The New Frontier

Brian Plonka

Spokesman-Review

The land between the Rockies and the Cascades was one of the last places where the American immigrant's dream of 'The West' could be played out. In the first half of this century, people came from 'used up', places in the east looking for a new life in the Pacific Inland Northwest, carrying with the Thomas Jefferson's vision that immigrants would occupy and change the land. To them, their settling would help 'finish' God's work. However, when they tried to finish the Northwest they ran into a principal that is older than Jefferson's agrarian democracy, the law of unintended consequences. Today, we still live with the consequences of the pioneers' view of the land they came to. They left us a legacy of mines, farms, settlements and an attitude towards the land that we are just beginning to question. A salmon completes the fourth leg of obstacles and cruises through river mile 307 at the McNary Dam fish-viewing room on the Columbia River. For centuries the salmon have navigated these waters to their spawning grounds; the journey remains one of danger and uncertainty. 'White man's damns mean no Indian's salmon.' George Red Hawk, chief of Cayuse Indians during the building of Grand Coulee Dam.

Brian Plonka, "The New Frontier ," in POYi Archive, Item #30357, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/30357 (accessed November 23, 2024).