Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/57

Rh dead should never again return nor hold any communication with the living.

In concluding this chapter we cannot forbear to call the attention of our readers to the rare beauty of many of the native Indian names of localities. These names always have some significance, and ordinarily there is some such poetic or figurative conception involved in the name as plainly reveals the fact that these rude and unfortunate natives have the souls of poets beneath their savage exterior. It is truly lamentable that some of the sonorous and poetic native names have been thrust aside for the commonplace and oft-repeated names of Eastern or European localities or the still less attractive names of discoverers or their unimportant friends.

Think of using the names Salem and Portland for Chemeketa and Multnomah, the native names. Chemeketa means "Here we Rest," or, some say, the "Place of Peace," for it was the council ground of the Willamette Valley Indians. But the Methodist missionaries thought that it would have a more Biblical sound and conduce to the spiritual welfare of the natives to translate the word into its equivalent, Salem. So they spoiled the wild native beauty of the name for all time. Multnomah means "Down the Waters." But two Yankee sea captains, with a sad deficiency of poetry in them, tossed up a coin to decide whether to employ the name of Boston or Portland, the native town of each, and the latter won the toss.

Oregon has been more fortunate than Washington in its State name, for it has the unique name, stately and sonorous, which old Jonathan Carver first used for the River and which is one of the most distinctive