On 30 November 1804, the newly established garrison at Fort Mandan faced its first diplomatic-military test. A Mandan messenger crossed the half-frozen Missouri to report that a hunting party from his nation had been attacked by Sioux warriors, with one man killed, others wounded, and horses stolen. The captains’ response — to march volunteers across the river in a show of solidarity — is preserved in three quite different accounts, each shaped by the writer’s vantage point and purpose.
Clark’s Diplomatic Theater
Clark’s entry is by far the most detailed and the most self-consciously diplomatic. He casts the expedition into a paternal idiom familiar from Jeffersonian Indian policy, framing the Mandans as “my Dutifull Children” whose blood he has come to avenge. He records the formal choreography of the encounter — the chiefs meeting his party 200 yards from the town, the invitation to the lodge, the request that the great chief “repeat the Cercunstance of the Sioux attack as it realy happined.”
Clark also preserves what neither Ordway nor Gass attempts: the Mandan reply in something approaching its original rhetorical shape.
the Sious who Spilt our Blood is gorn home — The Snow is deep and it is Cold, our horses Cannot Travel thro the plains in pursute — If you will go and conduct us in the Spring after the Snow is gorn, we will assemble all the warriers & Brave men in all the villages and go with you.
A second Clark fragment for the same date adds intelligence absent from the other journals: that roughly half the attacking party were Pawnee (“Panias”), and that two Pawnee visitors were therefore hurried home “for fear of their being put to death by the party Defeated.” Clark alone records the dying speech of the slain young chief — “this day I shall die like a man before my Enimies” — a detail that suggests he was probing not only military but cultural intelligence.
Ordway’s Soldier’s-Eye View
Sergeant Ordway’s account, by contrast, is structured around the march itself. Where Clark dwells on speeches, Ordway describes terrain, formation, and weather. He notes that the messenger arrived “about 9 oClock A.M.” (he writes “last night” but immediately corrects to morning), and that the volunteers — “Captain Clark, myself & 20 more of the party” — crossed the river by pirogue and pushed through three miles of willow and brush with “flanking parties out each Side & a rear Guard.” Ordway, posted on the left flank, candidly admits he “found it difficult getting through the brush.”
Ordway also captures the social texture of the visit in a way Clark’s official prose does not:
they appeared to be pleased at our comming to their assistance & used us friendly, they would have us to Eat in every lodge we went in
His closing detail — that the officers issued each man “a drink of Taffe, which we Stood in need off” after the cold return march across the ice — is the kind of ration-book observation Clark omits but that defines Ordway’s register throughout the journals.
Gass: A Conspicuous Absence
The most striking cross-narrator pattern on this date is what Patrick Gass does not report. The published Gass entry attributed to 30 November describes passing “black bluffs on the south side,” speaking with Indians from a moving boat, and the “old chief” becoming alarmed when “the waves ran very high.” None of this fits Fort Mandan in late November, when the Missouri was already freezing over and the party was stationary in winter quarters. Ordway describes crossing the river on ice; Clark confirms “I crossed the River on the Ice and returned to the fort.”
The Gass passage almost certainly belongs to an earlier date in the downriver journey and has been misattributed in the printed edition — a reminder that Gass’s journal, posthumously edited by David McKeehan, is the least textually reliable of the three. For the Sioux-attack episode, researchers must rely on Clark and Ordway, whose accounts complement rather than contradict each other: Clark gives the council, Ordway gives the column.
Patterns Across the Three
Read together, the entries illustrate a recurring division of labor in the expedition’s documentary record. Clark, as commanding officer present at the lodge, records diplomatic content — speeches, intelligence, the political fallout for the visiting Pawnee. Ordway, marching in the ranks, records logistics, terrain, and the men’s experience, including the welcome ration of taffia. Neither man’s account would be complete without the other. Gass’s misplaced entry, meanwhile, underscores why cross-narrator comparison remains essential: a single source, especially an edited one, can silently mislead.
