pushed into and penetrated a wilderness into which no 
European had theretofore set foot. Their buoyant 
French temperament enabled them to make them- 
selves popular even among wild Indian tribes; and so 
they became pioneers of civilization. | Among the 
trading companies organized for this purpose two are 
especially prominent, their history running down to 
our day, namely: the Hudson’s Bay Company, char- 
tered by Charles II in 1670, whose headquarters were 
then in New York, and the North West Company, es- 
tablished at Montreal in 1783. These two rival com- 
panies carried on their trade chiefly on the Great 
Lakes, and later descended from there into the Mis- 
sissippi Valley. The country further west was as yet 
unkn e first fragmentary information about 
this country we find in the travels of Jonathan Carver 
of Connecticut, who, about the year 1763, was among 
the Indians on the Upper Mississippi. He mentions a 
River Oregon or the River of the West (Columbia). 
This information he probably received through In- 
dians. The word “Oregon” seems to date from this, 
its first mention. The first traveler who reached the 
Pacific Coast by going westward was Sir Alexander 
Mackenzie, a former British officer. He crossed the 
Rocky Mountains for the first time in 1793, at 52° 
20’ 48” north latitude, and reached the Pacific Ocean 
in what is now Caledonia, between latitude 52° and 
55°, and consequently north of the Columbia River. 
Soon thereafter the North West Company erected, 
on the Pacific Coast, in the region mentioned, two 
Geographical 
Historical 
Survey” 
a 
