The Corps of Discovery’s arrival at the mouth of the Little Missouri on April 12, 1805, produced four overlapping accounts that, read together, expose the layered authorship of the expedition’s record. Lewis and Clark, writing as commanders, generate the primary observations; Ordway and Gass, writing as enlisted men, draw selectively from those observations and from their own field experience. The result is a single day refracted through four registers.
A Near-Disaster Only Lewis Records
The most dramatic incident of the morning appears in only one journal. Lewis describes the red pirogue’s perilous passage beneath a collapsing bank:
the red perogue contrary to my expectation or wish passed under this bank by means of her toe line where I expected to have seen her carried under every instant. I did not discover that she was about to make this attempt untill it was too late for the men to reembark… this cost me some moments of uneasiness, her cargo was of much importance to us in our present advanced situation
Clark, Ordway, and Gass say nothing of the episode. Clark notes only that the party “Set out verry early” with the mercury at 56°. Ordway records an early departure and a beaver shot in the river. Gass elides the morning entirely, beginning his entry at 8 a.m. with the arrival at the Little Missouri. The silence is telling: Lewis writes as the officer responsible for the cargo, and the anxiety belongs to him alone. The enlisted journalists, perhaps unaware of how close the red pirogue came to disaster, or simply uninterested in the captain’s interior weather, leave the moment unrecorded.
Measuring the River: Captains Agree, Gass Differs
The Little Missouri itself receives careful measurement from Lewis and Clark, who agree almost exactly. Clark writes that the river “is 134 yards wide and 2 feet 6 Inches deep at the mouth,” and Lewis independently records it as “134 yards wide at it’s mouth, and sets in with a bould current but it’s greatest debth is not more than 21/2 feet.” The convergence reflects shared instruments and a shared halt for celestial observation — both captains note that clouds defeated the evening reading.
Ordway, by contrast, gives the width as “120 yards” and characterizes the river as “rapid and muddy like the big Missourie.” His figure is close but clearly his own estimate rather than a transcription of the captains’ measurement. Gass offers no measurement at all, contenting himself with the observation that the Little Missouri “exactly resembles the Missouri in colour, current and taste” — a sensory comparison echoing Ordway’s and Clark’s note that “the water of the little Missouri is of the Same texture Colour & quallity of that of the Big Missouri.”
The Hare, the Beaver, and the Onions
Three small incidents appear across multiple journals, allowing comparison of detail and emphasis. The beaver shot in the river — identified by Lewis as taken by “George Drewyer” — is mentioned by all four narrators, though only Lewis names the hunter and only Lewis draws an inference from the sighting:
the beaver being seen in the day, is a proof that they have been but little hunted, as they always keep themselves closly concealed during the day where they are so.
This is characteristic Lewis: an observed fact yields a generalization about animal behavior and human pressure on the landscape. Ordway and Gass simply log the kill.
Clark’s hare receives equally varied treatment. Clark himself describes it with naturalist precision: “I killed a Hare Changeing its Colour Some parts retaining its long white fur & other parts assumeing the Short grey.” Gass compresses this to “Captain Clarke killed a hare, which was now changing its colour from white to grey,” preserving Clark’s observation almost verbatim — strong evidence that Gass had access to the captain’s notes or conversation. Ordway, meanwhile, calls the same animal a “white rabit,” missing both the species identification and the molt.
Lewis alone records the wild onions gathered in the plain, describing the bulb as “of an oval form, white, and about the size of a small bullet” with a leaf resembling “that of the shive.” Ordway notes only that the hunters “found wild Inions &. C.” The botanical particularity is Lewis’s signature.
Weather, Camps, and What Each Sees
The afternoon squall is recorded by Ordway and Clark but not by Lewis or Gass. Clark notes the wind “became violent & flowey accompanied with thunder and a little rain”; Ordway dates it to “about 3 oClock” and observes that it “lasted untill afer Sunset.” Clark alone notices the mice already “cutting our bags of corn & parched meal,” and Clark alone catalogues the magpies, grouse, meadowlarks, and the half-grown wild cherry leaves — the day’s richest natural-history inventory. Where Lewis turns inward to the river’s geography and the pirogue’s near-loss, Clark turns outward to the surrounding plain and its inhabitants. Together the four entries demonstrate how the expedition’s record depended on complementary attention: no single narrator captured the day whole.
