The journal entries for December 18, 1804 offer a striking case study in how four men sharing the same stockade could record radically different versions of a single day. John Ordway, Patrick Gass, Joseph Whitehouse, and William Clark all note the bitter cold, the failed buffalo hunt, and the departure of the North West Company traders. Yet only Clark captures the diplomatic intrigue that made the day consequential.
A Shared Skeleton of Events
Three of the four narrators produce nearly interchangeable accounts of the hunt and the traders’ departure. Ordway records that hunters "went out on the hills but found it So cold that they would not follow the Buffo in the praries So they returned to the Fort." Whitehouse, characteristically terse, writes that "8 of the party went out to hunt, but Saw nothing but Some goats." Gass agrees on the goats:
look for the buffaloe; but could see nothing but some goats. At 9 we returned and found the men from the N. W. company had set out on their return, notwithstanding the severity of the weather.
The verbal overlap between Gass and Whitehouse — both emphasizing that the traders left "notwithstanding" the cold — suggests the kind of shared phrasing that often appears among the enlisted journalists, whether through conversation, copying, or simply hearing the same remarks circulated around the fort. Whitehouse writes "Set of this morning notwithstanding the coldness of the weather"; Gass writes "set out on their return, notwithstanding the severity of the weather." The parallel construction is too close to be coincidental.
Ordway, by contrast, supplies a logistical detail the others omit: the expedition lent the departing traders "a Sled [on] which they draw by a horse their Robes & furs over to their Forts." This small kindness, easily lost, reveals the working civility between the American party and their Canadian competitors.
Clark Alone Sees the Politics
Where the sergeants and privates record weather and hunting, Clark — as co-commander — records governance. His entry names the departing traders ("Mr. Haney & La Rocke"), specifies their destination ("the Grossventre Camp"), and then pivots to a matter none of the other journalists mention at all:
Sent Jessomme to the Main Chief of the mandans to know the Cause of his detaining or takeing a horse of Chabonoe our big belly interpeter, which we found was thro the rascallity of one Lafrance a trader from the N W. Company, who told this Cheif that Chabonah owd. him a horse to go and take him he done So agreeable to an indian Custom he gave up the horse
This passage opens a window onto the layered economy of the upper Missouri. A North West Company trader named Lafrance has manipulated Mandan custom — under which a creditor could seize property — to extract a horse from Toussaint Charbonneau through the chief himself. Clark dispatches René Jusseaume to investigate, exercising a quasi-judicial role on behalf of the expedition’s interpreter. The same morning that Ordway saw a friendly loan of a sled, Clark saw a fraud requiring intervention.
That none of the enlisted men mention the Charbonneau horse is itself revealing. Either they did not know — the matter was handled at the captains’ level — or they did not consider it journal-worthy. The contrast underscores how rank shaped the documentary record. Gass, Ordway, and Whitehouse track what they could see and do; Clark tracks what he had to manage.
Register and the Limits of the Enlisted Eye
The register differences are equally telling. Whitehouse’s "a verry cold day" and Gass’s compressed three-day summary (he yokes December 19, 20, and 21 onto the end of the same paragraph) suggest journals kept under physical strain, perhaps written up days later. Ordway is more methodical, offering the thermometer reading ("42o abo 12", i.e., 42 below by his notation conventions) and the half-hourly relief of the night watch. Clark, writing with the authority of command, gives names, motives, and consequences.
Read together, the four entries demonstrate that the "same day" at Fort Mandan was in fact several different days, refracted through the responsibilities and literary habits of each writer. The Lafrance incident — a minor episode in the expedition’s larger narrative — survives only because Clark thought it worth recording. Without his entry, the December 18 archive would preserve only cold weather and goats.
