October 27, 1804 marked the Corps of Discovery’s arrival at the Mandan villages near the Knife River — a turning point that would shape the expedition’s winter and its diplomatic future. Three narrators present that day — Sergeant John Ordway, Sergeant Patrick Gass, and Captain William Clark — each recorded the day’s events, but with strikingly different emphases. Read together, their entries expose how rank, role, and audience shaped what each man chose to preserve.
The Sergeants’ Parallel Accounts
Ordway and Gass produce remarkably similar entries, suggesting either close conversation between the two sergeants or shared reliance on a common framework for the day’s record. Both fix the arrival time precisely. Ordway writes that “at 7 oC. we arived at the 1st village of the Mandens on S. S.,” while Gass notes, “At half past seven we arrived at the first village of the Mandans and halted about two hours.” Both men estimate the village at roughly forty lodges; both compare the architecture to that of the Arikara (“Rekarees” / “Rickarees”) villages encountered earlier; both record the black mineral stratum in the bluff resembling “Stone coal” or “coal”; and both close with the identical mileage figure — 1610 miles from the mouth of the Missouri.
Yet small differences separate them. Ordway lingers on the human scene, noting the French traders living among the Mandans and observing that one “kept a Squaw & had a child by hir which was tollerable white.” He notes the children “are verry numerous” and that the men were “mostly a hunting.” Gass, more economical, generalizes the same observation into an ethnographic remark: “These Indians have better complexions than most other Indians, and some of the children have fair hair.” Where Ordway reports a specific mixed-race child, Gass folds the detail into a broader claim about the population. Gass alone records a burial practice the others omit entirely:
These people do not bury their dead, but place the body on a scaffold, wrapped in a buffaloe robe, where it lies exposed.
This detail — central to later ethnographic understanding of Plains mortuary custom — appears in neither sergeant Ordway’s entry nor Clark’s, a reminder that Gass’s published journal frequently preserves observations the manuscript record loses.
Clark’s Diplomatic Register
Clark’s entry operates in a wholly different register. Where the sergeants count lodges and miles, Clark records statecraft. He walks to a chief’s lodge, smokes, and immediately registers a diplomatic misstep: “I walked to a Chiefs Logg & Smoked with them, but Could not eat, which did displease them a little.” In his second draft of the entry he expands the moment, noting that the chiefs “were anxious that I would Stay and eat with them, my indisposition provented my eating which displeased them, untill a full explination took place.” Neither Ordway nor Gass mentions this exchange — it belongs to the captains’ sphere of responsibility.
Clark also introduces the day’s most consequential addition: René Jusseaume, the French trader hired on the spot as interpreter. Clark’s assessment is unsparing:
well to give my ideas as to the impression thais man makes on me is a Cunin artfull an insoncear he tels me he was once empld. by my brother in the Illinois & of his description I conceve as a Spye upon the British of Michillinicknac & St Joseph,s we think he may be made use full to us & do employ him as an interpeter
Ordway never names this Frenchman; Gass does not mention him at all. The hire — a calculated bet on a man Clark distrusts — is captain’s business, and only the captain records it.
Architecture, Geography, and the Council Site
Clark also offers what the sergeants do not: a description of Mandan architecture. The village sits “on an eminance of about 50 feet above the Water,” with houses “round and Verry large Containing Several families, as also their horses which is tied on one Side of the enterance.” He defers fuller ethnographic treatment — “a Discription of those houses will be given hereafter” — a habit of the captain’s journals that signals planning for later expansion.
All three narrators converge on the day’s strategic conclusion: the choice of campsite. Ordway notes plainly that “this is the most conveneint place to hold a counsel with the whole nation,” and that “we hoisted a flag pole.” Gass echoes the purpose — “for the purpose of holding a council with the natives.” Clark elaborates the logistics, recording that three carrots of tobacco were dispatched to the upriver villages with invitations to council the following day. The flagstaff goes up; the diplomacy is set in motion. The sergeants record the gesture; the captain records the strategy behind it.
