Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/54

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

4 8 Frederick V. Holman 1826, from which I have quoted. This book and map show how little was known of the geography of Oregon, especially west of the Cascade Mountains, in 1830, by persons not living in that part of Oregon. In Hall J. Kelley's Memoir to Hon. Caleb Cushing, Chair- man of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives, dated January 31, 1839 (Appendix O, of House Rep. 101, February 16, 1839), Kelley makes a brief statement of his trip to Oregon in 1834, and gives a fairly accurate description of the Willamette River and says: "This river has been sometimes misnamed the 'Multonomah/ " (Page 55.) On page 61 he says: "The Multonomahs, who formerly occupied the Wappatoo islands, and the country around the mouth of the Wallamette, and who numbered 3,000 souls, are all dead, and their villages reduced to desolation." One of the rarest books relating to Oregon is the "Narrative of Zenas Leonard," published at Clearfield, Pennsylvania, in 1839. Only three or four copies of the original edition are known to be in existence. A limited edition of it was reprinted, in 1904, by The Burrows Brothers Company of Cleveland, Ohio. I have a copy of this reprint. Leonard was one of a trapping party under command of Captains Gant and Black- well, which left St. Louis, Missouri, in April, 1831. In Sep- tember, 1832, the party arrived at the headwaters of the Willamette River, which Leonard calls "the Multenemough river." (Pages 123 and 124 of the Reprint). In the summer of 1833 Leonard joined the party of Capt. Bonneville (page 147 of the Reprint). What was originally called Wappatoo Island, near the mouth of the Willamette and lying between the Columbia River and Willamette Slough, is now known as Sauvie's Island. Sauve, for whom it is named, was a French-Canadian employe of the Hudson's Bay Company, who lived on the Island. The earliest public mention of the change of its name from Wappatoo, I have found, is in the following act of the Provisional Legislature, passed August 15, 1845, an( * approved