| Letters | Oregon Historical Quarterly, 105.4

Letters

To the Editor:

It was gratifying to read the many tributes to Rick Harmon in your last issue, and I'd like to echo what Robert Johnston wrote about Rick's rare capacity for nurturing others. For generations to come, thousands of readers will benefit from his meticulous care for his craft and his writers. He gave me the benefit of his painstaking editorial skills, not only for articles that appeared in the Quarterly, but for my first book. Coming from a man who never took shortcuts, that was a very large gift. He also encouraged me and befriended my family. At our last lunch together, when his health was failing, he was full of questions for my young son, needed to know how life was for Peter. Peter doesn't pay much attention to adults, but he remembers Rick.

Rick was often troubled by life. He seemed unable to grasp that his intelligence, diligence, and integrity were rare, and that humility left him puzzled and hurt when the rest of us could not keep pace. Yet his disappointments never seemed to interfere with his dedication to the written word and his many friends. As Rick neared death, his melancholy gave ground to a gratitude for those closest to him and the gift of a half century of life.

Emily Dickenson reminds us that death stops for us if we are too busy to stop for death. Rick left us too soon, but with the offering of a life replete with good, hard work and an abiding care for others, crowned by grace.

David Peterson del Mar

Portland, Oregon

To the Editor:

I share James Kopp's frustration ("Documenting Utopia in Oregon, OHQ, Summer 2004) as to the paucity of information on Oregon's early cooperative societies. My great-grandfather, Thomas J. Haycox, came from New York state in 1890 to join the Nehalem Valley Cooperative Colony, mentioned by Mr. Kopp as being one of the more obscure. Indeed it was, and is. There is no reference to it in the recollections of Nehalem Valley old-timers that I've encountered, nor is it remembered at the Natal Grange (five miles east of Mist and thriving since 1901). It is likewise missing from deed records of Columbia County, the publishings of the Columbia County Historical Society, the resources of the state library and those records of incorporation (which the colony claimed to be, on September 10, 1888) maintained by the secretary of state. It may be that my grandfather's disclosure to Fred Lockley in 1946 is all that's ever been said about it for publication, although one hopes not. Recalled William J. Haycox: "My father was a member of a co-operative colony that bought a large track of land four miles from Mist. There was a heavy stand of timber on most of the land owned by the colony. Tom Nordby, purser of the [steamboat G.W.] Shaver, acted as business agent and sales manager for the colony. He obtained money for a sawmill and later became a well-to-do lumber operator" ["Fred Lockley's Impresions," Oregon Journal, August 17, 1947].

The colony evidently disintegrated within a year or so of Tom's arrival. Utopian communities were arguably uncertain affairs, in that some conscripts were naive in their expectations as a result of reading hopelessly optimistic tracts about communal living while others weren't prepared for the hard labor that this new world entailed. In this case, the failure also reflected domestic concerns. My father was told that the women rebelled when advised by their governors that they would be required to prepare meals in a communal kitchen.

Economically, the Nehalem Valley Cooperative Colony made little sense. Significant markets were distant; lumber from the mill had to be hauled in wagons over a difficult road to Clatskanie on the Columbia River. Every step of the way, of course, it was shaded by standing timber that was cheaper to haul to market than theirs. To be sure, they had gotten away from the world. That is a theme of several memoirs of early Nehalem Valley settlement; immigrants are described as being uncertain why they came for any reason more substantial than a love of solitude.

A great deal of that country is tree farm now, including the homestead Tom occupied after the colony failed. He was in Portland for several years and Seaside for a decade but returned to the valley periodically and died there in 1920. He was a socialist, although his companions on the Seaside city council (1908–09) probably knew him better as a commercial painter. Son Fred described Tom as a silent and moody man, estranged form parents and siblings. Grandson Erny said he "was the toughest Englishman I ever knew." We can assume, I suppose, that solitude was his strong preference.

Ernest Haycox Jr.

Mosier, Oregon

To the Editor:

I was happy to see Goddard and Love's article on the source of the name "Oregon" ("Oregon, the Beautiful," OHQ, Summer 2004). Unfortunately, the early draft sent to me arrived after the seventh edition of Oregon Geographic Names had gone to the printer. I have updated the text on my computer file, and a revision will appear in the next edition.

I believe their explanation is now the most plausible. Their trail of historical and circumstantial evidence is compelling. However, in view of the long controversy and now three reasonable explanations in the past forty years, I feel we must not completely close the door on the investigation.

Lewis L. McArthur

Portland, Oregon

The revised portion of Mr. McArthur's new entry for "Oregon" in Oregon Geographic Names reads:

More plausible explanations of the name Oregon are given by George R. Stewart, Scott Byram and David Lewis, and Ives Goddard and Thomas Love. Stewart, in an article in American Speech, April 1944, and Names on the Land, 1967, propounded that the origin was an engraver's error naming the Ouisconsink (Wisconsin) River on certain French editions of Lahontan's map published in the early 1700s. In early editions, the name was not only misspelled Ouariconsint but also hyphenated after Ouaricon, with the final syllable oddly offset. Stewart feels that Rogers heard secondhand of the River Ouaricon that flowed west somewhere beyond the Great Lakes and that he mistakenly or carelessly transformed the word first to Ouragon and then to Ourigan. The odd nomenclature did not occur in the English editions of the map, so if Rogers had seen one, he would have had no readon to suspect the Ouaricon was merely the Wisconsin by another name.

In 2001, Byram and Lewis advanced the theory in OHQ, v 102, p. 128 et seq., that the name comes from an Indian trade route used to transport, among other goods, ooligan, a grease condensed from a species of smelt abundant on the north Pacific Coast. Cree tribes east of the Rocky Mountains would have pronounced this oorigan. While this trade involved a journey of over fifteen hundred miles, there is ample evidence that it occurred with some regularity.

Of the three, Goddard and Love are most convincing in OHQ, v 105, p. 238 et seq. They contend Rogers heard the word wauregon, an Algonqin word meaning "beautiful" or "beautiful river," from his Mohegan scouts. There are maps showing the Ohio River with this name as well as a very early map with a Belle Riv flowing west from the vicinity of the Great Lakes. Their evidence is compelling, but they admit no written or recorded verification in Rogers's writings. The compiler believes Goddard and Love are correct but awaits confirming or other evidence before closing the question.

Corrections

The Fall 2004 Oregon Historical Quarterly (105:3) included a discrepancy between the caption and image on page 371. The plant pictured is Mahonia aquifolium (also known as Berberis aquifolium), Oregon grape or hollyleaved barberry. It should have shown Mahonia nervosa (also known as Berberis nervosa), dull Oregon grape or Cascade barberry, which the caption discusses. The editors regret the error.

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