Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/72

Rh 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