The wreck of a stern canoe in a Snake River rapid below the Palouse confluence produced one of the more vivid clusters of cross-narrator testimony in the expedition record. Patrick Gass, John Ordway, and William Clark each describe the same accident, yet their accounts diverge sharply in detail, register, and what each man thought worth preserving for posterity.
Three Versions of the Same Disaster
Clark, writing as commander, foregrounds the inventory of loss. He names Drouillard as steersman of the canoe that struck and itemizes ruined and missing goods with the precision of a man accountable for them:
Great many articles lost among other things 2 of the mens beding Shot pouches Tomahaws &c. &c. and every article wet of which we have great Cause to lament as all our loose Powder two Canisters, all our roots prepared in the Indian way, and one half of our goods, fortunately the lead canisters which was in the canoe was tied down, otherwise they must have been lost
Ordway, by contrast, places himself inside the accident. His is the only account that identifies the narrator as one of the men stranded on the rock:
the canoe got lightned She went of[f] of a sudden & left myself and three more standing on the rock half leg deep in the rapid water, untill a canoe came to our assistance
Gass, the most compressed of the three, reduces the episode to a sentence and a half, noting only that “a canoe hit a rock, and part of her sunk” and that “with the assistance of the other canoes all the men got safe to shore.” Where Clark laments and Ordway reports bodily peril, Gass moves quickly past the wreck to the day’s mileage — fourteen miles — and the halt on the island.
What Each Narrator Notices
The differences are not merely stylistic. Each man records details the others omit. Clark alone preserves the geological landmark of the morning: a rock “resembling the hull of a Ship” on the larboard point — an image whose ironic foreshadowing of the afternoon’s wreck he does not comment on but plainly noted. Clark also alone mentions his “good dinner of Blue wing Teel,” the first such meal in three weeks, a small domestic note that humanizes the official journal.
Ordway is the most precise about the lost goods at the level of the enlisted men’s property: “two mens bedding lost one tommahawk, and some other Small articles a Small copper kittle.” His copper kettle does not appear in Clark’s list. Ordway also documents the campsite’s archaeology — “an old fishery where the natives had dryed Sammon burryed their wood covred over it” — and admits frankly, “we took some for our use.” Clark records the same buried cache but insists the party was “Cautious not to touch” the fish, attributing the use of the buried wood to “the wish of our two Chiefs.” The discrepancy is small but telling: Clark frames the appropriation as sanctioned by Nez Perce guides, while Ordway simply records the act.
Gass, alone among the three, extends his entry into the following day, October 15, and offers an aesthetic appraisal of the river that is unmatched in tone elsewhere in the journals:
This river in general is very handsome, except at the rapids, where it is risking both life and property to pass; and even these rapids, when the bare view or prospect is considered distinct from the advantages of navigation, may add to its beauty, by interposing variety and scenes of romantick grandeur where there is so much uniformity in the appearance of the country.
The vocabulary — “romantick grandeur,” “uniformity,” the bracketed concession of navigational risk — strongly suggests the editorial hand of David McKeehan, Gass’s 1807 publisher, polishing the sergeant’s plainer field notes for a reading public.
Patterns Across the Three Accounts
Ordway and Clark agree on the essential mechanics: the canoe ran on a rock, turned, filled, and was held by the men until a second canoe could unload and assist. They diverge on duration (Clark estimates an hour) and on the catalogue of goods. Gass shows no sign of having consulted either — his timing (“About 1 o’clock”) and his mileage figure stand independently, and his brevity suggests he was not present in the wrecked canoe and recorded only what he saw from another vessel or learned secondhand.
The cluster illustrates a recurring pattern in the expedition record: Clark writes as accountant of the enterprise; Ordway writes as participant-witness with a sergeant’s eye for specific property; Gass — or Gass-through-McKeehan — writes for an audience, smoothing incident into narrative and admitting the language of the picturesque that the captains’ field journals never indulge.
