December 24, 1805, at the unfinished huts of Fort Clatsop. Two public-domain narrators record the day as Christmas Eve on the Columbia: Clark at length, Ordway in two sentences. Thwaites’s Whitehouse text ends 6 November 1805, so there is no Whitehouse Christmas Eve in this corpus. Gass’s 1807 journal, printed under this date, is a different day — Columbia rapids and a village of semi-subterranean lodges from the October descent.
Roofing under rain
Clark’s two drafts agree on the labor and the weather. Men carried punchens and finished covering the huts; most of them moved in. Rain the night before, rain without intermission through the day, a hard rain in the evening. Ordway, characteristically short, still matches the work:
covering our huts and made fires in them. Some of the men moved in them this evening.
He does not mention Cuscalah, files, or spoiled meat. He does not mention Christmas.
Cuscalah’s visit, Clark’s only
The day’s diplomacy is Clark’s alone, written twice. Cuscalah — “the Indian who had treated me So politely when I was at the Clatsops village” — comes by canoe with a younger brother and two women, and lays a mat and a parcel of roots before each captain. A demand for two files follows. The captains have no files to spare and return the presents, “which displeased them a little.” An offer of a woman to each is declined, “which also displeased them.” The second draft is blunter:
the female part appeared to be highly disgusted at our refuseing to axcept of their favours
. Ordway, writing from the enlisted huts, has none of this. That silence is expected; it is also a reminder that much of the Clatsop diplomacy in this corpus survives only in Clark’s book.
Gass printed under the wrong day
The Gass paragraph attached to December 24 in the 1807 book is not a Fort Clatsop Christmas Eve. It describes rapid water below the falls, further narrows, sea otters that sank when shot, and a village whose lodges are sunk a story into the ground, lined with flag mats, cedar bark above:
This village has better lodges than any on the river above; one story of which is sunk under ground and lined with flag mats; The upper part about 4 feet above ground is covered over with cedar bark, and they are tolerably comfortable houses.
That is the October descent of the Columbia, not the salt-wind clearing at the new fort. McKeehan’s printed chronology is not a daily match for Clark. Researchers comparing dates across narrators should treat Gass’s calendar with caution and not read this lodge description as a Christmas Eve observation.
Spoiled meat, no enlisted feast
Clark closes with the quartermaster’s note:
our Store of Meat entirely Spoiled, we are obliged to make use of it as we have nothing else except a little pounded fish
— the pounded fish bought near the Columbia falls. In this corpus that is the Christmas Eve table: spoiled elk or deer, a portable fish reserve, new roofs, and a refused gift. There is no public-domain enlisted record here of flour, pepper, or dried apples issued for the morning.
