The Corps of Discovery’s departure from Fort Mandan on April 8, 1805 produced a rare alignment of four journal-keepers writing about the same short stretch of river. Lewis, Clark, Sergeant Ordway, and Sergeant Gass all record a hard northwest wind, a swamped canoe, the passage of the Hidatsa (Gros Ventre) villages near the mouth of the Knife River, and a camp made on a bluff-side reach roughly fourteen miles upstream. Read together, the four entries reveal how differently the captains and the sergeants weighted the same day’s events — and how quickly small discrepancies enter the written record.
The Swamped Canoe: Four Versions of One Accident
Every narrator marks the moment a small canoe filled with water, but each quantifies the loss differently. Lewis, writing with the precision of a commanding officer accounting for stores, reports:
we lost half a bag of bisquit, and about thirty pounds of powder by this accedent; the powder we regard as a serious loss, but we spread it to dry immediately and hope we shall still be enabled to restore the greater part of it.
Clark, characteristically blunter, gives a larger figure:
2/3 of a barrel of powder lost by this accedent.
The two captains were writing of the same kegs, yet their estimates do not obviously agree — a reminder that even the expedition’s leadership produced parallel rather than identical inventories.
Ordway, the meticulous sergeant, lists the damage as a sequence rather than a sum:
every thing in the perogue was wet damiged a keg of powder a bag of buiscuit and a nomber of other articles.
Gass minimizes the event entirely, writing that the canoe “had received little damage except wetting some powder on board.” Where Lewis treats the loss as serious and Clark as substantial, Gass seems determined to reassure his eventual readers. The register difference is striking: Gass’s journal, prepared with publication in mind, smooths the day’s anxieties; the captains’ field notebooks preserve them.
Departures, Farewells, and a Woman Turned Back
The captains record human partings the sergeants omit. Lewis describes walking ashore to take ceremonial leave of the Mandan chief Black Cat: he “took leave of him after smoking a pipe as is their custom.” Clark, on the river, records his own farewell from a different chief:
I took my leave of the great Chief of the Mandans who gave me a par of excellent mockersons.
Neither Ordway nor Gass mentions either farewell, though Ordway notes that the party “took breakfast at 2d vil[lage].” The captains alone bore the diplomatic weight of departure; the sergeants tracked miles, wind, and ice.
An even sharper divergence concerns a Mandan man and woman who attempted to join the expedition. Clark notes tersely that
an Indian joined us, also an Indian woman with a view to accompany us, the woman was Sent back the man being acquainted with the Countrey we allowed him to accompanie ns.
Lewis is more pointed about the woman’s intent: she was “extreemly solicitous to accompany one of the men of our party, this however we positively refused to permit.” Ordway records only the man —
an Indian came from the Mandan nation and joined us to go and Show us the River
— and Gass omits the episode altogether. The captains, responsible for discipline, record a refusal; the sergeants record only an addition to the roster.
What Gass Sees That the Others Miss
Gass alone offers two observations of lasting interest. The first concerns Sacagawea, whom the captains do not mention by name on this date:
The woman that is with us is a squaw of the Snake nation of Indians, and wife to our interpreter. We expect she will be of service to us, when passing through that nation.
This is one of the earliest expedition statements of her anticipated diplomatic value, and it appears in the journal of a sergeant rather than a captain.
The second is geological. Gass describes high bluffs on the south side,
one of which had lately been a burning volcano. The pumice stones lay very thick around it, and there was a strong smell of sulphur.
The phenomenon — burning lignite seams in the Missouri bluffs, often misidentified by early travelers as volcanic — goes unmentioned by Lewis, Clark, and Ordway in their April 8 entries. Where the captains attended to powder accounts and parting ceremonies, and Ordway tracked navigation, Gass alone preserved the sensory texture of the riverbank: smoke, sulphur, and pumice.
Read in parallel, the four entries demonstrate a recurring pattern of the early upstream journey: Lewis supplies measured assessment, Clark supplies blunt totals and diplomatic detail, Ordway supplies sequential navigation, and Gass — writing for an audience — supplies narrative color and ethnographic framing the others let pass.
