The journals of February 4, 1805, document a single event — the departure of a sixteen-man hunting party from Fort Mandan — through three sharply contrasting registers. Captain Meriwether Lewis, Sergeant John Ordway, and Sergeant Patrick Gass each commit the day to paper, but the differences in detail, framing, and context expose how authorship within the Corps of Discovery operated along clear hierarchies of information.
Strategic Context Versus Field Notation
Lewis alone supplies the reasoning behind the expedition. He opens with meteorological precision — “the thermometer stood at 18° below Naught, wind from N. W.” — and then explains the urgency driving Clark’s departure:
our stock of meat which we had procured in the Months of November & December is now nearly exhausted; a supply of this articles is at this moment peculiarly interesting as well for our immediate consumption, as that we may have time before the approach of the warm season to prepare the meat for our voyage in the spring of the year.
Lewis frames the hunt as a logistical race against thaw, and notes Clark’s contingency plan to push as far as “the River bullet” if game proves scarce. He further situates the Corps within a regional food crisis, observing that “no buffaloe have made their appearance in our neighbourhood for some weeks” and that “our Indian neighbours suffer extreemly at this moment for the article of flesh.”
Neither sergeant offers any of this. Ordway records only the bare mechanics of departure: “14 men of the party & 2 frenchman Set off this morning with 2 horses and 2 Sleds in order to Go a considerable distance down the River a hunting.” Gass, who is himself among the hunters, condenses the day to a single terse line: “went down the river to hunt. We proceeded on 20 miles and could see no game.” The captain explains why; the sergeants simply move.
Discrepancies in the Count
A small but telling inconsistency surfaces in the personnel figures. Lewis writes that Clark’s party consisted of “sixteen of our command and two frenchmen.” Ordway counts “14 men of the party & 2 frenchman.” The two-man gap likely reflects whether Clark and a second officer or noncommissioned leader are tallied within the “command” or treated separately. Lewis, writing from the fort, knows the official roster; Ordway, who remained behind to keep the post journal, may be counting only enlisted men visible at departure. Gass, traveling with the group, gives no number at all — a pattern consistent with his habit of writing from the perspective of the marching column rather than the muster roll.
Lewis is also alone in describing the equipment, noting that “the men transported their baggage on a couple of small wooden Slays drawn by themselves, and took with them 3 pack horses” intended to return early with meat. Ordway mentions “2 horses and 2 Sleds,” omitting the third pack horse. The discrepancy is minor but suggests Ordway recorded what he saw leave the gate, while Lewis recorded the operational plan.
Shields and the Two Lean Deer
Both Lewis and Ordway record John Shields’s separate hunt close to the fort. Ordway notes simply that “Shields went out a Short time in this bottom and killed two Deer.” Lewis confirms the kill — “Shields killed two deer this evening” — but adds the kind of naturalist detail Ordway consistently omits: “both very lean one a large buck, he had shed his horns.” The observation that the buck had already shed its antlers is a phenological note useful to Lewis’s broader natural-history project, and it is precisely the sort of marginal datum that the captain captures and the sergeants do not. Gass, twenty miles downriver and seeing no game, makes no mention of Shields at all.
Taken together, the three entries form a layered record: Lewis as strategist and naturalist, Ordway as fort-bound clerk noting comings and goings, and Gass as participant-observer reporting only what the hunting party itself encountered. The same February morning yields a logistical essay, a duty log, and a trail note — a useful reminder that the “expedition record” is in fact a composite shaped by where each writer stood when he opened his journal.
This analysis was generated with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor.
