Short History of Oregon Chapter 5

Chapter V.

Origin of the Name “Oregon.”-Captain Carver

The word “Oregon,” as a geographical expression, is older than any knowledge of the country. As to its origin there has been much historical inquiry, supplemented by conjecture; but after long attention to the subject and examination of all available sources of information, the only conclusion possible is that Oregon owes its name to Capt. Jonathan Carver.

Jonathan Carver was born in Connecticut in 1732, and served in the English colonial army throughout the French and Indian wars in the country of the Great Lakes. Leaving Boston in June, 1766, he journeyed westward, and was for several years an adventurous traveler in the region which the English, with colonial help, had wrested from the French. It is admitted by historians that Carver traveled as far as the head waters of the Mississippi, probably to the Lake Park region in Minnesota, where rise streams flowing into the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Red River of the North. Carver’s claim to extensive traveling west of the head waters of the Mississippi, covering a period of five months, is a very doubtful one, since his descriptions of the names, manners and customs of the Indian tribes of that region are but translations into English of the works of the earlier French explorers of the same section.

Shortly after his return to Boston in 1768 Carver endeavored to enlist the assistance of the colonial authorities in the publication of a book of his travels, and to obtain reimbursement, in part at least, of his expenses. But he could get no attention.

A few years later, when unusual interest was felt in England in the discovery of the Northwest passage, to find which the celebrated Captain Cook had been despatched on a voyage of exploration to the North Pacific Ocean, Carver was living in London, in much financial distress. Encouraged by the trend of public interest he again turned his attention to the preparation of a book of his travels, which was published in 1778, and was evidently compiled in a large measure from the narratives of the French explorers before alluded to, translated literally, in great part, into English. In this book, in a passage referring to the Nadowessie (now Sioux) Indians and other tribes inhabiting the region of the head waters of the Mississippi and Red River of the North, appears the first use of the term “Oregon” which has anywhere been discovered. Carver writes:

“From these nations, together with my own observations, I have learned that the four most capital rivers on the continent of North America, viz: the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, the River Bourbon [Red River of the North], and the Oregon, or River of the West, have their sources in the same neighborhood. The waters of the three former are within thirty miles of each other [this is practically correct, and this point, somewhere in Western Minnesota, is probably the limit of this westward journey]; the latter, however, is rather further west. This shows that these parts the highest lands in North America; and it is an instance not to be paralleled on the other three-quarters of the globe, that four rivers of such magnitude should take their rise together, and each, after running separate courses, discharge their waters into different oceans, at the distance of two thousand miles from their sources. For in their passage from this spot to the Bay of St. Lawrence, east; to the bay of Mexico, south; to Hudson’s Bay, north; and to the Bay at the Straits of Anian, west, each of these traverse upwards of two thousand miles.”

This has led to the erroneous bestowal upon Captain Carver of all credit for making known to the world the existence of the Columbia River, when the fact is that it was known long before his doubtful journey; and his reference to it, so far from being written upon original information, was but the republication of facts made known by the French explorers, already mentioned, many years before.

In the above-quoted statement Carver does not claim to have visited the head waters of the river Oregon, or even to know their exact location. He expressly observers that the derived his information chiefly “from these nations,” and it is possible that even from them it reached him through the medium of his French predecessors.

Carver’s authority for calling the River of the West “Oregon” has been a matter of much discussion. While it is now quite generally believed that the word owes its origin to Carver himself, or was thought by him to be the name of the stream from some unintelligible words spoken by the Indians in referring to the river, yet many theories are current, founded upon similarity of sound, but plausible only to those lacking information concerning the details of early explorations on the Pacific coast. The following is one of these theories, quite generally accepted, from the pen of Archbishop Blanchet, speaking of himself in the third person:-

“Jonathan Carver, an English captain in the wars by which Canada came into the possession of Great Britain, after the peace, left Boston, June 6, 1766, crossed the continent to the Pacific, and returned October, 1768. In relation to his travels, which were published in 1774, and republished in 1788, he is the first who makes use of the word ‘Oregon.’ The origin of that word has never been discovered in the country. The first Catholic missionaries, Father Demers, later Bishop of Vancouver Island, and Father Blanchet, later Bishop of Oregon City, arrived in Oregon in 1838. They traveled through it for many years, from south to north, from west to east, visiting and teaching the numerous tribes of Oregon, Washington Territory, and British possessions. But in all their various excursions among the Indians they never succeeded in finding the origin of the word ‘Oregon.’ Now it appears that what could not be found in Oregon has been discovered by Archbishop Blanchet in Bolivia, when he visited that country, Chile, and Peru in 1855 and 1857. The word ‘Oregon,’ in his opinion, most undoubtedly had its root in the Spanish word Oreja (ear), and came from the qualifying word Orejon (big ear). For it is probable that the Spaniards, who first discovered and visited the country, when they saw the Indians with big ears, enlarged by the lard of ornaments, were naturally inclined to call them Orejon (big ears). That nickname, first given to the Indians, became also the name of the country. This explains how Captain Carver got it and first made use of it. But the travelers, perhaps Carver himself, not knowing the Spanish language, nor the peculiar pronunciation of the j in Spanish, for facility’s sake would have written it and pronounced it Oregon, instead of Orejon, in changing j to g. Such, in all probability, must be the origin of the word ‘Oregon.’ It comes from the Spanish word Orejon.”

It is to be regretted that this truly clever explanation is not substantiated by facts. In 1768, when Carver’s journey was completed, Spanish explorers were not familiar enough with the coast line to be aware of even the existence of the Columbia River, and certainly had never had any communication with the native inhabitants of the section. The only expeditions that had been made had not passed beyond latitude 43° or 44°, and had not so much as attempted to land. No allusion is made to the natives of this unknown land in the record of any Spanish explorer previous to the date of Captain Carver’s journey, and the bishop’s supposition that the Spaniards, at an earlier date, had “discovered and visited this country”, but proves his unfamiliarity with the history of Spanish explorations on the Pacific coast. The assertion, in the same communication, that Carver “crossed the continent to the Pacific” is equally at variance with the facts. So far as ascertainable, the word “Oregon” was unknown to the Indians until after the country was visited by trappers, and the bishop himself states that in all their extensive travels among the natives tribes of Oregon, Washington Territory, and the British possessions, he and his missionary associates found no authority for the use of the word.

Equally without substantiation is the idea that “Oregon” was the Indian name of the Columbia River, for had it been, the early settlers in this region would have learned the name from the natives, instead of having to teach it to them.

The theory that early Spanish explorers bestowed the name because of the wild marjoram (Origanum) found along the Oregon coast is quickly dispelled in the light of the fact that the name “Oregon” had appeared in print before the Spaniards had set foot on the coast.

In an address delivered at an annual reunion of the Oregon Pioneer Association, the able and distinguished editor of the Portland “Oregonian,” Hon. Harvey W. Scott, an acknowledge authority on matters historical, said:-

“The name ‘Oregon’ came very slowly into notice. It was long after the publication of Carver’s book when it again made its appearance. The name seems not to have been known either to Capt. Vancouver or to Capt. Gray, since neither uses it in recording his search for the ‘River of the West.’ Capt. Gray, entering the river as a discoverer, called it, not the ‘Oregon,’ but the ‘Columbia,’ for this ship-a fact which shows that the name ‘Oregon’ was quite unknown at that time (1792). The name was not used by Lewis and Clark in the report of their travels. In John Jacob Astor’s petition to Congress, presented in 1812, setting forth his claim for national assistance for his undertaking, on the ground that his efforts to establish trade on the North Pacific coast under the sovereignty of the United States would redound to the public security and advantage, the name ‘Oregon’ is not used to designate or describe the country; nor is it used in the Act of Congress passed in response to Mr. Astor’s petition, by which the American Fur company was permitted to introduce into the territory in question goods suitable for the Indian trade. At this time, indeed, the name appears to have been quite unknown, and perhaps would have perished but for the poet William Cullen Bryant, who evidently had happened in his reading upon the volume of Carver’s travels. The word suited the sonorous movement and solemn majesty of his verse, and he embalmed it in ‘Thanatopsis,’ published in 1817. The journal of Lewis and Clark had just been published, and the description therein of the dissolitudes and ‘continuous woods’ touched Bryan’t poetic spirit and recalled the name he had seen in Carver’s book…Bryant’s poem, widely read, was among the instruments by which the name was brought into general notice.”

So far as the writer is able to ascertain, there is still an opening for a satisfactory explanation of the origin, beyond Captain Carver, of the name “Oregon”-in that State even a tenable theory will be warmly welcomed, and an untenable one not wholly neglected.