plunges. Thus, with the advent of white homeseekers, the aborigines were already releasing, unwittingly and tragically, the land of their forebears. More than eighty per cent of their once large numbers had perished. As a consequence, the Indians put up little resistance to white occupation.
Along the tributaries, in the evergreen wilderness from which the Willamette emerges, are occasional waterfalls.
But on the main river there is only the one great overleap, known as Willamette Falls. As early as 1838, in his Journal of an Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains,
the Rev. Samuel Parker wrote
in somewhat romantic vein
of this
geographic feature:
“The river above spreads out into a wide, deep basin, and runs slowly and smoothly until within a half mile of the falls, when its velocity increases, its width diminishes, eddies are formed in which the water turns back as if loath to make the plunge; but it is forced forward by the water in the rear, and when still nearer it breaks upon the volcanic rocks scattered across the channel, and then as if resigned to its fate, smooths its agitated surges, and precipitates down an almost perpendicular. . . presenting a somewhat whitened column . . . The rising mist formed in the rays of the sun a beautiful bow . . . "
Of the extensive Willamette country, much of a descriptive nature appears in the accounts of early day travelers through the region. Joel Palmer, settler, mill owner and early Indian agent, in his Journal of Travels over the Rocky Mountains, 1845–46, makes this observation: “The Willamette valley, including the first plateaus of the Cascade and Coast ranges, may be said to average a width of about sixty, and a length of about two hundred miles. It is beautifully diversified with timber and prairie.” Of this diversity, Lieutenant Wilkes wrote in his Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition into the Oregon country in 1841: “The prairies are at least one-third greater in extent than the forest; they were again seen carpeted with the most luxuriant growth of flowers, of the richest tints of red, yellow and blue, extending in places a distance of fifteen to twenty miles.”
