John Day

John Day and the Astoria expedition:

Last week Josh and I floated down the John Day river in eastern Oregon. I was the third trip I've made on the river, but the first time I really wondered who John Day was and why this river was named for him. The river is notable in Oregon history mainly for the brief gold rush to Canyon City in 1862. Canyon City is near the town of John Day on the south fork of the river, well upstream of the part we floated. Prospectors traveled there on a route from the Dalles which crossed the John Day River downstream of Clarno (below the section we floated). Interpretive signage, such as in Antelope, recalls this period, and the stagecoach that ran along this route.

I took along on our trip the book Astoria, by Washington Irving, because I believed that the overland Astoria expedition may have traveled down the river in 1811 or 1812. It turns out they did not. They attempted to canoe down the Snake River, until they encountered rapids which destroyed their boats and supplies, and took the lives of a couple members of the expedition. Without going into the gory details, suffice it to say that the survivors split into several small groups and proceeded on foot from the Snake overland across Northeast Oregon to rejoin the Columbia somewhere between the Dalles and the tri-cities area. So they presumably cross the Blue Mountains or the Wallowas. In Astoria the geography is extremely vague, since when Irving wrote the Oregon Trail had still not been plotted and rutted, and the region was little-known except to Native people.

John Day joined the expedition during its voyage up the Missouri River in the autumn of 1810. He is introduced as:

a hunter from the backwoods of Virginia, who had been several years on the Missouri in the service of Mr. Crooks, and of other traders. He was about forty years of age, six feet two inches high, straight as an Indian; with an elastic step as if he trod on springs, and a handsome, open, manly countenance. It was his boast that, in his younger days, nothing could hurt or daunt him; but he had "lived too fast," and injured his constitution by his excesses. Still he was strong of hand, bold of heart, a prime woodman, and an almost unerring shot. He had the frank spirit of a Virginian, and the rough heroism of a pioneer of the west.

You see here the kind of heroic physiognomy that Irving bestows on his favorite men. The status of a "Virginian" is elite, as with Daniel Boone, even decades after the man departs Virginia. He has the virtues of the Indian without, of course, the weaknesses. But he does have a weakness, or at least Irving plants the doubt that foreshadows what will happen later.

In reading Astoria I was paying attention to how Irving describes the Canadien voyageurs (who made up the majority of the men on both the overland and the maritime expedition to Oregon), and the contrasts between how Irving treats the voyageurs and how he describes the anglos, such as in his portrait of John Day. The maritime travelers, including Gabriel Franchère, whom I blogged about last spring when I was reading his narrative in French, were hired at Montreal, and the overland voyageurs signed contracts at Montreal, at Mackinac, and at St. Louis. They were hired to perform the grunt labor of the expedition, the paddle the canoes or pirogues and to carry the pelts and supplies across portages or overland. Most of these Canadiens (unlike Franchère) were illiterate, and so left no record of their own thoughts and experiences on the expedition. Irving rarely mentions their names; they are a mass of labor, not worth distinguishing as individuals. Here's a typical passage from chapter 17, when the anglo leaders Ramsay Crooks and McLellan are worrying about threats from the Teton Sioux whom they will have to pass as they continue up the Missouri:

All these causes of uneasiness were concealed as much as possible from the Canadian voyageurs, lest they should become intimidated; it was impossible, however, to prevent the rumors brought by the Indians from leaking out, and they became subjects of gossiping and exaggeration. The chief of the Omahas, too, on returning from a hunting excursion, reported that two men had been killed some distance above, by a band of Sioux. This added to the fears that already began to be excited. The voyageurs pictured to themselves bands of fierce warriors stationed along each bank of the river, by whom they would be exposed to be shot down in their boats: or lurking hordes, who would set on them at night, and massacre them in their encampments. Some lost heart, and proposed to return, rather than fight their way, and, in a manner, run the gauntlet through the country of these piratical marauders. In fact, three men deserted while at this village. Luckily, their place was supplied by three others who happened to be there, and who were prevailed on to join the expedition by promises of liberal pay, and by being fitted out and equipped in complete style.

The voyageurs are said to be strong, tireless, jolly, and forebearing, but fearful and vain. They are expendable and replaceable.  The "style" they enjoy is not elaborate, it can be satisfied with feathers in their caps. Nicole St-Onge has studied the account books of the overland expedition, kept by the Irish clerk John Reed, which reveal the voyageurs unwritten predilections better than any other surviving sources. They held out for higher pay than was typical for voyageurs who worked along well-established routes, but many of them also spent their wages quickly on liquor, clothing, and rare feathers.

To get back to John Day, his most significant role in the Astoria is when he and Ramsay Crooks succeed, just barely, in reaching the Columbia near Walla Walla. "Mr. Crooks remained here twenty days, detained by the extremely reduced state of John Day, who was utterly unable to travel, and whom he would not abandon, as Day had been in his employ on the Missouri, and had always proved himself most faithful." The Walla Wallas help them, but when they proceed down the Columbia, they are robbed by locals near Celilo Falls, and "stripped naked" with neither rifles nor flint and steel. They return to Walla Walla for charity. They finally succeed in reaching Astoria on the 11th of May, 1812.

But on the return voyage the party again encounters starvation and cold weather along the Snake River, and it proves too much for John Day:

the poor fellow's wits had been partially unsettled by the sufferings and horrors through which they had passed, and he doubted whether they had ever been restored to perfect sanity....The sight of any of the natives put him in an absolute fury, and he would heap on them the most opprobrious epithets; recollecting, no doubt, what he had suffered from Indian robbers.
On the evening of the 2d of July he became absolutely frantic, and attempted to destroy himself. Being disarmed, he sank into quietude, and professed the greatest remorse for the crime he had meditated. He then pretended to sleep, and having thus lulled suspicion, suddenly sprang up, just before daylight, seized a pair of loaded pistols, and endeavored to blow out his brains. In his hurry he fired too high, and the balls passed over his head. He was instantly secured and placed under a guard in one of the boats. How to dispose of him was now the question, as it was impossible to keep him with the expedition. Fortunately Mr. Stuart met with some Indians....the Indians executed their task faithfully, and landed John Day among his friends at Astoria; but his constitution was completely broken by the hardships he had undergone, and he died within a year.

John Day apparently suffered from a form of PTSD, a rare flaw in character for an heroic Virginian. Oddly enough, other sources claim that he lived until 1819 or 1820.