Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 12.djvu/369

 PRESERVATION OF INDIAN NAMES ' y Walter H. Abbott The purpose of this Society as I understand it is the preser- vation of a record of past events. Such records in Oregon should cover a history of its discovery, exploration, settlement, and development. Due to the newspapers and various other publications this record is very fully kept as to present day happenings; hence a society such as this will find its chief field in the period before such means of daily records were established, and along the lines of happenings or enterprises which are not chronicled in the above mediums. In every Western state the period, open to historical record, is very short. One or two generations measure the beginning of real settlement even though the discovery may have reached back a century or more. What is usually regarded as history, is, therefore, within the memory of many now living, and the collection of much of the historical material is easy and more valuable because of the fullness of information obtainable. It is to be hoped that this Society will take advantage of the present decade to leave the fullest possible records for succeed- ing generations so that the future may have full information from which it can draw its deductions from the experience of the past. When, however, the Oregon historian reaches the limit of white occupation, exploration or discovery, he does not have to step off into botany, natural history or geology for all further information. Oregon was already teeming with human life. Man had been here for centuries. Who will tell us how long? The record which we now have is but the dust on the surface as compared with the events which have happened, and which possibly cry out at us in signs and marks yet to be deciphered. i Paper read before the Linn County Historical Society.