Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 2/An Oregon Literature
AN OREGON LITERATURE
How to develop an Oregon literature is one of the tasks now before the people of the north Pacific Coast.
By "Oregon" is meant, we hardly need say, the old historic Oregon, that stood for at least one great quarter of the western North American coast, back to the Rocky Mountain divide. I am quite aware that the people of Washington rather object to this large use of the name "Oregon," whether applied to pine or to literature; and are rather disposed to regard with disdain the effort to unite the two states under one term. But there are good reasons besides local pride in continuing the larger use of the old name. There is the historical analogy. Americans still speak "English," though they are much the loftier shoot of the old stock. A large number of the trees and plants of America are named "Canadense" out of regard to the place where their habitat was first discovered; as also many of the Oregon trees and birds bear the name "Californica." There are other good reasons besides. Geographically, the basin of the Columbia and its sea coast is a unit. Commercially, it must also be so. Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana will flourish in a business way as they co-operate for mutual interest. There is a solidarity here much greater than that of New England. Local rivalries will continue, but general union must be effected before our states take the part they should either in local development or in the national destiny.
Besides this, Washington and Idaho can not develop their own historical and traditional origins without going into Oregon territory; a broader and truer local spirit will enable them to see that it is a source of congratulation and even of pride for them to trace their descent through Oregon and the Oregon Trail. While not doubting that a certain contraction of aim adds to the intensity of energy, it is still important that local ambition and enterprise should not be allowed to efface historical truthfulness, or limit breadth of mind. The versatility and progressiveness of the people of Washington must be conceded, and their rapid increase in numbers, wealth, and commerce is leaving Oregon behind. This is due largely to the influx of eastern people and eastern capital who have seen opportunities open in the undeveloped resources of Washington which they could not so easily find in the older and slower Oregon. They have brought the latest methods, abundance of money, and the daring of youth, and their growth is both an astonishment and warning to Oregonians who have been content with old-fashioned ways and the conservatism of age. Nevertheless, we believe that nothing would be more for the permanent advantage and culture of the people of Washington than a definite, intelligent, sympathetic study of our historical descent. While giving so much as they have done, there is yet much, perhaps quite as much, for them to gain.
This applies as much, and perhaps even more, to the people of Oregon. We are comparatively torpid; we have but the faintest conception of our historical wealth. A superficial familiarity only adds to our real density on the subject. Only until recently have the best of us been catching the true historical perspective, in which both reason and imagination can play, and disclose truthful proportions; or have realized that right here, in our own midst, has been re-enacted an epitome of all history within an hundred years. Nor is it at all probable that any of us have as yet caught the real meaning and spirit of the events that transpired in Oregon during that time/much less what they shall mean when they stand in the perspective of a thousand years. However, not to amplify this point or justify the fine old name of Oregon, whose origin and meaning we do not know, but wait for the future to discover, there are several things that we already have which point to the growth of a native Oregon literature, which will fill out and complete American literature,—and American literature just at present seems trailing her Psyche wings in the dust.
We have—to make a brief catalogue:
1. The scenic conditions. Ours is a highland and a sunland. Extent and sublimity are combined. Our plateaux are crumpled up at selected intervals into mountain chains, with peaks overlooking all. The boundlessness of the prairie must yield to the boundlessness of the mountains as seen from above; and besides that we have the sea. Yet with so many points, of mountains, sea, and sky, where our scenery merges with the unseen and coalesces with the infinite, ours is after all a land of cosy nooks and sheltered valleys; of tiny streams and busy brooks, as well as of majestic rivers. Here life, at least to the altitude of a thousand feet, may be entirely Acadian. At the two thousand or five thousand foot level it becomes sylvan and pastoral, as at the ten thousand foot level it becomes universal. We can extend our vision and unfold our sympathies almost anywhere here by simply going up—for we have the mountain peaks to go up on. Then we see two and perhaps four states, and belong no more to one part or valley. These impressions of sublimity and beauty, which touch us everywhere here, and are influential in forming early character, yield to older minds the invitations of science, as at every fissue and erosion the earth's history is disclosed; it is imprinted here in multifold chapters, and these same uplifted strata offer to industry the incentive to examination.
2. We have an interesting meteorolgy. A Californian, commenting on our state, said that we seemed to have more weather than climate. The reverse would be dubious—that California has more climate than weather. Here, undoubtedly, the seasonal changes are much more marked; but who would forego the influences of cloudland? At least in a literary point of view the changes of the sky, its winds and storms, and the music of the sea, have no compensation in perpetual serenity. Our climate, moreover, is of such extensive diversification, and offers such wide range of study and choice, that it would be a truculent author indeed who could not find somewhere the meterological moods that touched his fancy or waked his genius. Indeed, it is not too much to say that in both of the above the student of science not only will find herein ample field, but that no science can be completed without recourse to northwestern states. Already the science of the age, in the person of Professor Huxley, has been indebted to Oregon, in the person of Professor Condon, for the most complete demonstration yet made in paleontology of the law of evolution; a debt, however, not yet acknowledged. If literature is to be the mirror of nature, in the field of either poetry or science our states are the place for it.
3. Characteristics of native races have nowhere been better developed, or more accurately and sympathetically recorded. We have already hundreds of well defined Indian characters within reach of literary development; we have a considerable collection of their myths and legends; and what is more to the point, we have a very considerable remnant of the Indians themselves. Certainly they are not now in their original, exteriors; but their characters remain, and they are in many respects the most interesting people on the globe. It is a singular and foolish mistake to suppose that the Indians lose their traits upon acquiring the customs and education of white men. Such a man as Simon Pokagon shows how erroneous is the supposition. The Indians are now in a state of lapse, and even, in some respects, of degradation; but this is not the end. Our literature as it reaches its larger development will realize the high conceptions and reflect the intense consciousness of the native races.
4. The history of our old Oregon is the history of freemen. Our soil has never been stained with slavery. Upon close examination it will be seen that not one important act of pioneer history was not determined at last by the consciousness of personal liberty—freedom of the body as well as of the mind. How much of this came from the boundless country; how much from the liberty-loving native tribes; and how much from the bold spirits that arrived from the older states is one of the problems to be worked out later. But it was here.
5. Our history is also the history of benevolence. Owing to what causes it need not now be inquired, the hundred years of white man's occupancy of the valley of the Columbia has been one of almost uninterrupted peace. Not only has this been a condition of passive good will, but of active beneficence. Some time since a lecturer recently from the east began by telling his Oregon audience that this state had been settled on a selfish plan. Nothing could be more mistaken. The brains of the men who came to Oregon were teeming with ideas of social and religious improvements for the race, and so far from being selfish in their aim were rather open to the charge of Utopianism. The chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company was so distinguished by his humanity as to offend his employers. The leading spirits of the American settlers were Christian missionaries, who not only established churches of their respective denominations, but founded so many educational and humane enterprises out of their personal means as to almost interfere with each othersoperations. They had, if anything, a zeal that outrun discretion. The mass of the people supported these leaders and were so industrious and temperate that from the first destitution has been practically unknown. No people has been distinguished by a higher level of purpose from the beginning than have we. The famous history of the Atlantic States is dark with contention and superstition compared with our own. Our people of the present day have fallen to a lower level of aspiration, and we are morally degenerate sons; but it is to be remembered that in their intent and true purpose trade and production are also benevolent. Freed from the personal rewards that obscure their true nature these great utilities of industrial life, which we are now seeking to establish here, will also yield peace and good will. The paeans of peace are yet to be composed. Nowhere is there a soil more consecrated to such literature than here. We have the historical setting and illustrations.
6. We also have here already the beginnings of a literature. It has been fitful, provincial in some respects, and like all true literature in its beginnings, little recognized or rewarded; but at any rate it has not been produced by purchase of money kings, or any other sort of kings, or by imperial fiat. It has been free. Nevertheless, Oregon has been the land of authors. We have poets whose verses have gone around the world. We have singers and artists whose work is at the top, as our apples bear off the prize at the expositions. Our literature, so far as it has been developed, is characterized by purity, ideality, depth of emotion, and versatility. Its basis is so broad and vigorous, not to say indiscriminately erratic, that any sort of form or style may be built upon it. Yet Simpson, Miller, Markham, Balch, and many others yield suggestions and inspiration that well invite others to succeed them.
7. Still further, and without this all the above would be vain, we have the quality of young minds here that may be impressed with such an heritage. Our Oregon youth are sometimes hastily spoken of as vapid and vicious. There is too often a disconcerting unconventionality about them, and a disappointing fondness for trifling amusements. A precocious development giving place all too speedily to premature decrepitude, is a still more disagreeable symptom. But with all that may be said, we have our proportion of steady boys and serious girls, whose ambitions, are high and whose strength is sufficient. In every school there are boys and girls who can already compose a letter or an article that would do credit to their elders. Not everyone indeed with a literary penchant will choose this for his life work. The rewards of industry and commerce and the professions are now too great for that. Literature as a vocation, provided one really writes his heart and tells the truth, is too nearly a whole burnt offering to claim any but the elect; but out of the many who are called some will be chosen. We already have as hopeful author material as can be found anywhere.
After the above seven items, a word should follow as to the need of an Oregon literature. Without its literature a people is lost; they can not think; they lose power to feel. Sympathy is withered. There is no civic consciousness. No vital or manly people have been without their literature. Atlantic States' literature can not take the place of our own, any more than the last year's leaves can nourish this year's fruit. New leaves for the new fruit; new bottles for the new wine. A vehicle of expression as new as the new feelings and new lives that come with every generation. The disaccordance between the expressions used by the writers of the past or of other regions and their own observations, makes old or distant literature not a vehicle for expression to our own people. With this only they become inexpressive, and from that point their mental and moral decline commences. Give our people a language and history that does not quite fit them to think in, and they do not think. They prefer the stimulus of sensation, and return to the basilar elements. I do not hesitate to refer much of the moral decadence of our Oregon poeple to this fact alone.
But once more, literature makes the future. Homer made Alexander; Vergil made the Roman papacy; Bryant and Whittier made the emancipators; Milton made modern England or, at least, the modern liberal England of Gladstone, "mewing her mighty youth." To whom imperial England of Joseph Chamberlain is indebted, I could not say; but an England of Browning is due before long all energy, all chivalry, all gentleness. If Oregon is to have a worthy future, it will first appear as a literary consciousness, uniting all elements of society that we have here, and charging the youth with an ideal to which they shall devote their lives. No one is going to make this for us; others are too busy in their own lot. It is for us to do, if it is done. Certainly we are not to depreciate what we have, nor overlook what is now progressing. We have not a few earnest writers and many earnest teachers. Our journalism is eminent and progressive; but what is made for the day passes with the day. We want something that will last at least a generation, as a vehicle of popular thought.
How to meet the want is the problem. We are accustomed to look upon truly vital literature as an inspiration, and not to be produced except by the chances of genius. That may, in a measure, be true. Nevertheless, if the conditions are created, the result will follow. As a means of creating the conditions, I will only suggest here that I hope in some way the stories and records of our hundred years on this coast may be placed in an available and interesting form before the youth of the state. I hope this may be one outcome of our centennial celebration. Our youth will then know what old Oregon was, and what their—Oregon or Washington—may be. They will find the "footprints on the sands of time;" not in some dreamy Acadie, or holy land, but around their own towns and farms. Then their imagination and judgment can make the meaning out for themselves.