August 17, 1804, a waiting camp on the Missouri. Three published journals in this corpus record the day: Clark, Ordway, and Floyd. No Whitehouse journal is published here for this date. George Drouillard and a small party had been sent after deserters and toward the Otoes. Until that party came in, the work was maintenance and waiting.
Three registers at a waiting camp
Clark writes the day twice. He opens not with the deserter hunt but with a longitude estimate — “We must be at this time about 99° 45′ 00″ West of Greenwich” — and a botanical list:
I Collected a grass much resembling wheet with a grain like Rye, much fuller of grain, one like Rye & one like Barley Grass Small, a Grass like Timothey except the Seed which is on branches from the main Stalk-
Only after the grasses does he turn to the human news. Late this evening “one of the party Sent after the deserters returned & joined us, he left the party 3 miles back”. The second draft names him: “at 6 oClock this evening Labieche one of the Party Sent to the Ottoes joined, and informed that the Party was behind with one of the Deserters M B. Reed and the 3 principal Chiefs of the Nations”. They had caught both deserters; “La Liberty they cought but he decived them and got away”. The chiefs were coming “to make a peace with the Mahars thro us”; because the Mahars were not at home, “this great object cannot be accomplished at this time”. Clark then “Set the Praries on fire to bring the Mahars & Soues if any were near, this being the usial Signal.” A cool evening; two beaver caught.
Ordway compresses the same camp into practical reportage. Wind from the “S. E.”; “we are yet waiting here for G. Drewyer & the 3 men who were with him”; “the men remained in camp reparing the arms & Cloathing”. He names the messenger “Labuche” and reports what the messenger said: “Drewyer & the Zottaus Chiefs was comming near with the Deserter”. He does not have the three miles back, the peace with the Mahars, the prairie fire, the grasses, or the beaver. His “Zottaus” is the Otoes under another spelling. Weather, labor, news — a stripped outline of Clark’s day without Clark’s diplomacy.
Floyd’s short line
Floyd’s entry for the seventeenth is the briefest of the three:
Continued Hear for ouer men thay did not Return Last night
He does not record Labiche’s evening arrival. His next dated line is “Satturday augt 18”: “ouer men Returnd and Brot with them the man and Brot with them the Grand Chief of the ottoes and 2 Loer ones and 6 youers of thare nattion”. Read against Clark and Ordway, Floyd is still waiting after they have already heard the advance report. Either he wrote before Labiche came in, or the messenger’s arrival was not the fact he chose to keep. The journals are not uniform witnesses. Rank, the hour of writing, and what each man thought worth a line all shape the page.
What the cross-reading shows
Two patterns are enough. Clark alone records the diplomatic substance: that the Oto chiefs are traveling with the party to negotiate peace with the Mahars, and that the prairie burning is a signal rather than an incidental fire. Ordway has the chiefs coming with the deserter and stops there. Floyd, on the 17th, has neither chiefs nor deserter — only the absence of “ouer men”. Second, the advance messenger is a Clark-and-Ordway fact. Clark’s “left the party 3 miles back” is the only cited measure of that separation.
Read singly, each entry is partial. Read together, they restore a camp that was botanical and diplomatic in Clark, laborious in Ordway, and, in Floyd’s one sentence, still only waiting.
