Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/20

4 We know that in their ages of residence in the sun shine and fog of the coast, along the swift-flowing rivers and in the verdant and blossoming valleys, the early tribes of Oregon developed an important literature, but of the literature itself we have only a very little and can never have more than a small part of what might have been ours if we had not waited too long. Most of it is gone forever with the old chiefs and squaws to eternal memaloose land.

To preserve it with any fullness, our efforts are tragically tardy, at least a hundred years overdue. If in the time of the explorers, fur traders, missionaries, or even the early pioneers, there had been a few men with the ethnological interest and technique of such scientists today, the literature of the primitive races of Oregon might well have filled volumes.

Writing in 1875 of this loss, Hubert Howe Bancroft said:

"Nor need we pause to look back through the dark vista of unwritten history, and speculate, who and what they are, nor for how many thousands of years they have been coming and going, counting the winters, the moons, and the sleeps; chasing the wild game, basking in the sunshine, pursuing and being pursued, killing and being killed. All knowledge regarding them lies buried in an eternity of the past, as all knowledge of their successors remains folded in an eternity of the future. We came upon them unawares, unbidden, and while we gazed they melted away."

S. A. Clarke, pioneer Oregon historian and writer, has explained in less figurative language how this happened and how it was allowed to happen:

The first comers were of the fur trade, exclusively, whether they came by sea in ships, or, if trappers and moun-