A Native American name for the mountain is Seekseekqua; its English name, Mount Jefferson (originally called Mount Vancouver by the British) was decided in honor of U.S. President Thomas Jefferson by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The expedition, which was sponsored by President Jefferson, first saw the peak from the mouth of the Willamette River on March 30, 1806. Walter Eaton later described Mount Jefferson as the most remote, the most inaccessible and alluring mountain in Oregon, writing that Jefferson and Mount Hood seem to hold mystic converse with one another over the canyons between.