Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/75

24 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