By April 6, 1805, the Corps of Discovery was poised to leave Fort Mandan after a long winter. Baggage was being loaded into the pirogues, and the men expected to embark imminently. Instead, a rumor brought by Mandan visitors — that the entire Arikara (Ricara) nation had come up the Missouri to the opposite bank — produced a full day’s delay. Three narrators present at the fort recorded the episode: Sergeant John Ordway, Sergeant Patrick Gass, and Captain William Clark. Read together, their entries reveal a clear hierarchy of access to information and three distinct registers of expedition record-keeping.
Three Vantage Points on a Single Rumor
Ordway, writing as a sergeant close to the practical work of the day, opens with the loading of the pirogues and then frames the news as a logistical interruption. He attributes the report directly to its source and adds a layer of Mandan interpretation:
Some of the Mandans Indians informed us that the RickaRee nation was all comming up to their villages, as they Supposed to Stay and live with them, our officers wished to wait and know their business.
Ordway’s phrasing — “as they Supposed to Stay and live with them” — preserves the Mandan speakers’ own theory of Arikara intentions, a detail neither Gass nor Clark records. He also names the composition of the scouting party with characteristic specificity: “our Interpreter one of the party and two frenchmen.” The closing weather note (“the wind gentle from the South”) is a habit of Ordway’s daily discipline, not shared by the others on this date.
Gass, by contrast, compresses the entire affair into two sentences:
morning we heard that some of the Rickarees had come up to the Mandan villages. Our interpreter and some of the men were sent over to ascertain the truth of the report ; and we were detained all day waiting their return.
Where Ordway writes “the RickaRee nation was all comming up,” Gass scales the report down to “some of the Rickarees.” This is consistent with Gass’s tendency, visible across his journal, to flatten dramatic claims into measured summary. His emphasis falls on the consequence — “we were detained all day” — rather than the diplomatic content. The published character of Gass’s journal (edited by David McKeehan in 1807) likely accentuates this clean, summarized prose.
Clark’s Diplomatic Frame
Clark’s entry is the shortest of the three but carries the diplomatic weight the sergeants lack. He confirms the scale of the report — “the whole of the ricarra nation” — and locates them precisely “on the other Side of the river near their old village.” Most importantly, he reveals the captains’ actual question:
we Sent an interpreter to See with orders to return imediately and let us know if their Chiefs ment to go down to See their great father.
This single clause reframes the day. Where Ordway reports the officers wanting to “know their business” in general terms, and Gass reduces the mission to ascertaining “the truth of the report,” Clark discloses the specific U.S. policy interest: whether Arikara chiefs would travel down the Missouri to meet President Jefferson. The expedition had spent the winter cultivating exactly such delegations, and Clark’s instruction to the interpreter to “return imediately” reflects the tension between diplomatic opportunity and the urgency of departure.
Patterns of Borrowing and Independent Observation
The three entries show no sign of textual copying among the narrators on this date — a contrast to other days when Ordway and Gass align closely in phrasing. Each writer independently identifies the same core facts (Arikara report, interpreter dispatched, day lost) but selects different surrounding detail: Ordway preserves Mandan speech and weather; Gass strips to consequence; Clark records command intent. The variation in scale of the rumor — “all comming up” (Ordway), “some of the Rickarees” (Gass), “the whole of the ricarra nation” (Clark) — also suggests the report was already mutating as it passed through the fort.
The day’s delay would prove brief. The expedition would launch the permanent party up the Missouri the following afternoon, beginning the leg of the journey that opens Chapter VII in the published narratives: Fort Mandan to the Marias River. The April 6 entries, taken together, capture the expedition in its final administrative posture — still bound by Mandan-Arikara intelligence, still attentive to Jeffersonian diplomatic aims, and not yet in the country beyond.
