ORIGIN OF THE NAME OREGON 99
more reasonable to suppose that he gathered his data directly from French traders or habitants at Detroit or Niagara, or in- directly through the Mohawk Indians of New York, with whom he was intimate. It will be remembered that the Mo- hawks and allied tribes were friendly to the English in the French and Indian War; and that these tribes were members of the great Iroquoian family which sent so many trappers and canoemen into the fur trade in the west.
Major Rogers, in 1765, said that the Indians called the then mythical river flowing into the always mythical Straits of Anian the Ouragon ; and his later spelling (in 1772) is probably merely a careless reiteration of the same name. Granting that tale to be true does not mean that this was a name current among the Rocky mountain or the Plains tribes, or those of Minnesota. It might rather have been a name applied by the Mohawks, or some other of the Iroquoian tribes of New York or Canada. 6 With them it would not have been a name currently used, but one mentioned only in response to inquiry, or by some retired canoeman or trapper ; and might have been a French name. The French had been going into the Mississippi valley and to the region of lake Winnipeg and its tributary streams for many years prior to 1760: They were the fore- runners of exploration and trade in those regions, and the Iroquois who accompanied them necessarily heard and used words of the French tongue.
In the application of place names it was the custom of Indians to use a name descriptive of some physical feature of a stream, or of the locality through which it flowed, and the same custom prevailed among the French. When the French bestowed a name they did so either in honor of some saint in their religious calendar, or by some descriptive word. Every state in the Old Northwest and in Old Oregon contains many instances of such nomenclature. The name Ouragon is prac- tically the same as Ouragan, a word to be found in any French dictionary meaning windstorm, hurricane or tornado. The River of the West was, in 1765 et circa, supposed to rise in
6 Classed by ethnologists as renr intelligent Indian* and whose dialect would have permitted the pronunciation of this name.
