Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/599

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HISTORIANS
551

10, 1862. He received his early education in the public schools and was graduated from Amherst College in 1885. That institution in 1930 and the University of Oregon in 1919 conferred honorary degrees upon him. He has been actively engaged in investment banking, doing a tremendous amount of research as an avocation and building up one of the largest private libraries of Pacific Northwest material in the country. His interest has been particularly in the sources of Oregon history pertaining to the periods of discovery, exploration and the fur trade. In addition to a large number of historical articles, he is author of the following separate publications: The Evolution of a Lament, 1908; Peter Skene Ogden: Fur Trader, 1910; David Thompson, Pathfinder, and the Columbia River, 1911; The Earliest Travelers on the Oregon Trail, 1912; The Fur Trade in the Columbia River Basin Prior to 1811, 1915; The Dalles-Celilo Portage; Its History and Influence, 1915; David Thompson and Beginnings in Idaho, 1920; The Strange Case of Jonathan Carver and the Name Oregon, 1920; The Origin of the Name Oregon, 1921; "David Thompson, Astronomer and Geographer", a chapter in Agnes C. Laut's The Blazed Trail of the Old Frontier, 1926; In the Land of the Kootenai, 1926; "Doctor" Robert Newell, Mountain Man, 1927; Steptoe Butte and Steptoe Battle-Field, 1927; Camels in the Inland Empire, 1929; Sir George Simpson's Place in the History of the "Old Oregon Country", 1929; Voyages of the Jenny to Oregon, 1792-94, with F. W. Howay, 1929; Spokane House, 1930; The Chinook Wind, 1932; The Murder of Peu-Peu-Mox-Mox, 1934; Richard ("Captain Johnny") Grant, 1935.

The Mysterious Oregon

The subject of these remarks is the name "Oregon", the ultimate source and meaning of which seem destined to remain more or less a mystery.... In his book Carver says the name "Oregon" was communicated to him by the Indians during his travels, but it has been found that in slightly different form it was contained in the instructions given to these men by Rogers.... The career of Rogers offers interesting details, but these remarks are concerned only with his opportunities to obtain information about a river flowing into the Pacific and called, he said, by the Indians, the Ouragon.... The name Ouragon as a geographic designation is distinctly obscure. It does not appear on any map, as far as yet known. Opinions as to how Major Robert Rogers ob-