Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/48

 42 Frederick V. Holman Washington Counties ; and on the west by Clatsop County and a small portion of Tillamook County. Its county seat is St. Helens. Multnomah County. Multnomah County was created December 22, 1854, by the Territorial Legislature. (Special Laws of 1854-5, page 29). It comprises a part of the eastern portion of Washington County and a part of the northern portion of Clackamas County. It is the smallest, but the most populous and wealthy County in Oregon. Its name is the Indian name of the Willamette River from the falls, at Oregon City, to its mouth. It was also the name of a tribe of Indians whose principal habitat was at the upper end of Wappatoo (now Sauvie's) Island, near the mouth of the Columbia River. Multnomah was not the name of a Chief nor of any one Indian, but it may have been used as a nick- name. In the "Original Journals" of Lewis and Clark the name of the tribe and of the lower Willamette is spelled Mulk- nomau, Vol. 3, page 198; Mult-no-mah and Multnomah, Vol. 4, pages 221, 233, 242, and Vol. 6, page 116; Volume 4, page 241, the name is spelled Multnomar. It is also spelled in sev- eral ways in early books on Oregon : Multnaba, by Franchere in his "Relation," page 84, under date of May 6, 181 1; Molt- noma, by Ross in his "Adventures," page 87 ; Multonomah, by Wyeth, in the "Journal" of his first expedition, page 178, under date of November 29, 1832 ; Multnomah, by Townsend, in his "Narrative," page 175 ; Multnomah, by Parker in his "Jour- nal," page 141. On the same page, under date of October 17, 1835, Parker writes of the island, which he calls Wappatoo [Sauvie's], and says : "It was upon this island the Multnomah Indians formerly resided, but they have become, as a tribe, extinct." The name is also spelled : Multonomah, by Peter H. Burnett, Appendix of George Wilkes' "History of Oregon," page 98 ; and Multinoma, in Palmer's "Journal," page 87. Sir George Simpson, Governor-in-Chief of the Hudson's Bay