 | Joaquin Miller's Poems |  |
OYE-AGUA: OREGON
Why, who doth know ye? Who shall know
But I, that on thy peaks of snow
Brake bread the first? Who loves ye best?
Who holds ye still, of more stern worth
Than all proud peoples of the earth?
Indifferent of blame or praise,
Still sing of ye, as one who plays
The same sweet air in all strange climes—
The same wild, piercing highland air,
Because—because, his heart is there.
“Here are the continuous woods; here rolls the Oregon and hears no sound save its own dashing.”
If there is a statelier name in all our constellation of stars, I have not heard it. Alabama—Here we rest—is sweet, attractive, restful, but the name has not the rush of waters, the misty tang of mold and sombre wood, of cloud-tossing trees, the strength, the stir, the color of Oregon: Oye-agua.
It is high time that some one should make clear the root of this great name; the written story of its origin. For it appealed to the poet Bryant most effectively, as well as many others, John Hay especially.
For more than thirty years I have made eager inquiry for evidence as to when and by whom in the earliest expeditions the stately names Sierra Grande del Nord and Oye-agua were bequeathed us on the North Pacific sea bank, but I am today empty handed. The letters I had received from the poet Bryant and John Hay and others were destroyed in the San Francisco fire. I had placed them for greater safety in the library of the Bohemian Club, along with autograph copies of books from eminent authors all over the world. I have not had heart to seriously take up the subject since. But I think the noble name speaks very plainly for itself and needs no written evidence of its etymology.
In 1858, while teaching a sort of primer school, below Fort Vancouver, during vacation at Columbia College, the forerunner of the Oregon University, I met Father Broulette, the head of the Catholic School at Vancouver. This learned and kindly priest helped me in my Latin, when I went to him on Saturdays, and twice took me rowing in an Indian's canoe far up the great Oregon River to hear the waters; to hear the waters dashing down out of the clouds from the melting snows of Mount Hood. And he quoted Bryant's poem and laid great stress on the words: “Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound save its own dashing.”
We could hear—you can today—hear something more than the dashing waters of the Oregon, that forget the precipitous steeps and sweep away out like a younger Yosemite, a broad, blowing Bridal Veil, till it trails in a lustrous white mist over the mighty river's tranquil breast! You hear something more than the dashing waters. You hear an aeolian harp in the heavens. Now low, now high, as the winds sweep the snow-white bridal veil of broken mist to and fro, till you are ready to say, with the good old priest, “You hear away up yonder in the clouds, an orchestra of angels. Oye-agua, Or-e-gon!” And when called to address the students of the State University about Oregon, a land I have known and loved longer than most of you have lived, gave the root and definition of this beautiful word, for so many foolish and unfair things have been said about its etymology.
But, alas! What evidence have I now at hand, further than that written on the face of the waters and heard in the clouds from the stupendous steeps? I appealed to Lummis, Librarian at Los Angeles, Editor of “Out West” and our most learned man in Spanish here, but he has given me no light, save to deride the accepted idea that the name came from the Spanish word “Orejones,” big ears, and to prefer the name “Oregono,” or sage; artemesia. But these early Spanish explorers knew nothing at all of our sage, or artemisia, beyond the mountains, and these great navigators who discovered us gave their beautiful names only from what they saw and heard. Here is what the learned Mr. Lummis says:
Los Angeles, Cal., May 6, 1907.Dear Old Joaquin:—* * * The Spanish derivation won't work for a minute on “aure el agua.” It is not aure, but oye; Gannett's definition for Oregones is also fly-blown, since that is
As for the offensive name, “Big Ears,” that is simply out of nature and therefore impossible. We have the Nez Perce: Pierce nose, the Pend d'aureille, ears with pendants, or earrings, but all our Indians have ever had notably small ears, small hands, small feet.
The learned Spanish professor at the University of California is also in doubt as to the definition of our name, but will not dispute Oye-agua: hear the waters.
When John Hay was Secretary of our Spanish Legation at Madrid, and writing his “Castilian Days,” I laid the case before him once, when on a friendly visit, and proposed that we reach some result, but he protested that it would be wasted time to glean where Washington Irving had harvested, and at once quoted Bryant when I spoke of the waters dashing down out of the clouds. And John Hay, the great poet by nature, but the enforced great diplomat, said: “Let the waters dashing down out of heaven speak for themselves. I think it no stretch of imagination to submit that they are forever crying out to the clouds, like the prophets in the wilderness, ‘Oye-agua, Oye-agua! Oregon!’”
To understand the importance of Mr. Hay's words, we must know that he not only knew Spanish, but the Spanish Christian in these explorations of conquest. These men were mightily in earnest, and when they could not follow their calendar of saints, which they did as a rule, they named things from sound or color, or conspicuous features, as they found them. They rarely named anything after their revered men and women, as did the French and notably the English; they never jested with the names of places and things. They gave thousands and thousands of names, from the Straits of Magellan to the Straits of Vitus Behring, but you search in vain for one single such name as California's “Calamity Jane,” “Yuba Dam River” or “Give a Damn Gulch.”
As Bryant, the poet, wrote; as Hay, the poet, said: “They heard, they saw the dashing of the waters down out of heaven, and they said, ‘Hear the waters! Oye-agua! Oregon.’ And Oregon it is, and Oregon it must and will remain!”
It would seem that Washington Irving, so long our minister at Madrid, should have found some record there, while mousing among the archives for material, but you search in vain for light in all his happy pages. But where did the boy poet, Bryant, come upon the pretty, poetic word, “Oregon”? And where did he find warrant to say, nearly a century ago, “Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound save its own dashing”? The poetry here is so perfect, the description, both sound and sense, so exact—and true poetry is the purest form of truth—that I know Oye-agua means Oregon, as I know Cape Blanco is Cape Blanco, because it looks it, lives it.
| Joaquin Miller's Poems | |