Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 21.djvu/331

 OREGON MEANING, ORIGIN AND APPLICATION 319

The Canadian Indians knew that Fathers Allouez, Hennepin, La Salle and Marquette had made tremendous efforts to find and did find and traveled with boats upon the Mississippi river, so when the Chippewas were asked by the French their name for this river replied, as corrupted into French, "Mee- shee See-pee", meaning "Mee-shee", Father, and "See-pee", water, or Father's Water, referring to the Jesuit Fathers and not to the then unknown fact of its being the largest river in the world. 2

The word "Oregon" is derived from a Shoshoni Indian ex- pression meaning, The River of the West, originating from the two Shoshoni words "Ogwa," River and "Pe-on," West, or "Ogwa Pe-on." The Sioux pronounced this word in the more euphonious manner in which we now hear it, a characteristic in which their tongue excels and the Shoshoni "Gwa" under- went, etymologically, a variation in the new language and became changed to "r," thus giving the sonorous word which Jonathan Carver, who first published the name to the English world, heard spoken by them during his visit with the Sioux nation. 3

In the word "Ogwa" the syllable "Og" means undulations and is the basis of such words as "river," "snake," "salmon," or anything having a wavy motion. The sound "Pah" means water. Therefore, a river is undulating water. "Pe-on" is contracted from the two syllables, "Pe-ah," big and "Pah," water or Big Water meaning the Pacific Ocean. Some strik- ing natural phenomenon determined the cardinal points for the Shoshonis. Thus, "Coona-nah," derived from "Coona," fire and "Nah," in the direction of, means North, referring to the Northern Lights; or "To-yah-nah" from "To-yah," mountain the East as the sun, in rising, comes from over the mountains ; or "You-aw-nah" from "You-ant" meaning warm, the South the direction of warmth especially of warm winds ; and "Pe-on-nah," West, the direction of the big water or ocean. Captain Clark stated that the Shoshonis of the Salmon River country when asked about their river said it flowed into

2 Upham's Minnesota Geographic Names, 4.

3 Boaz, Handbook of American Indian Languages, 875.