The events of October 18, 1804 along the lower stretch of what is now Emmons County, North Dakota, produced three overlapping but distinctly textured records. Patrick Gass, John Ordway, and William Clark all noted the same core incidents — an early frost, a meeting with two robbed French trappers, the passage of Cannonball River, and a productive day of hunting. Yet each narrator selects different details for preservation, and the divergences illuminate how information traveled, was shared, and was filtered within the expedition’s documentary apparatus.
The Robbed Frenchmen: A Shared Incident, Three Tellings
All three journalists report the encounter with two French trappers descending the Missouri after being robbed near the Mandan villages, but the specifics shift between accounts. Gass offers the most compressed version, noting that the trappers had been “robbed of their arms, ammunition and some fur which they had,” and that they reversed course “in hopes of recovering their property.” Ordway expands the inventory considerably, listing “their Guns & amunition &c. axe & 30 beaver Skins & all they had,” and crucially identifies the men as connected to the expedition’s own Arikara interpreter:
their was 2 frenchman in the cannoe who had been a hunting up to the Manden nation and was Robed by a hunting party of the Mandens… which belonged to the frenchman we had on board Mr Gravelleen.
Clark, writing as captain, focuses on a different specificity — “4 Traps, & part of their Skins and Several other articles” — and records a careful epistemic hedge that neither sergeant offers: the trappers were robbed “by Indians he took to be Mandans.” In Clark’s revised entry, this caution sharpens into the identification that the men “were in the imploy of our Ricaree interpeter Mr. Gravelin.” The pattern suggests Ordway and Clark were drawing on shared conversations aboard the keelboat — likely with Gravelines himself — while Gass, working at greater remove, recorded only the bare outline of the affair.
The Stones That Named the River
The naming of Cannonball River prompts the most striking divergence in observational register. Gass mentions only that the party “passed a small river, on the south side called Cannon-ball river” — the name floats free of explanation. Ordway, by contrast, supplies the etymology directly and notes a practical use:
passed Sand Stone Bluff on the Same Side ab° the River where we found round Stone in the form of cannon balls. Some of them verry large we took one of them on Board to answer for an anker.
Clark gives the fullest geological description, attentive to texture and utility in a way characteristic of his expanded captain’s journal:
in and at the foot of the Bluff, and in the water is a number of round Stones, resembling Shells and Cannon balls of Different Sises, and of excellent grit for Grindstons.
Where Ordway sees an anchor, Clark sees grindstone material; where Gass records only a name, both Clark and Ordway preserve the phenomenon that produced it. Clark’s revised entry adds the headwaters — the river “heads in the Court not or Black mountains” — extending observation into geographic inference beyond what either sergeant attempts.
Counting Game and Counting Differently
The day’s hunting tally exposes a familiar pattern of small numerical disagreements. Gass tallies “six deer, four goats and a pelican.” Ordway, writing later in the day or with access to additional reports, records “Six Deer 4 Goats & 3 Elk” plus the earlier elk and pelican. Clark’s first draft says “6 Deer & 4 Elk”; his revised entry expands this to “4 Goats 6 Deer 4 Elk & a pelican.” The pronghorn (“Goats”) appear in every account, but only Ordway and Clark register the truly arresting figure of the day — a single herd of 248 elk. Clark elevates this from a hunter’s report to an ethnographic note, adding that “The ricara Indians inform us that they find no black tail Deer as high up as this place,” a comparative remark wholly absent from the sergeants’ journals.
Taken together, the three October 18 entries form a useful case study in expedition documentation. Gass produces the publishable summary; Ordway records the working detail of camp life, including improvised gear like the stone anchor; Clark synthesizes geography, ethnography, and incident into a more analytical record, then revises it into something approaching official narrative. The robbed Frenchmen, the round stones, and the immense elk herd all happened once — but they survive in the archive three times over, each time slightly different.
This analysis was AI-assisted and reviewed by a human editor.
