John Day was born around 1770 in
Culpeper County, Virginia and came west through
Kentucky to
Spanish Upper Louisiana (now
Missouri) by 1797. After a few years trading up the Missouri River, in late 1810 he was engaged as a hunter for the
Pacific Fur Company and joined an overland expedition led by
Wilson Price Hunt. The party trekked west from Missouri to
Fort Astoria at the mouth of the
Columbia River in 1811–12. Day is best known, along with
Ramsay Crooks, for being robbed and stripped naked by Native Americans on the Columbia River near the mouth of the
river that now bears his name in
Eastern Oregon, and forced to walk about seventy miles back up the Columbia River to friendly Walla Walla Indians, through harsh conditions without clothing or tools of any kind. After finally making their way to Fort Astoria in April 1812, Day was assigned to accompany
Robert Stuart back east to
St. Louis in June 1812, but was left on the Lower Columbia River where he is said to have gone mad. He returned to Fort Astoria and spent the next eight years hunting and trapping mainly in the
Willamette Valley and the inland northwest. John Day died February 16, 1820, at the winter camp of
Donald MacKenzie's Snake Country Expedition in what is now the
Little Lost River valley in
Butte County, Idaho. His name is well-remembered, being attached to the
John Day River and its four branches in eastern Oregon, as well as the cities of
John Day and
Dayville in
Grant County, Oregon, and a smaller
John Day River and unincorporated community in
Clatsop County, Oregon, the
John Day Dam on the Columbia River, and the
John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. The Little Lost River, Idaho, was previously known as "Day's River" and the valley was called "Day's Defile" during the fur trade era. ==References==