J. Kelley, the evidence being in his favor, and no adverse claimant appearing. As stated in his History of the Settlement of Oregon, he was the first to make that application familiar to the public mind, while previous to his writings and correspondence the country was known as the 'Northwest Territory,' 'Columbia River,' or 'River Oregon.' About the time that Kelley was laboring to raise a company for Oregon, and importuning Congress and the cabinet members for aid, there are frequent allusions to the subject in Niles' Register, xl. 407; xli. 285; and xlii. 82 and 388. He, too, was looking
for its origin, and says: 'Oregon, the Indian name of this river, was traced by me to a large river called Orjon in Chinese Tartary, whose latitude corresponds with that of Oregon in America. The word Killamucks, the name of the tribe a little south of the outlet of the Oregon, was also traced to a people called Kilmuchs, who anciently lived near the mouth of the Orjon in Asia.' This coincidence, however, does not account for the manner in which Carver obtained it; for he did not obtain it upon the shores of the Pacific, but about the head-waters of the Mississippi. Kelley, in his anxiety to prove his assertions, states, without other evidence than a reference to the 'Marine Archives of Madrid,' that Cuadra, a Spanish captain in the service of the viceroy of Mexico in 1792, and who in that year was at Nootka with Captain Vancouver of the British exploring squadron, and captains Gray and Ingraham of the American trading fleet in the Pacific, 'called this river Oregon.' The reference to a manuscript in the archives of Madrid must have been for
