JONATHAN CARVER AND THE NAME OREGON 353
been at Mackinac during Carver's residence there, if we in- terpret his dates correctly; at any rate he had heard about Carver's journey five years before the publication of the manuscript, and he reflects an opinion which probably was current around Mackinac in those days. It may be remarked that the same opinion about Captain Carver's not having ascended the Saint Peter River at all was given independently by William H. Keating, the trained naturalist and historian of Long's expedition in 1823 to the sources of that river. 13
Returning now to the theory that the Indians used a corrup- tion of some Spanish name in speaking of the River of the West, it may be said that Captain Carver's statement, about the Indians at Rendezvous declining to trade there and unitedly carrying their furs on to Mackinac or to distant Louisiana, is not confirmed by other accounts of the fur trade at that time, and is an example of the inaccuracies to be found in the first or journal portion of his book. But all accounts agree as to this opportunity for contact between the Indians and the French from the lower-river trading points, where Spanish influences prevailed, where the licenses to traders were issued by Spanish officials, and where the trading goods may have been given some Spanish markings, The name of Spain was at the time very generally associated with a mythical river flowing into the Pacific Ocean for several reasons, particularly these: Spanish explorations northward from Mexico into California and the acquisition of horses by the Indians by way of the great interior basin between the Rocky and Sierra Nevada ranges of mountains ; rumors of Spanish knowledge of the sources of Colorado River; the discoveries by the Spanish navigator Martin d'Aguilar on the Northwest Coast. In fact a corruption from the Spanish, through French and Indian tongues, of the name of that navigator is not an entire im- possibility. A case in point appears in the narrative of Alex- ander Mackenzie, who reached the Pacific Ocean at Bentict Arm in the summer of 1792. The natives there told him of the recent visit of boats containing white men, one com-
iTsee vol. i, pp. 323-4 of Narrative of Expedition to Source of St. Peter's River, (Philadelphia, if- ^
