After looking back over the vista of years, none of the party could say that life had been a failure; there was the lady bordering close on eighty years; the gentleman eighty-four and past (Peter Smith), with the "kids" of the party past the sixty-eighth mark, yet one would scarcely ever meet a more cheerful and merry party than this of the reunion of the old settlers of 1855.[18]
[18] Since this meeting in June, 1904, all of the ten pioneers that comprised the party have died, prior to the writing of this note, except the author and one other.
In the latter part of the seventeenth century that intrepid American traveler, Jonathan Carver, wrote these immortal words:
"From the intelligence I gained from the Naudowessie Indians, among whom I arrived on the 7th of December (1776), and whose language I perfectly acquired during a residence of five months, and also from the accounts I afterwards obtained from the Assinipoils, who speak the same tongue, being a revolted band of the Naudowessies; and from the Killistinoes, neighbors of the Assinipoils, who speak the Chipeway language and inhabit the heads of the River Bourbon; I say from these natives, together with my own observations, I have learned that the four most capital rivers on the continent of North America, viz.: the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, the River Bourbon and the Oregon, or the River of the West (as I hinted in my introduction), have their sources in the same neighborhood. The waters of the three former are within thirty miles of each other; the latter, however, is further west."
All students of history acknowledge this is the first mention of the word Oregon in English literature. The narrative quoted was inspired by his observations on the upper Mississippi, and particularly upon the event of reaching his farthest point, sixty miles above the Falls of St. Anthony, November 17th, 1776. This was the farthest up the Mississippi that the white man had ever penetrated, "So that we are obliged solely to the Indians for all the intelligence we are able to give relative to the more northern parts," and yet this man, seemingly with prophetic sight, discovered the great river of the West, attempted to name it, and coined a word for the purpose. While Carver missed his mark and did not succeed in affixing the new-born name to the great river he saw in his vision, yet the word became immortal through the mighty empire for which it afterwards stood. Carver made no explanation as to where the word Oregon came from, but wrote as though it was well known like the other rivers mentioned. Probably for all time the origin of this name with be a mystery.