The journal entries for December 12, 1805, capture a working day at the unfinished Fort Clatsop, where construction labor, persistent rain, and an afternoon trading visit from Clatsop neighbors filled the hours. Patrick Gass and William Clark both document the same events, but their narrative priorities diverge sharply — Gass keeping a builder’s log, Clark expanding into commercial and ethnographic detail. A second Clark-aligned entry, evidently a clean copy or parallel draft, confirms how Clark’s observations were refined for the record.
Construction Progress and the Problem of Boards
Gass, the expedition’s carpenter and most practical chronicler of construction, leads with the day’s tangible achievement: three rooms finished except for roofing. He immediately registers the technical obstacle that will dog the work for days:
In the forenoon we finished 3 rooms of our cabins, all but the covering ; which I expect will be a difficult part of the business, as we have not yet found any timber which splits well; two men went out to make some boards, if possible, for our roofs.
Clark mentions the same detail — “despatched 2 men to get board timber” — but without Gass’s diagnostic concern about the unsplittable timber. Where Gass identifies a problem, Clark merely notes a task assigned. The contrast underscores Gass’s value as the expedition’s working artisan: he sees the woodgrain, not just the work order. The parallel Clark-aligned entry similarly reduces the matter to “detached two men to Split boards,” omitting the material difficulty entirely.
Fleas, Robes, and Shared Misery
Both Clark entries dwell on a complaint Gass passes over in silence. Clark writes:
The flees so bad last night that, I made but a broken nights rest we can’t get them out of our robes & Skins, which we are obliged to make use of for bedding
The parallel entry repeats the lament almost verbatim, calling them “those trouble insects” lodged in “robes and blankets.” That this nuisance survives into a fair-copy version suggests Clark considered it worth preserving as evidence of conditions in the new winter quarters. Gass, by contrast, ends his entry with the laconic “Some rain fell in the evening” — no mention of fleas, no mention of broken sleep. Whether Gass slept better or simply considered such complaints beneath the dignity of a published-style journal is unclear, but the omission is characteristic. Gass’s prose throughout the expedition tends to suppress personal discomfort in favor of accomplished tasks.
The Clatsop Visit: Trade, Ethnography, and Diplomacy
The most striking divergence comes with the afternoon visitors. Gass disposes of them in a single sentence: “About 3 o’clock in the afternoon a number of the natives from the seashore came to our camp, and remained all night.” Clark, by contrast, devotes the bulk of his entry to the encounter, naming the goods exchanged, the prices, the chief, and his assessment of Clatsop trading character.
2 Canoe of Indians Came from the 2 villages of Clotsop below, & brought Wapitoo roots a black root they call Si-ni-tor and a Small Sea orter Skin all of which we purchased for a fiew fishing hooks & Some Snake Indian Tobacco.
The parallel entry refines the transcription of the black root to “Sha-na toe qua” and adds that it is “Sweet” — a small but telling correction suggesting Clark revisited his linguistic notes. The chief’s name likewise appears as “Conyear” in one entry and the fuller “Con-ny-au or Com mo-wol” in the other, evidence of Clark working toward a more accurate record.
Clark’s commercial assessment is unusually sharp. Where the field entry calls the Clatsops “tite Deelers,” the parallel version expands this into a fuller character sketch:
I can readily discover that they are Close deelers, & Stickle for a verry little, never close a bargin except they think they have the advantage Value Blue beeds highly, white they also prise but no other Colour do they Value in the leastthe Wap pa to they Sell high, this root the purchase at a high price from the nativs above.
This recognition that the Clatsops were themselves middlemen — buying wapato upriver and reselling at coastal markups — reflects Clark’s growing sophistication about Lower Columbia trade networks. Gass, focused on roofing and timber, records none of it. The two narrators thus produce complementary documents: Gass preserves the rhythm of labor, Clark the texture of encounter.
