A Mountain

There is an ancient fable concerning a certain prophet, one who had married a wealthy widow, that he stood upon a plain and beckoned to an eminence before him, saying "Come to me, mountain." The mountain moved not. A second time he bade it: "Straightway come hither to me, sir mountain." And still the mountain came not. Thereupon, his patience unexhausted, he gathered up his burnoose, and with appropriate words, since the mountain would not come to him, he went to the mountain. All this happened many years ago, before there was a Congress of the U. S.

Now matters are in a different state; for if one person or a group of persons desires to appropriate a mountain, there is always recourse to the Congress. It is this method which has been adopted by the City of Tacoma. But there is this difficulty with the modern method: that, whereas no one could take exception to the prophet's procedure in his difficult case, recourse to Congress is likely to be attended by dissension.

In the last session of Congress, Senator Clarence C. Dill, a Democrat from Washington, introduced a resolution to change the name of Mount Rainier to Mount Tacoma. The Senate approved the resolution and it went to the House where it now rests in the Committee of Public Lands, which has asked the U. S. Geographic Board for a report on the question.

The matter of naming this particular Mountain goes back to May 8, 1792, when the British Captain, George Vancouver, on a voyage of discovery through the northern Pacific and around the world, set down in his journal that "the weather was serene and pleasant, and the country continued to exhibit between us and the eastern snowy range the same luxuriant appearance. ..." The round, snowy mountain, now forming its southern extremity . . . after my friend Rear Admiral Rainier, I distinguished by the name Mount Rainier." So it was known afterwards.

In 1853, one Theodore Winthrop made a journey over the Cascades; nine years later, he described his journey in a book, The Canoe and the Saddle. Therein he said: "Mount Regnier, Christians have dubbed it. . . . More melodiously, the Siwashes call it Tacoma--a generic term also applied to all snow peaks." Therewith was engendered a controversy.

In 1868, a saw-milling town on Commencement Bay was named Tacoma. In 1873, the Northern Pacific Railway located its western terminus on Puget Sound and called the place New Tacoma. In 1883, the Northern Pacific Railway announced that on its maps and guide books "the Indian name" Tacoma would supplant Mount Rainier. A powerful director of the railroad, who was President of the Tacoma Land Company, booming the new town, saw to the changing of the name.

In 1890, the U. S. Board of Geographic Names composed of ten representatives--two from the Coast and Geodetic Survey, one each from the State Department, Lighthouse Board (Treasury), Engineer Corps (Army), Hydrographic Office (Navy), Post Office Department, Smithsonian Institution, two from the Geological Survey--considered and unanimously decided that the proper name of the mountain was Rainier. In 1917, on a rehearing, the same Board reaffirmed its position, saying:

"No geographic feature in any part of the world can claim a name more firmly fixed by right of discovery, by priority and by universal usage for more than a century.. . . For a hundred years, the name of Mount Rainier has been used whenever the mountain has been mentioned in histories, geographies, books on travel and exploration, scientific publications, encyclopedias, dictionaries and atlases of many nations--by the United States, Canada, England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Russia, Spain and even Arabia."

But the citizens of the city of Tacoma were unsatisfied. They refused to call the mountain anything but Mt. Tacoma. Their representatives in Congress set out to fulfill their wishes over the heads of the Geographic Board. Not only was the matter taken to Congress, but an old-fashioned war of pamphlets began. First the Tacoma-ites got out The Name. Then the Rainierians retorted with The Great Myth--"Mount Tacoma--"

Said The Name:

"Admiral Rainier was an obscure Britisher who ravaged our coasts in the time of the Revolutionary War, robbed our citizens, killed and destroyed our people, carried away men, women and children, consigned them to the hold of his ship, maltreated and starved them to death and heaved their bodies overboard as so much common garbage. . . .

"A whole carload of beer and finer intoxicants rolled in, in connection with the scandalous midnight proceedings by authorities in Washington 30 years ago, fastening the name Rainier upon the mountain, thereby prostituting this noble mountain to be an advertising agency for a brand of intoxicating liquor; such are the two things whose memory is perpetuated in this insulting name upon America's grandest mountain -- the British marauder's atrocities and a brand of lager beer.

"A shame, a burning shame is this to the lofty toned America of 1917 and 1918. A lasting insult to the men of 1776 who fought our battles and won our freedom for us. The writer is not a swearing man; if he were he would lift aloft the Henry Watterson war-cry in the late Hohenzollern strife and paraphrasing it devoutly cry: 'To hell with the name Rainier from Mount Tacoma.' "

Said The Great Myth:

"Aside from Dr. Cook's fanciful voyage to the North Pole, no fiction of modern times approaches that involved in the movement to change the historic name of Mount Rainier bestowed by its discoverer, Captain George Vancouver, in 1792, in accordance with time honored custom, to Mount Tacoma, on the plea that the latter was the aboriginal name. The rank and file of the people of Tacoma are sincere and honorable--a typical cross section of the genus Americanus. They have been told--and are told daily-- that the Indian name was Mount Tacoma, and they are ready to fight for it.

"The bitter and vindictive spirit in which the campaign for Mount Tacoma has been conducted has been detrimental to the cause and has resulted in the alignment of practically the entire State of Washington against Tacoma, not only in the matter of the Mountain, but in the way of sympathy and fellowship.

"Any person or any organization that opposes Tacoma's pet ambition is subjected to vilification and misrepresentation.

"It would seem that only a hysterical craving for notoriety is responsible for a monumental selfishness as huge as Mount Rainier itself. It looks like the biggest land grab since Noah homesteaded Mount Ararat."

Further, The Great Myth contends:

1) That Admiral Rainier was not an obscure villain. In 1778, as a lieutenant in command of a sloop, he captured a large American privateer after a hard action in which he was severely wounded; soon after he was sent to the East Indies, rose steadily in rank to Admiral, retired, became a Member of Parliament and died leaving one tenth of his large estate to reduce the national debt of Great Britain.

2) That the name Tacoma was never heard or printed until Winthrop brought out his book in 1862; and that he either invented it or corrupted from some Indian word which he did not understand, such as "tkohph" (white), which his guide might have used in pointing to the snowy mountains.

3) That there was no brewery or beer in existence to bribe the Geographic Board in 1890; the brewery and the beer did not appear until some three or four years later.

The State of Washington watches the action of Congress with anxiety, divided against itself. If Tacoma loses, she has still the option of following the example of the ancient prophet: she may change her own name to Rainier.