March 2, 1806, at Fort Clatsop. Three published journals survive for the day in this corpus: John Ordway’s short trade note, and the long, nearly parallel natural-history entries of William Clark and Meriwether Lewis. Patrick Gass has no published journal for this date here.
Ordway’s ledger
Ordway records that three men returned from the village with a considerable quantity of little fish
resembling herren only a size smaller, and some Sturgeon and a fiew wapatoes, which they purchased from them, the natives catch a vast quantity of fish &C.
He does not name the three men. He does not call the small fish anchovies, and he does not mention a feast. What he keeps is the comparison to herring, a size smaller, the sturgeon, a few wapato, and the Native catch. That is the enlisted day: who came back, what was purchased.
The captains’ shared opening
Clark and Lewis open with the sick list, almost word for word. Clark:
The diet of the Sick is So inferior that they recover their Strength but Slowly. none of them are now Sick but all in a State of Covelessence with keen appetites and nothing to eate except lean Elk meat.
Lewis has the same convalescence and the same lean elk, with “convalessence” and “nothing to eat.” Then the supply that changes the table. Clark names three men:
This evening late Drewyer, Crusat & Wiser returned with a most acceptable Supply of fat Sturgen, fresh anchoves and a bag Containing about a bushel of Wappato. we feasted on the Anchovies and wappatoe.-.
Lewis names only Drewyer, with the same sturgeon, anchovies, and bushel of wappetoe, and “we feasted on Anchovies and Wappetoe.” The captains treat the arrival as relief from lean meat. Ordway’s three men, herring-like fish, sturgeon, and few wapato are the same boats in a different register.
Two versions of the cock of the plains
Both captains then describe the heath cock, or cock of the plains. The differences are small and consistent. Clark estimates the bird at “3/4ths the Size of a turkey”; Lewis gives “2/3rds the size of a turkey.” Clark places its range “from the enterance of Lewis’s river to the mountains which pass the Columbia between the Great falls and Rapids”; Lewis writes “from the entrance of the S. E. fork of the Columbia to that of Clark’s river.” Clark’s heading is the Heath Cock or cock of the Plains; Lewis’s is the Cock of the Plains alone.
Much of the plumage, tail, and gizzard is shared. Both men say the gizzard “resembles a maw quite as much as a gizzard,” that the birds make a cackling noise like the dunghill fowl, and that the flesh is dark and only tolerable. Clark’s comparison is to “the Pheasant or Prarie hen, or Grouse”; Lewis’s is “either the Pheasant or Grouse.” Lewis alone adds that they “sometimes feed on the prickley pear,” interpolates “the following is a likeness of the head and beak,” and notes that the bird “is invariably found in the plains.” Clark, after a “faint likeness of the Cock of the plains or Heath Cock,” carries the species back to first meeting “on the Missouri below and in the neighbourhood of the Rocky Mountains,” and then adds a separate bird Lewis does not write this day:
The large Black & White Pheasant is peculiar to that portion of the Rocky Mountains watered by the Columbia River.
Clark’s pheasant is about the size of a hen, dark brown, black, and white, “very much the appearance of that kind of dunghill fowl, which the henwives of our Countrey Call dommanicker,” booted to the toes, feeding on sac-a-com-mis berries and pine seed. That continuation is Clark’s, not a break in a copied grouse paragraph.
Clark’s cattail
Only Clark records the cattail, or Cooper’s flag, eaten by “the nativs of this neighbourhood.” It is “pleasantly tasted and appears to be very nutrecious.” The inner root, eaten without preparation, is
Composed of a number of capellary white flexable Strong fibers among which is a mealy or Starch like Substance which readily disolves in the mouth
and, he thinks, “would make excellent Starch.” Lewis omits the plant entirely this day.
The pattern is not simple copying in one direction. The captains share the sick diet, the feast, and most of the grouse; Clark keeps the three returning names, the cattail, the Missouri first-meeting, and the black-and-white pheasant; Lewis keeps the prickly-pear note, the plains habit, and the sketch call-out; Ordway keeps the herring comparison and the Native catch. That is the published record for March 2.
