culprit. Sanitary conditions on the trail were quite atrocious, and contact contamination was responsible for more than half of all deaths on the trail.

The westward expansion of Americans from the east came at the expense of many native people o the region. Native groups trying to defend their territory accounted for around a quarter of deaths on the Oregon Trail. Freezing, starving, bandits, and trampling accounted for most of the rest.

With no driver licenses, passports, nor photo IDs of any kind, some pioneers arrived at their destinations dead, or close enough to it that they could not identify themselves, and had no paperwork to confirm their identities. When this happened, frontier folks would do their best to bury them proper, no matter what they might be named.

This is the story of a headstone which simply reads “A Pioneer, 1852” Who they were, and whence they came lost to time, never discovered by the good people of Seattle who laid them to rest.

#graveoftheweek #walkingtour #cemetery #SeattleRenaissance