On April 1, 1852, Nicolas Delin (or Devin) (b. ca.

1817) begins construction of a water-powered sawmill

at the head of Commencement Bay in what will become Tacoma. By the end of the year, the mill will be
cutting lumber and selling it to local settlers and to the California market. This is the first Euro-American
settlement in Tacoma, but it will be abandoned in 1855.
The Olympia area was well established by 1853 thanks to the Hudson's Bay Company's nearby Fort Nisqually and Puget Sound
Agriculture Company, the early U.S. settlement at Tumwater, and Catholic missionary activity. The discovery of coal and a good
harbor boosted the pioneer economy and Olympia served as the terminus of the Cowlitz Trail, the northern extension of the
Oregon Trail, where settlers could transfer from foot and wagons to canoes and ships and spread outward along the shores of
Puget Sound. The town grew with its own economy as Washington grew as a state, in addition to serving as the seat of
government from 1853 to the present time.

George W. Bush (1790?-1863) was a key leader of the first group of American citizens to
settle north of the Columbia River in what is now Washington. Bush was a successful farmer
in Missouri, but as a free African American in a slave state, he faced increasing
discrimination and decided to move west. In 1844, Bush and his good friend Michael T.
Simmons (1814-1867), a white Irish American, led their families and three others over the
Oregon Trail. When they found that racial exclusion laws had preceded them and barred
Bush from settling south of the Columbia River, they settled on Puget Sound, becoming the
first Americans to do so. Bush established a successful farm near present day Olympia on
land that became known as Bush Prairie. He and his family were noted for their generosity
to new arrivals and for their friendship with the Nisqually Indians who lived nearby. Bush
continued modernizing and improving his farm until his death in 1863. Named George
Washington Bush in honor of the nation's first president, he has no known connection to
the family of the two later presidents who share with him the name George Bush.

On November 29, 1847, Cayuse tribal members attack white settlers and
missionaries at Waiilatpu in what will become known as the Whitman
Massacre. Thirteen whites are killed during three days of bloodshed, most of them on the first day;
another is believed to have drowned after escaping the initial attack.

Waiilatpu was a Christian mission on the Walla Walla River operated by Dr. Marcus Whitman
(1802-1847) and his wife Narcissa (Prentiss) Whitman (1808-1847). The mission served as an
important rest stop for immigrants on the Oregon Trail. The Cayuse may have acted in retaliation for
tribal members killed by whites, in an effort to stop increased white immigration into the Walla
Walla Valley, or most likely, out of the belief that Marcus Whitman was an evil shaman using
measles to kill people. The physician was unsuccessfully treating the Cayuse, who lacked immunity,
and measles was killing them but not the whites. The massacre led to the Cayuse War and will spur
the U.S. Congress to create Oregon Territory.