Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/383



WILL OF JOHN DAY 375

to conclude that Joshua Day and John Day are one and the same person notwithstanding the discrepancy in names, and that our Mr. John Day then ascended the Columbia at least as far as one of the other North- West Company trading posts and eventually joined the North-West Company in some form of service. The document herewith is partial proof of such service and his weakness of body probably accounts for the lack of mention of him.

Our next record of John Day is contained in the Journal of Alex. Ross, who was in charge of the Hudson's Bay Company trapping party in the Snake country in 1823-24. The entry of May 12th, 1824, reads: "Went up to headwaters of the river. This is the defile where in 1819 died John Day." (Or. Hist. Quar. Vol. 14, p. 380.) Day's Defile is a mountain valley which heads in the Salmon River mountains of central Idaho and opens upon the lava beds to the north of the Three Buttes. John Work's Journal of November 2nd, 1830, reads : "Camped near the head of Day's River" (Or. Hist. Quar., Vol. 13, p. 369). Capt. Bonneville was on the same stream in December, 1832, as related by Mr. Irving, and the Arrowsmith maps of 1835-45 designate it as Day's or MacKenzie's river. It has, however, lost the original name and is now mapped as Little Lost River, from the fact that its flow sinks and follows under- ground channels to the Snake river.

Turning now to the document itself we find that the testator and witnesses recite its execution Feb. 15th, 1820, "on the dependencies of the River Columbia," and that Donald Mac- Kenzie proves it by swearing that John Day died Feb. 16th, 1820, "on the south side of the River Columbia in the Ter- ritory of Oregon." Had it been executed at Fort George or Spokane or Nez Perce the recital would have been different. This document was therefore written and executed in the camp of Donald MacKenzie on one of the mountain streams of Idaho, and may be the first proven will ever executed in Old Oregon certainly in the State of Idaho.

Donald MacKenzie was a passenger in Canoe No. 1 of the