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THE EARLY EXPLORATIONS AND THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME OF THE OREGON COUNTRY

BY WILLIAM H. GALVANI

I. THE EARLY EXPLORATIONS

It is certain that long before the voyages of Captains Gray and Vancouver they (the Spaniards) knew at least a part of the course of that (the Columbia) River which was designated in their maps under the name of Oregon. Gabriel Franchere's Narrative of the Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811-14, Page II 3, note.*

It is an undisputed historic fact that our earliest explorers and settlers, long before the keen contest for supremacy began between England and Spain, were Spaniards. It is likewise a fact that for some strange and unaccountable reasons the Spanish government, until the middle of the Eighteenth cen- tury, carefully avoided the use of the name America in their histories and official documents in not one of which can the word be found. It is furthermore as certain and historically fully accepted that the declining power of Spain directed its active colonizing efforts towards the West Coast of North America; and, whether anyone is inclined to ques- tion the early voyages of the Portuguese navigator, Ca- brillo, in the Spanish service, who discovered Cape Men- docino in 1542, 1 or those of the Greek pilot Apostolos Valerianus of Cephalonia, commonly known as Juan de Fuca, who, in 1592, is supposed to have approached the straits now bearing his name 2, the voyages of Sebastian Vizcaino up to the 43rd parallel as early as 1603 are certainly unquestionable ; that based largely on the result of his explorations and actual surveys, as recorded in his journals, he recommended certain places for settlement and naval stations; that for some rea- sons the Spanish Government deliberately concealed the


 * French Edition published in Montreal in 1819, English translation in 1854.

1 Professor Geo. Davidson in his "An Examination of Some of the Early Voyages on the Northwest Coast of America from 1539 to 1603," identified with practical certainty some seventy points mentioned by the diary of Juan Rodriquez Cabrillo along the Coast, and placing the limit of the voyage at Rogue River, Oregon, though Ferrelo, Chief pilot to Cabrillo, gives the latitude 44 degrees. See his Introduction to Spanish Explorations in the Southwest 1542-1706, Edited by H. E. Bolton, New York, Charles Scribners' Sons, 1916.

2 Though no record of Juan de Fuca's voyage has been found in the Mexican archives, the unsupported testimony of Michael Lock (an English Merchant who published the story in 1619, "the narrative was accepted by Raleigh and Purchas, and the latitude of the supposed channel and de Fuca's description of it corre- spond with surprising accuracy to the Strait that now bears his romantic name." K. Coman in Economic Beginnings of the Far West. Vol. I p. 8. New York, The MacMillan Co., 1912.