The journal entries for March 17, 1805, capture a small but consequential episode in the final weeks at Fort Mandan: the interpreter Toussaint Charbonneau, having earlier withdrawn from the expedition’s terms, reverses himself and asks to be reinstated. Sergeant John Ordway and Captain William Clark both record the event, and the differences between their accounts illuminate how rank, role, and audience shaped the expedition’s documentary record.
Two Vantage Points on a Single Reversal
Ordway, writing from the perspective of the enlisted ranks tasked with the day’s labor, frames the moment in terms of physical movement of goods. He notes that Charbonneau “be-gan to move his baggage across the river in order to Go up to the Grossvantars to live,” and then, mid-transfer, “concluded and agreed to Go with us.” The reversal is presented almost as a logistical curiosity — baggage hauled one direction, then hauled back:
Mr Sharbonow be-gan to move his baggage across the river in order to Go up to the Grossvantars to live, had Got the most of his things across the River he concluded and agreed to Go with us. then moved his effects back to the Fort, & pitched a lodge near the Fort
Clark, by contrast, treats the same event as a matter of negotiation and apology. In his account, the initiative comes from Charbonneau, who dispatches “a french man of our party” as an emissary:
Mr. Chabonah Sent a french man of our party that he was Sorry for the foolissh part he had acted and if we pleased he would accompany us agreeabley to the terms we had perposed and doe every thing we wished him to doe
Clark adds a detail Ordway omits entirely: that Charbonneau had already, “two days ago,” asked through the French interpreter to be excused for “his Simplicity” and taken back into service. The captain thus places the March 17 reconciliation at the end of a multi-day diplomatic sequence rather than treating it as a sudden change of mind.
Register and What Each Narrator Notices
The contrast in register is instructive. Ordway’s entry registers the visible — baggage in motion, a lodge pitched, the high west wind, and the small grievance that “Warner has lost his Tommahawk, expect the Indians Stole it.” His is a sergeant’s log: who did what, where, and what went missing. The Charbonneau matter sits alongside the lost tomahawk and the airing of parched meal as one item among several.
Clark’s entry, by contrast, foregrounds the human transaction. He records that the captains “called him in and Spoke to him on the Subject,” emphasizing the formal interview and the renewed agreement on terms. Where Ordway sees movement, Clark sees a contract restored. Notably, Clark says little about the baggage shuttle that so structures Ordway’s account — the captain’s interest is in the agreement, not the choreography.
Neither narrator names Sacagawea, though her presence in the Charbonneau household is part of what made his services valuable to the expedition. Both men also note environmental and social conditions in passing: Ordway flags the high westerly wind that complicated the airing of goods, while Clark observes that “the river riseing a little and Severall places open” — an early signal of the spring breakup that would soon permit departure. Clark’s note that there were “but fiew Indians here to day” complements Ordway’s silence on Mandan visitors and suggests the fort’s social rhythms were quieting as departure neared.
Reading the Entries Together
Read in parallel, the two accounts neither contradict nor duplicate one another. Ordway supplies the external sequence — the baggage crossing the river and being hauled back, the lodge pitched near the fort — that confirms the visibility of Charbonneau’s reversal to the rank and file. Clark supplies the back-channel diplomacy: the prior overture through the French interpreter, the captains’ formal acceptance, and the language of “terms” that frames the relationship as contractual.
The episode also previews the divided documentary habits that characterize the expedition’s longer record. Ordway is the chronicler of the company’s daily texture; Clark, when he writes alone on a given day, tends toward the negotiated and the consequential. The lost tomahawk and the rehired interpreter belong to the same March Sunday, but only one narrator is interested in both.
