Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 21.djvu/349



NAME OF THE OREGON COUNTRY 337

observed, "there is no present" that makes it so. That is why every subject had been handled, time and again, by everyone who thought of having a thought, or a capacity of transcribing and interpreting facts or fancies, into words and phrases. Hence, it is that history, or the romance of history, includes not only persons, events and places that had an actual exist- ence, but also detailed accounts of events that never happened, wonderful biographies of persons that never existed, and graphic descriptions of places that no geographer ever located, nor mortal eye had ever seen. We thus seem to know more of what we suppose had happened thousands of years ago than we do of what actually transpired but a few years ago, or, indeed, of what is going on right now, before our very eyes, so to speak.

It is my purpose to deal here with the derivation of a symbol or word a matter, it is true, not so important as that of an actual or tangible thing. That word is O R E G O N, and the fact that the subject, every now and then, receives some atten- tion from editors, statesmen, historians and even poets must be my apology for submitting the following observations :

Without going much into detail, I beg to remark here that the various explanations for the derivation of the name of Oregon have absolutely no foundation. Chief among these explanations are the "wild thyme" myth, an herb of unusual abundance found here by early explorers, but which herb has, with the advent of civilization, so mysteriously disappeared. Then comes the story of Jonathan Carver, 11 who, while among the Indians on the waters of the Upper Mississippi, in 1766-68, was informed by them that they heard of far-away tribes to the Westward, in a territory by the name of Oregon, which according to them meant the "great River of the West," 12 as if that, even assuming this to be absolutely correct, is sufficient of an explanation for the actual origin of that name.

Another solution is that offered by Junius Henri Brown,

11 Winsor, in his "Narrative and Critical History of America," Vol. 7, p. 555, gives credit to Carver for first using the name of Oregon.

12 "As to the name of Oregon, or the authority for its use, the traveller (Carver) is silent; and nothing has been learned from any other source, though

p. 145, New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1845.