JONATHAN CARVER'S SOURCE FOR THE NAME OREGON
By T. C. Elliott
On the outer walls of the Public Library of Portland, a beautiful building which was constructed within the last twenty years and covers an entire city block in that metropolis of the state of Oregon, are carved names of men and women who have attained fame in the various fields of the world's progress; and in the group of names of noted explorers—Columbus, Balboa, Marco Polo, Livingstone, Mackenzie and others—appears the name Carver. The occasion for this honor was a book written by Jonathan Carver of Massachusetts, which has been printed in several languages and gone through more than thirty editions, and which, incidentally, introduced into literature and history the name OREGON.
At the time of its publication in London, in 1778, Captain Carver's book, entitled "Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America in the Years 1766, 1767 and 1768," was one of the best sellers on the London market. That fact, and the prominence later awarded to it in literature, have occasioned much inquiry about its author, and opinion, pro and con, as to the sources of his information and reliability of his statements. The most prominent contributions on that subject are those of the late Edward Gaylord Bourne of Yale University, (printed in volume eleven—1906—of the American Historical Review), and of Mr. John Thomas Lee of Madison, (printed in the Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin for 1909 and 1912), and of Dr. William Browning of Brooklyn (printed in the Wisconsin Magazine of History in 1920). The present writer has recently added two chapters to that discussion, namely, "The Strange Case of Jonathan Carver and the Name Oregon," and "The Origin of the Name Oregon," both printed in the Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society of December 1920 and June 1921. He now adds a third, in connection with which it is proper to explain that the documentary material
