The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society

Taylor, S. H., Correspondence of, Oregon Bound, 1853........117-160
Whitman, Dr. Marcus, Requests of, at Boston of the American
Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions....
Young, F. G., Introduction to John Boit's Log of the Columbia,
1790-3

........

.257-264

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A SKETCH OF THE ROGUE RIVER VALLEY
AND SOUTHERN OREGON HISTORY*

By ALICE APPLEGATE SARGENT
PART I.

Lying between the Cascade mountains on the east, and the Coast range on the west, and tempered by the warm oceanic current from Japan, the Rogue River Valley has a climate unsurpassed except perhaps by the coast valleys of Greece.

THE ROGUE INDIANS

About the year 1834 we find the Rogue River Valley a wilderness inhabited by a tribe of Indians. These Indians were a branch of the tribe living in northern California whom we now know as the Shastas. But the original name was not Shasta but Chesta. They were the Chesta Scotons and the Indians living in the Rogue River valley were Chesta Scotons. The first white men to set foot in the valley of whom we have any authentic record, were some French Canadian trappers who were trapping for furs for that great British monopoly the Hudson's Bay Company. These men made their way into the valley and set their traps along the river, but the Indians

* Read before the Greater Medford Club in the Spring of 1915.

NO VIMU AMBOLIAD

ALICE APPLEGATE SARGENT

stole the traps, and the trappers always spoke of them as the rogues; the river was the river of the rogues and the valley the valley of the rogues. Old pioneers have assured me that this is the way by which the river, the valley and the Indians came by the name.

Another story as to the origin of the name is this: That the river was called Rouge or Red river by some French voyageurs on account of the cliffs at the mouth of the river being of red color. By an act of the legislature in 1853-4 Rogue river was to be Gold river, but it has never been so called.

FIFTEEN PIONEERS, OPENERS OF THE SOUTHERN ROUTE

In the year 1846 fifteen pioneers from the Willamette valley came into the Rogue river valley, seeking a route by which immigrants could reach the Willamette valley without having to travel the long northern route across the Blue mountains and down the Columbia river as they had to come. Their names were: Jesse Applegate, Lindsay Applegate, Levi Scott, John Scott, Henry Boygus, Benjamin Burch, John Owens, John Jones, Robert Smith, Samuel Goodhue, Moses Harris, David Goff, Benit Osborne, William Sportsman and William Parker. Lindsay Applegate was my father, Jesse Applegate, my uncle.

Each man was equipped with a saddle horse and a pack horse. As they made their way through the Rogue river valley they were constantly followed by the Indians and had to be on guard day and night. When they had to pass through heavy timber and brush they dismounted and led their horses, carrying their guns across their arms ready to fire. The Indians were armed with bows and poisoned arrows, the pioneers with the old-time muzzle loading rifles. They made their way through the valley, crossed the Cascade mountains into the Klamath country and thence east to the Humboldt river. Here they met a train of immigrants. They brought back with them one hundred and fifty people, the pioneers traveling ahead and

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The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, Volumen22