The journals of Patrick Gass and William Clark for November 20, 1805, describe the same camp on the south shore of the Columbia near its mouth, but they read almost as parallel reports filed by observers with very different responsibilities. Gass, who remained behind at the main camp with Lewis, summarizes the day’s arrivals, departures, and curiosities. Clark, returning from his reconnaissance north of the cape, records the texture of the march itself — the tides, the raft-building, the wary Chinnook parties met on the beach.
Two Vantage Points on a Single Day
Gass writes from the stationary camp, and his entry has the cadence of a digest: weather, hunters out, hunters in, and an inventory of what Clark’s returning party brought with them. He notes that Lewis “gave one of them a medal, as he ranked as a chief in the nation,” framing the diplomacy as a discrete event. Clark, writing the same scene from the receiving end of the march, expands the medal ceremony into a fuller record:
found maney of the Chin nooks with Capt. Lewis of whome there was 2 Cheifs Com com mo ly & Chil-lar-la-wil to whome we gave Medals and to one a flag.
Clark names the two chiefs — Comcomly and Chillarlawil — where Gass refers only to a generic recipient. The pattern is consistent across the expedition: Gass, working from a shorter daily memorandum and writing for eventual publication, tends to compress Indigenous names and political detail, while Clark preserves the specifics his official role required him to track.
What Gass Sees That Clark Does Not
The reverse pattern, however, governs the day’s natural history. Gass devotes his most careful sentences to a bird Clark mentions only in passing on other days:
They killed a remarkably large buzzard, of a species different from any I had seen. It was g feet across the wings, and 3 feet 10 inches from the bill to the tail.
This is almost certainly a California condor, and Gass’s measurements — wingspan and body length to the inch — are the kind of quantitative observation that the captains usually reserve for themselves. Gass also notes the pumice stones washed up on the beach, judging them “of a quality superior to those on the Missouri,” a comparative geological remark that shows him drawing on the expedition’s cumulative experience. Clark, occupied with the river crossing and the diplomatic encounters, omits the buzzard and the pumice entirely from his November 20 entry. For the natural-history record of this day, Gass is the indispensable witness.
The Sea Otter Robe
Both narrators converge on the day’s most memorable transaction. Gass does not mention it at all — a striking omission, given the trouble it caused — but Clark records it twice, in a field draft and a fuller fair-copy version. In the shorter draft he writes:
maney Indians about one of which had on a robe made of 2 Sea Orter Skins. Capt Lewis offered him many things for his Skins with others a blanket, a coat all of which he refused we at length purchased it for a belt of Blue Beeds which the Squar had-
The expanded version sharpens the aesthetic judgment — “the fur of them were more butifull than any fur I had ever Seen” — and clarifies that the belt belonged to “the Squar-wife of our interpreter Shabono,” that is, Sacagawea. The detail matters: the captains had exhausted their trade goods trying to obtain the robe, and only Sacagawea’s personal ornament closed the deal. Clark’s two drafts show him reworking the episode for clarity, settling on a version that names Charbonneau and identifies the bead belt as Sacagawea’s possession rather than communal expedition property.
Clark also records a quieter diplomatic note absent from Gass: the Chinnook parties he met on the beach “appeard to know my deturmonation of keeping every individual of their nation at a proper distance, as they were guarded and resurved in my presence.” The remark suggests that word of the captains’ wariness — perhaps following thefts or tensions earlier in November — had traveled ahead of him along the coast. Gass, at camp, sees only the friendly arrivals; Clark, on the trail, registers the cooler reception that the expedition’s reputation was beginning to produce among the Lower Columbia peoples.
