# History of Oregon (Bancroft)/Volume 1/Chapter 1

HISTORY OF OREGON.
CHAPTER I.
OREGON IN 1834.
The Northwest Coast and the Oregon Territory—Physical Features—Mountain Ranges and Rivers—The Imperious Columbia—Distribution of Vegetation—Climate—Sunshine and Rain—Post-plantings of Civilization—Fort Vancouver—Its Lord Paramount—The Garden—Hospitality—Money, Morality, and Religion—Fort George—Fort Nisqually—Forts Langley, Umpqua, and Walla Walla—Okanagan and Colville—Forts Hall and Boisé—Fort William and Wapato Island—The French–Canadian Settlement—Missionaries, Traders, Farmers, Horse-dealers, Scientists, and Fur-hunters as Empire-builders—Origin of the Term Oregon.
The Oregon Territory, when first the term came into use, embraced the same somewhat undefined region which in these Pacific States histories I have denominated the Northwest Coast; namely, the lands lying between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, and extending northward indefinitely from the forty-second parallel of latitude. Later the name Oregon was applied to a narrower area.
In surface and climate it is varied; in resources limitless, though its possibilities are little known. There is grand and beautiful scenery in every portion of it; some wild and rugged, some treeless and lonely; altogether a magnificent stretch of primeval wilderness. It is divided longitudinally by the Cascade Mountains, one with the Snowy Range of California ​and Nevada, and so called from the turmoil of the Columbia in passing through them; while the eastern portion is cut transversely by the Blue Mountains—in popular parlance blue, from the contrast of their violet shadows with the tawny plain. Another and lower range rims the seaboard from Lower California and along the Oregon frontage to the Russian possessions; the high spurs thrown out by the Coast and Cascade ranges separate the valleys thus formed in southern Oregon by barriers as insurmountable as those in Greece.
Besides mountains and rivers there are forests, not spread over broad areas of level surface as they were back of the English Plantations; beneficent nature has for the good of civilized man confined them to the mountain sides and to the low lands along the streams. On the mountains different species of pine, fir, and spruce prevail, while near the streams grow deciduous trees, oak, maple, ash, alder, cotton-wood, and willow. This distribution of forest and prairie gives a charming diversity to the landscape in the western portion of the territory, from California northward; and singularly attractive is the valley of the Willamette with its infinite variety of forms, the richness of verdure, and the frequent small rivers with their fertile and wooded borders.
In western Oregon there is scarcely a spot, and few places in the eastern part, where there is not visible some lofty snow-clad peak of the Cascade Range, standing as sentinel of the centuries, and forming a landmark and guide. In many places three or five of these glistening heights may be seen at once. Hardly less striking are the purpled summits of the continuous range, silvered with snow in spring and autumn, and glowing during the afternoons of summer under a rosy violet mist. Eastern Oregon seems less prolific of natural beauties than the country west of the Cascade Range, where the Columbia River provides not only uninterrupted navigation from the sea to the ​heart of the mountains, but constitutes in itself a continuous panorama of rare views, to which minds even of the least ideality soon become attached. As the eastern foothills sink to plain, the forest disappears, only a few scattering pines remaining in the vicinity of the Dalles; by the bars and on sandy margins of the river grow willows and low shrubs, while above them rise high rounded bluffs, bald and monotonous, yet not without picturesque effect. Beyond these the country rolls off in broken plains, covered in spring by a delicate verdure bright with flowers, later wearing a russet hue that early gave it the name of desert. Yet even through this eastern part there is much to please the eye in the softly flowing outlines of the ever-changing scene, in the calm blue which canopies the imperious Columbia raging at its rocky obstructions, and in the deep cañons that channel the inflowing rivers from the south. A hundred miles from the mountains there are smaller streams with open valleys, occupied as grazing lands by native horse-owners, the Umatillas, Cayuses, Walla Wallas, and Nez Percés.
Yet farther east, beyond the Umatilla and Walla Walla countries, is the Snake or Lewis River region, in the eyes of those who visit it as worthless as it is wild and lonely. Its waterless deserts, severely hot in summer and cold in winter, inspire the overland tourist with dread; and many a trapper and voyageur meets his death from want in crossing them. Yet fertile spots are found, pleasant little valleys where the climate is delightful, and, so far as appears, the earth fruitful. North of the Snake River the whole region is unexplored except as traversed by fur-hunters; indeed, away at the base of the Rocky Mountains is a large and diversified tract, a terra incognita to the world at large. And for many years to come this portion of the Oregon Territory offers few attractions to agriculturists. On the other hand, all the western portion of Oregon, especially the ​Willamette Valley and the Puget Sound region, has been favorably spoken of by successive explorers, until its spreading fame agitates the question of ownership. Little is yet known of agricultural and mineral resources, but its mild and equable climate, affecting as it does the quality and value of furs, and being in itself so peculiar considering the latitude, is better understood. The winters of western Oregon are so mild that little ice forms; but they are wet, and cloudy of sky. The rains begin about mid-autumn and continue with greater or less constancy till May, after which fleeting showers occur until the June rise of the Columbia begins to decline. This excessive moisture comes in a measure from the Japan current, and is more immediately owing to the south-west winds of autumn and winter, driving inland the evaporations of ocean, which being arrested by the Cascade Range are precipitated on its seaward sides. Hence the peculiarities of the Oregon climate; the mountains wall the moisture from their eastern slopes, rendering that region arid. The dense growth of the western forests are of those trees that live on the moisture of the atmosphere, but do not like it about their roots. The evergreens of Oregon, the firs especially, refuse to grow on land that is subject to overflow, and their foliage protects the roots from rain. Spruce, yew, hemlock, and cedar grow on lower lands than firs and pines. It may seem anomalous that trees which avoid water should thrive in a so-called moist climate, and also that, while the climate is so wet, Oregon's atmosphere is remarkably dry, as evidenced by the fact that wet articles exposed to the air, but protected, from the rain, dry quickly even in the rainy season. Observing this, the early Oregonians call their ordinary rains 'mists,' and maintain that they do not wet people; and by a further stretch of imagination their descendants may fancy themselves not affected by the December and January mists.
But even if the winters are unpleasantly rainy, the ​summers compensate. By the first of July the clouds which clothe the prairies in waving grass and beds of flowers have passed away, and a clear sun ushers in each long delightful day, which begins in a clear twilight two hours after midnight, and ends only in another lingering twilight, softer though not more beautiful than the first. Often the temperature of the dry summer season falls to sixty or fifty-seven degrees Fahrenheit; seldom it exceeds seventy-two or seventy-six, though occasionally rising for a brief period to ninety or one hundred; yet whatever the heat of meridian, by four o'clock in the afternoon it begins to abate, leaving the evening so pleasantly cool that the bed requires a blanket—so comfortably cool that the settlers acquire a love for sleep that becomes characteristic, and is sometimes mentioned to their discredit. About four months of dry weather, with little or no rainfall, constitutes the summer of western Oregon, during which the grass becomes yellow and the earth powdered. Grain ripens and is gathered in August. September is seeding time, experience early teaching that it is better to have the wheat in the ground over winter, even if it must be pastured down, than trust the chance of late spring sowing.
The food resources native to western Oregon are fish, game, and berries. The Indians use a root resembling the potato, which they call wapato, found in abundance on Wapato Island, and also in some shallow lakes or overflowed prairie land. In wild fruit the country is prolific; but none are as fine as the same kinds in the middle states of the continent. Elk, bear, and deer are plentiful, but owing to the difficulty of pursuit through the dense undergrowth of the mountain forests, the chase is laborious. There is an abundance of water-fowl, conspicuous among which are brant, geese of several species, cranes, mallard, canvas-back, and summer duck, blue-winged and green-winged teal, snipe, golden and killdee plover, and other wading birds, some of which are not ​palatable. Of game-birds found in woods there are also plenty; grouse, quails, pheasants, and wood-doves inhabit the thickets of young firs, and the groves of oak and fir that skirt the older and darker forest. Singing birds which make their homes in trees are rare. The only really musical bird of Oregon is the meadowlark, which carols to the passer-by of the happiness he finds in his humble life near the ground.
The streams are well stocked with fish—the brooks with trout, and the rivers with salmon of two or three species. The most palatable and largest of these, the salmo quinnat, has been one of the chief articles of food for twenty years, and constituted a staple in the Hudson's Bay Company's supplies; in fact, the company's servants received dried salmon and nothing else when other articles were scarce.
Such were the natural conditions of life in Oregon in 1834. European civilization, however, had already driven in its stakes here and there about the wilderness preparatory to its overthrow. For some time past the country had been dominated exclusively by fur-traders from Canada and Great Britain; now people from the United States begin to come and settle. Ownership becomes a moot question; the territory is held by the United States and Great Britain under treaty of joint occupancy. Although in the History of the Northwest Coast I have given full descriptions of the fur-traders' forts and incipient settlements, I deem it advisable to review them here, so that the reader may have the picture fresh in his mind at the opening of this part of my history.
The most important post and place in all the Oregon Territory was Fort Vancouver, the Hudson's Bay Company's headquarters. It was situated upon a beautiful sloping plain, on the north bank of the Columbia, about six miles above the mouth of the Multnomah River, as the Willamette below the falls was still called, and opposite the centre of the ​Willamette Valley, at a point where the Columbia is broad and much divided by low, woody islands which add diversity to a prospect embracing every element of grandeur and grace, from glistening snow-peaks to the reflections of leaning shrubbery, whose flowers of white or red are mirrored in the calm surface of this most majestic of rivers.
The fort was not formidable in appearance. It consisted of a strong stockade about twenty feet high, without bastions, embracing an area of two hundred and fifty by one hundred and fifty yards. Within this enclosure, around three sides, were ranged the dwellings and offices of the gentlemen in the company's service. In the centre, facing the main entrance or great gate, was the residence of Doctor John McLoughlin, the governor by courtesy of the Hudson's Bay Company in Oregon, a French Canadian structure, painted white, with piazza and flower beds in front, and grapevines trained along a rude trellis. The steps leading to the hall of the governor's house were of horseshoe form, and between the two flights stood a twenty-four-pound cannon, mounted on a ship's carriage, and on either side of this were two mortar guns, all with shot piled orderly about them, but otherwise looking innocent enough in their peaceful resting-places. There were no galleries around the walls for sentries, nor loop-holes for small-arms, no appearances, in fact, indicating a dangerous neighborhood. Near the centre of the enclosure rose the company's flag-staff, and everything about the place was orderly, neat, and business-like. The magazine, warehouses, store and shops were all contained within the palisades, and during the hours appointed for labor every man attended to his duties, whether as trader, clerk, smith, baker, or tailor.
A bell large enough for a country church was supported by three stout poles about twenty feet high, covered with a little pointed roof to keep off the rain. This brazen monitor rang out at five o'clock in the ​morning, rousing the furriers, mechanics, and farmers to their tasks. At eight it announced breakfast; at nine work again; at twelve, dinner; at one, work; at six, suspension of labor, and supper. Saturday's work ended at five in the afternoon, at which time the physician of the establishment served to the men their week's rations, consisting in winter of eight gallons of potatoes and eight salt salmon, and in summer of pease and tallow; no bread or meat being allowed, except occasionally. The Indian servants of the Indian wives hunted and fished for additional supplies. Nor was this unremitting industry unnecessary. The management of the Hudson's Bay Company required its posts to be self-supporting. The extent of territory they traded over was immense, and the number of their forts increased the demand for such articles as could be produced only in favorable localities. For instance, at Fort Vancouver the demand for axes and hatchets for the trappers and Indians required fifty of them to be made daily. In addition to the manufacture of these, the smiths had plenty to do in repairing farming tools and milling machinery, and making the various articles required by a community of several hundred people. The carpenter, the turner, and the tailor were equally busy; two or three men were constantly employed making bread for the fort people and sea-biscuit for the coasting vessels. The furs had to be beaten once a week to drive out moths and dust. The clerks had not only to keep accounts and copy letters, but keep a journal of every day's affairs. Among so many persons, some were sure to be in the hospital, and on these the best medical care was bestowed. Though so far from the world as to seem removed from the worlds wants, Fort Vancouver was no place for the indulgence of poetic idleness.
And if within the fort this industry was necessary, it was none the less so without, where a farm of about seven hundred acres had been brought under ​cultivation, on which was raised abundance of grain and vegetables, requiring extensive storehouses. Large bands of cattle and sheep were kept, the latter improved by careful breeding until they yielded twelve-pound fleeces. From the few English apple seeds, elsewhere mentioned, had sprung trees which, though young, were so crowded with fruit as to need propping, and from the peach sprouts brought from Juan Fernandez Island had grown large trees that were bearing their first fruit. Indeed, the garden at Fort Vancouver rejoiced in a scientific overseer by the name of Bruce, who, on visiting England with McLoughlin, would see nothing in the duke of Devonshire's garden so pleasing to him as his Fort Vancouver plants, yet was careful to abstract as many of the Chiswick improvements as his mind could carry. Even then, and before, Bruce cultivated strawberries, figs, and lemons, the first with great success, the other two with the fruitless efforts that alone could be expected in the northern temperate zone; ornamental trees and flowers also received his fostering care.
On the farm was a flouring mill and thrashing machine, worked by oxen or horses in the Arcadian way, yet sufficient for the wants of all. A few miles above the fort, on a little stream falling into the Columbia, stood a saw-mill, cutting lumber enough during the year to supply not only the fort, but to load one or two vessels for the Hawaiian Islands.
Between the fort and the river, on the smooth sloping plain, lay a village consisting of thirty or forty log houses, ranged along a single street, and occupied by the servants of the company, Canadians, half-breeds, and Hawaiians, with a few from the Orkney Islands. In every house an Indian woman presided as mistress, and the street swarmed with children of mixed blood. Nothing offensive met the eye; everywhere cleanliness and decorum prevailed.
When a visitor came to Fort Vancouver—and the fort was seldom without its guest even in 1834—he ​would, if a person of consideration, be met at the boat-landing by the presiding officer, McLoughlin, a tall, large, commanding figure of benevolent mien, who courteously made him welcome to every comfort and convenience, as well as to his own genial society and that of his associates. Entering by one of the smaller gates at either side of the principal entrance, he was escorted to the doctor's own residence, and assigned plain but comfortable quarters; for it was not in empty show that the hospitality of Fort Vancouver consisted, but in its thorough home-like features, its plenty, and its frank and cordial intercourse. The visitors were all of the sterner sex, no white ladies having yet set foot within these precincts.
It was a rule of the company that the Indian wives and offspring of the officers should live in the seclusion of their own apartments, which left the officers' mess-room to themselves and their guests; and while no more time than necessary was consumed at table, the good cheer and the enlightened conversation of educated gentlemen threw over the entertainment a luxury and refinement all the more enjoyable after the rude experiences of a journey across the continent or a long voyage by sea. After the substantial dinner, concluded with a temperate glass of wine or spirits, the company withdrew for half an hour to the 'bachelors hall', to indulge in a pipe, and discuss with animation the topics of the time. When the officers and clerks returned to business, the guest might choose between the library and out-door attractions. A book, a boat, and a horse were always at his command. The sabbath was observed with the decorum of settled society. The service of the established church was read with impressiveness by Doctor McLoughlin himself, and listened to with reverence by the gentlemen and servants of the company. Respect for religion was inculcated both by precept and example. Observing that during his ten years' residence in the country many young children were coming forward in the ​village and within the walls of the fort, McLoughlin secured the services of an American as teacher, one Solomon Smith, left objectless by the failure of Wyeth's expedition; and the school thus organized, the first in Oregon, was a good one, wherein were taught the English branches, singing, deportment, and morality. It was the heart and brain of the Oregon Territory, though there were other places pulsating in response to the efforts at Fort Vancouver.
The most western establishment was Fort George, the Astoria of 1811–14. It no longer deserved to be called a fort, the defences of every description having disappeared, while at a little distance from the old stockade, now in ruins, was one principal building of hewn boards, surrounded with a number of Indian huts. Only about four acres were under cultivation, and only one white man, the trader in charge, resided there. It was maintained more as a point of observation than as a post affording commercial advantages.
A place of more importance was Fort Nisqually, situated on a little tributary of the river of that name, and less than a mile from the waters of Puget Sound. It consisted of a stockade about two hundred feet square, guarded by bastions well armed, enclosing a dozen small dwellings and the magazine and warehouses of the company. The situation was unsurpassed, on an open plain, yet convenient to exhaustless forests of good timber, within a short distance of navigable waters, and with the grand Mount Rainier in full view. The fort had only been established about one year, at this time. Away to the north, on rivers draining the valleys of British Columbia, were several trading posts, Fort Langley and the rest, owing allegiance to the Oregon governor, but not requiring mention in this connection.
The only other post of the Hudson's Bay Company, in what is now Oregon, was situated near the confluence of Elk Creek with the Umpqua River, two hundred miles south of the Columbia, and occupying ​a fine position among the hills of that beautiful country. It was but a small place, with a twenty-acre farm attached, under the charge of a French trader. The neat dwellings and other buildings were surrounded by the usual palisade, with bastions at the corners, for the Indians in this quarter were more savage than those in the vicinity of the Columbia.
About two hundred miles east of Fort Vancouver, on the east bank of the Columbia, near where it makes its great bend to the west, and at the mouth of the ​Walla Walla River, was a fort of that name. This establishment was also a stockade, and being in the country of warlike savages, there were two bastions, with an inner gallery, and other defences strongly constructed of drift-logs which had been brought from the mountains and heaped ashore at this place by the June freshets. Little agricultural land being found in the vicinity, and no timber, Fort Walla Walla was without the attractions of Fort Vancouver, but it ranked nevertheless as a place of importance, being the principal trading post between California and Stuart Lake, and accessible by water from Fort Vancouver. It was on the way from the great fur-hunting region about the head-waters of the Snake River and its tributaries, and the first resting-place the overland traveller met after leaving the Missouri River. There was always a genial and generous officer stationed at Fort Walla Walla, on whose head many a weary pilgrim called down blessings for favors received. Horses were plentiful, and a few cattle were kept there, but no grain was raised. The little garden spot by the river furnished vegetables, and those of an excellent quality. The climate was usually delightful, the only discomfort being the strong summer winds, which drove about with violence the dust, and sand, and gravel, so that it was deemed impossible to cultivate trees or shrubbery; hence the situation appeared without any beauty except that derived from a cloudless sky, and the near neighborhood of the picturesque cliffs of the Columbia and Walla Walla rivers.
One hundred and thirty-eight miles north from Fort Walla Walla lay Fort Okanagan, at the mouth of the Okanagan River, like the others a stockade, in charge of a gentlemanly officer. Other trading posts were located at favorable points on the Kootenais River, on the Spokane, on Lake Pend d'Oreille, and on the Flathead River, besides several north of the fiftieth parallel. But the post of the greatest ​importance next to Fort Vancouver was Fort Colville, situated om the Columbia River, one hundred miles northeast of Fort Okanagan, though much farther by the windings of the river. In the midst of a good agricultural country, with a fine climate, good fishing, and other advantages, it was the central supply post for all the other forts in the region of the north Columbia. Established shortly after Fort Vancouver, with its allotment of cattle, consisting of two cows and a bull, it had now like Fort Vancouver its lowing herds, furnishing beef, butter, and milk. It had, besides bands of fine horses and other stock, and a grist-mill for the large yield of grain. On the well-cultivated farm grew also excellent vegetables in abundance.
Such a convenience as a saw-mill did not exist in all the upper country, notwithstanding the number of posts, hence there could be little architectural display or furniture except of the rudest kind. Bedsteads and chairs were luxuries not to be thought of; bunks and stools were made from split logs, with a hatchet. Yet, since those who called at Fort Colville had travelled many hundred miles with only a blanket for a bed, the good fare here afforded made the place to them a Canaan.
Two forts had this year been established in the territory east of the Blue Mountains drained by Snake River. The first was Fort Hall, erected by an American, Nathaniel J. Wyeth, on this river, at its junction with the Portneuf; the second was erected by the Hudson's Bay Company, on the same river, a mile below the mouth of the Boise, and called Fort Boise.
The American, Wyeth, this being his second adventure in these parts, who had thus recently built, stocked, and manned Fort Hall, went on to the lower Columbia River that same autumn to meet a vessel, the brig May Dacre, of Boston, laden with goods from the United States, as the eastern seaboard of the great republic was then designated by western adventurers, and at the time of which I write he was ​engaged in building a fort and trading post on Wapato Island, which he called Fort William. With him came others, of whom I shall have occasion to speak in another place. While the work was being advanced, the men in Wyeth's service were living in temporary huts; pigs, chickens, goats, and sheep were running about in the vicinity; the May Dacre was moored to the bank, and a prospective rival of Fort Vancouver was already well under way. Mr Wyeth's adventures are given at length in The Northwest Coast, this volume beginning with an account of settlers from the United States promising permanence.
Nor was Fort William the only settlement in Oregon exclusive of the Hudson's Bay Company's forts. Thomas McKay, one of the race of Alexander McKay of the Astor expedition, and one of the company's most celebrated leaders, occupied a farm on the Multnomah opposite the lower end of Wapato Island. And there were other farms from fifty to a hundred miles south of this. The servants of the company were hired for a term of years, and were free at its expiration. But as they had been obliged to receive their pay in kind, for which they had not always use, and had seldom saved their earnings, if they wished to retire they must live not far from Fort Vancouver, and continue as the company's dependents, raising wheat, in exchange for which they received such indispensable articles as their condition of life demanded.
There were of this class, commonly called the French Canadians, a dozen or more families, most of them settled on a beautiful and fertile prairie about forty miles south of the Columbia, in the Valley Willamette. They lived in log houses, with large fireplaces, after the manner of pioneers of other countries; had considerable land under cultivation; owned horses of the native stock, not remarkable for beauty, but tough and fleet; and had the use of such cattle as the ​fur company chose to lend them. Numerous half-breed children played about their doors; they had no cares of church or state; no aspirations beyond a comfortable subsistence, which was theirs; and being on good terms with their only neighbors, the natives, they passed their lives in peaceful monotony. At the falls of the Willamette were the log houses which had been built by McLoughlin in connection with his mill-works there, and which were occupied occasionally by the company's servants, some improvements being still in progress at that place.
In addition to the French Canadians were a number of Americans who had come to the country with Wyeth's first expedition, and had also made settlements in the same neighborhood, on the east side of the Willamette River. In all the American territory west of the Blue Mountains there were about thirty-five white men, including the party at Fort William, who had not belonged to the Hudson's Bay Company, but were there with the intention to settle permanently.
Another element was this year introduced into the early society of Oregon. Since the fallen condition of the race left no spot of earth untainted, it followed that missionaries were needed to look after the spiritual interests of the natives of this western Eden. Missionaries were there in the persons of two brothers, named Lee, assisted by certain laymen, who, after having been received with the usual hospitality at Fort Vancouver, were busy erecting a dwelling and making other improvements at the place selected for their station, a little to the south of the French Canadian settlement in the Willamette Valley.
Besides the missionary family, there were at Fort Vancouver two gentlemen from the United States, who were travelling in the interests of science, Messrs Townsend and Nuttall, naturalists, after whom and by whom so many of our western plants were named; so that it cannot be said of Oregon that her earliest ​society was not good. After the failure of the Astor adventure, and previous to 1834, few persons had visited the Columbia River except those in some way connected with the fur-traders. Wyeth's first company of twelve, including himself, was the only party of the kind and number to enter Oregon. Two years previous, David Douglas, a Scotch botanist, had visited the territory and had spent some time roaming over its mountains; and rarely had the river been entered by a foreign or American vessel.
Another constituent of early Oregon society appears at this juncture, and if not so respectable as the fur magnates; so religious as the missionaries, so learned as the scientists, or so order-loving as the French Canadians, united with the small American element it became a power in the land. It made its appearance in the form of ten persons coming with a band of horses from California, and led by Hall J. Kelley, who once figured on paper as the would-be founder of a new Pacific empire.
East of the Blue Range, and in and about the Rocky Mountains, were American trappers and traders, who from their wandering and precarious mode of life could not be accurately numbered, but were in all probably ten or twelve hundred, to whom were opposed equal numbers owing allegiance to the Hudson's Bay Company. These were at that time hardly to be spoken of as component parts of any Oregon community, but some in time added themselves to those who had come from the United States.
Thus has been outlined a picture of the Oregon Territory in 1834, at which time this History of Oregon begins.
The Name Oregon.
As a rule, the aboriginals of America have no name for their rivers, and mountains, and lakes. It is not necessary they should have; they can live by but one river at one time, and that to them is 'the river.' Or they may apply to it, as to other natural objects, general, local, or descriptive terms; it is common for the town, country, river, and tribe to be designated by the name of the chief, which name changing, changes all the rest. According to Blanchet in Historical Magazine, ii. 335, the lower Chinooks called the Columbia yakaitl-wimakl, 'great river,' purely a general and descriptive term, and no name at all. Chief Factor Tolmie, of the Hudson's Bay Company, writes: 'Indians have names only for particular localities, and not for rivers. The white people gave the name Walamet to the whole Wallamet valley and river.' When Clarke, of the Lewis and Clarke expedition, visited the coast about Tillamook Head, he understood the Indians to say that they procured wapato roots by trading with the Indians over on the Shocatilcum or Columbia River. There can be no doubt of Clarke's misapprehension of the meaning of his informant, for the word was never heard of afterward, and it certainly bears no resemblance to the one whose origin we are seeking. With reference to this case I made special inquiry of an intelligent chief of one of the most intelligent tribes of the region of the upper Columbia, the Nez Percés, living on one of its tributaries, whether it was possible for that stream ever to have had a distinctive appellation by which it was known to any peoples upon it, or about it, or about the head-waters of the Mississippi, or Missouri, or any other stream; and he assured me, what I knew before, that it was not possible. It is very certain that the word Oregon does not belong to any of the several dialects of the territory drained by the Columbia River. In looking for traces of it among those of the country which was travelled over by Carver, in which the r sound is wanting, words must be looked for with the cognate l or other consonant. In the Iroquois language the word gwegon, meaning 'all,' is closely related to 'great,' as in kwan and kowanea of the Oneida and Cayuga dialects. It is to be noted here that the Iroquois travelled far and wide with the fur-traders. In the Algonquin tongue ouni-gam, according to Mackenzie, signifies 'portage;' while again in Iroquois, according to Schoolcraft, ti-ar-o-ga means 'a place of water rocks,' ti being 'water,' oga 'a place,' and or an abbreviation of tar, 'rock.' Gan, in Algonquin, Knisteneaux, Ojibwa, Snake, and other Indian tongues, is a common ending. In Algonquin, gan signifies 'lake,' being usually, however, combined with other words, as in Sagayigan, the Knisten​Knisteneaux as well as Algonquin form. The terminal syllable in the different dialects is variously pronounced gan, gun, and gon. In the Shoshone language occur two words bearing some relation, if not a very near one, to the subject. O-gwa, says Stuart in his Montana, means 'river,' and Oo-rook-un 'under,' 'on the bottom; ' and a word of a similar sound in Algonquin has a similar meaning. Schoolcraft mentions that o is a common prefix to the names of various parts of the body. Besides these various analogous sounds and meanings in several of the native languages, we have in the Oregon territory one river with the prefix o and the terminal gan—the Okanagan. After all this research we arrive at nothing nearer than that the word gan relates in several dialects to water in some form, and might possibly be used to signify a river, any river, but not necessarily the Columbia.
A popular theory, and one frequently advanced as new, concerning the origin of the word, is that the first European discoverers called the Columbia River, and country adjacent, Oregon, from the abundance of origanum, or wild marjoram, a plant possessing some medicinal virtues. This conjecture is open to several objections, the first that the plant mentioned grows a long distance from the coast, the only portion of the country visited by the early navigators; nor is the presence of it very conspicuous anywhere. Mengarini, a writer in the New York Ethnological Journal, i., 1871, advances the idea that the word comes from huracan, the Spanish for hurricane, founded on the fact that at some seasons of the year strong winds prevail on the Columbia River. The Spaniards derived their word 'huracan' from a native American word found among the people of the central parts; 'hurakan' is the name of a Quiché god, meaning the tempest. The English hurricane and the French ouragan are forms of the same word; but as the French had little to do with the earliest history of the Northwest Coast, the origin of the name has never been ascribed to them.
Of all the conjectures hazarded by writers from time to time, the one that suggests a Spanish origin from orejon, meaning 'a pull of the ear,' but for this purpose often interpreted 'long ear' or 'lop ear,' seems to have been most popular, though not supported by facts or probabilities. It has been often repeated, with not so much as a qualifying doubt, that the Spaniards travelling up the northern coast met a tribe of Indians with ears of extreme length, weighed down by heavy ornaments, and from this circumstance the Spaniards called them 'Long-ears,' and the country La Tierra de los Orejons, which became corrupted into Oregon by Englishmen and Americans. Others assert that while the derivation is correct it was not properly applied by these first-named writers, but that it signifies the country of lop-eared rabbits, this animal abounding there as well as in California. So popular became this theory in the mining times of 1848–9 that the Oregonians went by the name of 'Lop-ears' among the Californian miners. Indeed, I suspect this opportunity to ridicule their obtruding neighbors, proving too good to be lost, really first gave currency to the idea. From jest it grew to earnest; soberer-minded people then began to look for a more distant origin. On investigation it does not appear that any tribe upon the Oregon coast was ever ​more addicted to ear ornamentation than is common to all savage nations, or that they wore heavier ornaments. Neither is Oregon inhabited by lop-eared rabbits in a degree to distinguish it from some other countries.
Dates must not be disregarded as we look for proof or disproof of the current theories concerning the word. That it is not of early Spanish origin is established by the fact that it does not occur in the Spanish voyages, or on the Spanish maps. The Spaniards never had a name for the Columbia River, unless it be San Roque, which they applied in 1775 on one of their maps,
without being sure that any river flowed there. On their subsequent maps in 1791–2, after the river had been visited, it was put down as Rio de la Columbia. It is clear, then, that the name Oregon had not been applied to the country by any navigator up to that time, nor for a long time afterward. The word does not occur in Lewis and Clarke's journal, though it is found in Jefferson's instructions to Lewis, but not with reference to the river. It is not in any work published in the United States or England previous to the year 1811, the first year of American settlement, with one exception; that exception is the book of travels by Carver first mentioned, and which was published in London in 1778. It comes in thus: 'From the intelligence I gained from the Naudowessie Indians, among whom I arrived on the 7th of December, ​and whose language I perfectly acquired during a residence of seven months; and also from the accounts I afterward obtained from the Assinipoils, who speak the same tongue, being a revolted band of the Naudowessies; and from the Killistinoes, neighbours of the Assinipoils, who speak the Chipéway language, and inhabit the heads of the River Bourbon;—I say, from these nations, together with my own observations, I have learned that the four most capital rivers on the Continent of North America, viz., the St Lawrence, the Mississippi, the River Bourbon, and the Oregon, or the River of the West, have their sources in the same neighborhood. The waters of the three former are within thirty miles of each other; the latter, however, is rather farther west.
There is a happy audacity in Carver's statements, whether or not he intended to deceive, common to discoverers and geographers of that day. On his map he has the Heads of the Origan put down in latitude 47°, longitude 97°, and in the immediate vicinity of the head-waters of the upper Mississippi. Meantime, and doubtless while his map was being engraved, he received reports of the discoveries and movements of the Russians in the Pacific, who had been active during the years intervening between 1766 and 1778, the latter being the date of publication of Carver's book in London. On a map of 1768 by Jefferys the name River of the West 'according to the Russian maps' is shown. In the very year of the publication of Carver's narrative Cook was making his famous voyage along the Northwest Coast, and a general interest was felt among the maritime powers as to the results of any expedition of discovery. Enough had come to Carver's ears to make him place in the text of his book, though it was too much trouble to do so on the map, the sources of the Origan 'rather farther west,' and to add to his imaginary stream the secondary name of River of the West.
His assertion that four of the greatest rivers of the continent rose within thirty miles of each other, though pointing toward truth, was purely speculative. It was the fashion in those days to array speculation in positive forms. Also when he said, 'This shows that these parts are the highest lands in North America,' he meant those lands where he was, about the head of the Mississippi; therefore, if any such river as Origan existed, it rose there, in that neighborhood. The partial discovery of the Russians, and other rumors, led him to identify it with the River of the West; and the discovery made subsequently that there is a point on the continent where three great rivers head near together gave a weight to the former supposition which it did not merit.
The first American writer, after Carver, to make use of the word Oregon seems to have been the poet Bryant, in 1817. Struck with the poetical images suggested to his youthful mind by reading Carver's narrative, and knowing just enough of the country, from the reports of ship-masters and rumors of the hasty government expedition of 1804–6, to fire his imagination, he seized upon the word that fitted best his metre, and in his Thanatopsis made that word immortal. The popularity of Bryant's verse both at home and abroad fixed it in the public mind. Its adoption as the name of the territory drained by the River Oregon I am inclined to ascribe to the man who claims it, Hall ​J. Kelley, the evidence being in his favor, and no adverse claimant appearing. As stated in his History of the Settlement of Oregon, he was the first to make that application familiar to the public mind, while previous to his writings and correspondence the country was known as the 'Northwest Territory,' 'Columbia River,' or 'River Oregon.' About the time that Kelley was laboring to raise a company for Oregon, and importuning Congress and the cabinet members for aid, there are frequent allusions to the subject in Niles' Register, xl. 407; xli. 285; and xlii. 82 and 388. He, too, was looking
for its origin, and says: 'Oregon, the Indian name of this river, was traced by me to a large river called Orjon in Chinese Tartary, whose latitude corresponds with that of Oregon in America. The word Killamucks, the name of the tribe a little south of the outlet of the Oregon, was also traced to a people called Kilmuchs, who anciently lived near the mouth of the Orjon in Asia.' This coincidence, however, does not account for the manner in which Carver obtained it; for he did not obtain it upon the shores of the Pacific, but about the head-waters of the Mississippi. Kelley, in his anxiety to prove his assertions, states, without other evidence than a reference to the 'Marine Archives of Madrid,' that Cuadra, a Spanish captain in the service of the viceroy of Mexico in 1792, and who in that year was at Nootka with Captain Vancouver of the British exploring squadron, and captains Gray and Ingraham of the American trading fleet in the Pacific, 'called this river Oregon.' The reference to a manuscript in the archives of Madrid must have been for ​display, since neither Kelley nor his readers could have had access to it without journeying across the Atlantic, and it is extremely doubtful if he had ever seen anything like it; though he may have believed, in the confused state of his intellect, that such a fact had been communicated to him.
In another place he remarks: 'After surveying the mouth of the Columbia I supposed the word Orejon to be of Portuguese derivation—Orejon, a fort. It seemed an appropriate name; the entrance of the river being well fortified by nature.' He also refers to the fact that Humboldt speaks of 'le mot Indian Origan,' and says, 'Humboldt was a particular observer and correct writer, and would not have called this word Indian without good authority.' But this is a statement as disingenuous as the first. In referring to Gray's
discovery of the Columbia Paver in 1792, Humboldt adds a note wherein he mentions a doubt thrown by Malte-Brun upon the identity of the Columbia with the Tacoutché-Tessé, or Orégan of Mackenzie, which illustrates how far great men may sometimes wander from the truth. Mackenzie in 1793, after the discovery and naming of the Columbia, having come overland from Canada, discovered a river, the Fraser, which he hoped and believed was the Columbia and which in his narrative he calls by that name, alternately using 'Tacoutche Tesse' and 'Great River' in his book; and having 'Tacoutche Tesse, or Columbia River,' engraved on his map. But that Mackenzie calls any river the Origan, or Oregon, is not true.
Humboldt's criticism on an unknown geographer, however, furnishes a key to the manner in which a merely speculative idea became perpetuated through a mistake in map-engraving, when he goes on to say that he does not know whether the Origan enters into the lake placed in 39° to 41° north latitude, or pierces the mountain chain to enter some little bay between Bodega and Cape Orford; but that he objects to the attempt of a geographer ordinarily learned and prudent, to identify Orégan with Origen, a name which the above-mentioned geographer erroneously believes to have been placed on the map of Antonio Alzate, Geog. Math. et Physique et Politic, tom. xv. 116–17; and he further explains that Alzate had placed the words 'cuyo origen se ignora' near the junction of the Gila and the Colorado, and that the words being separated by the engraver, the geographer whom he is criticising, not under​understanding the Spanish language, and seeing the word Origen, and probably having read Carver's book, jumps to the conclusion that this is the Origan, and so represents it, to which Humboldt very properly takes exception, in the language so disingenuously quoted by Kelley. He has confounded the Spanish word Origen with ' le mot Indien Origan. ' But Humboldt calls it an Indian word because he has been so told by Carver and those who copied him; hence his mistake; the Indian word resembling it in the countries explored by Humboldt being, as already mentioned, 'huracan.' On a map contained in Cooke's Universal Geography, printed in London, without date, but from the names upon it not existing before Vancouver's surveys, we may infer the time of its publication, the Columbia is represented as rising near
the Mississippi, and running nearly due west to the Pacific Ocean; it is called River of the West near its mouth, and River Oregon where it rises. In a similar work by John Payne, New York, 1799, the River of the West is made to debouch into the strait of Juan de Fuca, while the name Oregon appears on the head, which is far east of the head of the Missouri. Both are evidently borrowed from Carver.
Greenhow thinks the word was invented by Carver. He says: 'On leaving the river, Gray gave it the name of his ship, the Columbia, which it still bears; though attempts are made to fix upon it that of Oregon, on the strength of accounts which Carver pretended to have collected, in 1766, among the Indians of the upper Mississippi, respecting a River Oregon, rising near Lake Superior, and emptying into the Strait of Anian.'
Thus have I given in detail all that is known concerning the name and the naming of Oregon, from which it appears clear to my mind that the word came from Carver through Bryant and Kelley. How Carver obtained it—whether with him it was pure fiction, vagary, caprice, or the embodiment of a fancied sound—we shall never know. That any natives of America ever employed the word for any purpose there is no evidence. Out of some Indian word or words, or parts of words, perhaps, Carver made a name for that yet unseen river, flowing into that mystical and mythical strait which had been the dream of discoverers for over two hundred years, and for which they had ​not ceased to look when his book was published. Therefore the summing of the evidence would read—Oregon, invented by Carver, made famous by Bryant, and fastened upon the Columbia River territory, first by Kelley, through his memorials to Congress and numerous published writings, begun as early as 1817; and secondly, by other English and American authors, who adopted it from the three sources here given.
The authorities consulted on this subject are, Carver's Travels, 16; Schoolcraft's Arch., ii. 37, 490–1, 495; Id., v. 708; Mackenzie's Voyages, 369; Humboldt's Essai Pol., i. 14, 342–4; Malte-Brun, Précis Géog., vi. 314; Greenhow's Or. and Cal., 142–5; Brasseur de Bourbourg, Popol Vuh., 8; Twiss' Oregon Question, 15–17; Ethnog. Jour., vi. 1871; Kelley's Settlements of Oregon, 88; Ross' Adventures, 5; Historical Magazine, i. 246–328; Davidson's Coast Pilot, 126, 154; Strong's Hist. Oregon, MS., 23; U.S. Govt. Doc, 25th Cong., 3d Sess., H. Rept., no. 101, 6–7; Pajaro Times, May 6, 1865; Brown's Willamette Valley, MS., 11–12; Benicia Tribune, Dec. 13, 1873; Grovers Pub. Life, MS., 15–19; Trans. Oregon Pioneer Assoc, 1875, 67; American Register for 1808, 138; Blagdon's Modern Geographer, 63–5, 392; Howard Quarterly, i. 70; California Farmer, Aug. 7, 1874; Portland Bulletin, Aug. 10, 1872; Eugene City Guard, Aug. 20, 1874; Pac. R. R. Report, ii. 18; Nouvelles An. des Voy., xiv. 53; Benton's Debates, viii. 188; Sturgis Oregon, 8; Burton's City of the Saints, 210; Cath. Almanac, in Smet's Missions, 15–16; Robertson's Right and Title to Oregon, 179; Salem Farmer, Aug. 10, 1872; Bigland's World, v. 510; Murphy's Oregon Dir., 1873, 30; San Francisco Bulletin, Sept. 19 and 24, 1863; Portland Oregonian, Sept. 15, 1863.