While it may appear that Oregon's original nickname, Webfoots, evolved into Ducks, this is not the case. Fishermen off the coast of Massachusetts were first called webfoots in the 1700s. It was the Webfoots of 1776 under Gen. George Washington who evacuated 10,000 troops across the East River to New York City, saving a likely defeat of the the young nation. In the 1840s, when new residents were settled in Oregon's Willamette Valley, they were called Webfoots because many of them were New Englanders, and also because the area was very rainy. Soon after the university opened in 1876, its athletic teams were nicknamed Webfoots and it was the official nickname by the 1890s. But as athletics became more popular, headline writers always sought shorter names to call teams, and it was these writers that mistook webfoot to relate somehow to ducks.In the early 1920s, a real-life duck named Puddles attended football and basketball games. After repeated complaints from the Humane Society, the duck no longer attended sports functions. Using his friendship with Walt Disney, athletic director Leo Harris obtained permission to use Donald Duck as the official mascot for Oregon in the late 1940s. In a truly unique situation, Oregon is the only school to have a Disney character as their mascot. Some people did not like the Donald Duck mascot, however. Steve Sandstrom, a student cartoonist, developed a mallard drake mascot to challenge the Disney Duck in 1978. Donald was the winner.