June 3, 1804, on the Missouri near the Osage. Four published journals in this corpus record the day: Clark in two drafts, Floyd, Ordway, and Whitehouse. No Gass journal is published here for this date, and Lewis left no entry of his own. They moved only a few miles to the mouth of Murrow Creek on the south side. The four pens do not give the same hours, and they do not give the same country.
What the enlisted journals keep
Ordway’s afternoon is a hunter’s tally and a start time:
the Hunters killed five Deer while we delayed at this place, we set out at 5 OC. in the afternoon and proceeded along the Clifts. we encamped at Morow Creek on S. Side.
Floyd, writing from the boats, keeps weather and a hunt the others split differently. The forenoon was “Clear”; later “Clouday with thunder and Rain wind from Es'”. He has “Capt Lewis and G. Drureay” killing “one Deer & Grown hog”, then “4 miles to River murrow on the South Saide it is about 30 yardes wide and High Cliftes on the Loer Side of it 3 hundered yardes up the River”. Camp at the mouth on the south side; “ouer hunters Kild one Deer”. Floyd is the only enlisted journalist who measures the creek and the cliffs. Ordway has the cliffs but not the widths. Whitehouse has neither.
Whitehouse is nearly blank:
a fair morning. Several men out a hunting. our officers takes observations &c.
The sentence could sit on any fair morning of the first month. He notes that observations were taken and does not record what they showed. The later habit of Whitehouse tracking Ordway is not visible yet.
Clark’s two drafts
Clark’s field draft and a more finished astronomical redraft are the center of the day. The redraft keeps the failed observation in numbers:
Took meridional altitude of suns U:L with the Octant and Glass Horrison adjusted back observation. the instrument gave 38° 2′ 00″
Then the admission: “it was Cloudy and the Suns disk much obsured, and Cannot be Depended on.” The first draft only says he “was disapointed, the Clouds obsured the Sun”. He still writes the instrument’s reading. Evening work waited on “the return of Capt Lewis from a walk of three or four ms. round”. Lewis’s hunt with Drouillard and that walk survive through Clark and Floyd; Ordway’s hunters are unnamed. Without those notes, Lewis’s afternoon would be invisible here.
Cupboard Creek, war sign, a sore throat
Two details are Clark’s alone. Three miles below camp he names a stream for a projecting rock: “I call Cupboard, Creek, mouths behind a rock which projects into the river” — the redraft has “Cupbord Creek as it Mouths above a rock of that appearance”. Floyd, Ordway, and Whitehouse do not mention it. They count only the destination.
At Murrow’s mouth the field draft has “much fresh Signs of Indians, haveing Crossed”. The redraft reads the same ground as “much Sign of war parties of Inds. haveing Crossed from the mouth of this Creek.” The move from generic sign to “war parties” is Clark interpreting the tracks a second time. None of the enlisted journals this day mention Indian sign of any kind. Read alone, Floyd, Ordway, and Whitehouse leave a river populated by deer.
The field draft ends with a line the redraft and the other three journals drop: “I have a verry Sore Throat, & am Tormented with Musquetors & Small ticks.” The redraft is “I have a bad Cold with a Sore throat” and the insects are gone.
Small disagreements remain in the file. Floyd’s Murrow is 30 yards, Clark’s redraft 20. Ordway’s hunters take five deer; Clark’s first draft has two, his second “Several”. Floyd sets out at 4 p.m.; Clark and Ordway at 5. That is the June 3 record as published here: two Clark drafts that keep even a bad sun shot, a sergeant who measures cliffs, a sergeant who counts five deer, and a private who only saw a fair morning and officers at their instruments.
