The September 14, 1805 entries from Whitehouse, Gass, Ordway, and Clark document one of the harder days on the Lolo Trail crossing. Comparing the four accounts reveals a textual community among the enlisted men, a captain’s eye for naming and topography, and a shared crisis: the party had run out of meat in country that offered almost nothing to hunt.
Parallel Texts: Whitehouse and Ordway
The closest textual relationship on this date is between Joseph Whitehouse and John Ordway. Their descriptions of the morning’s mountain crossing track each other almost word for word. Whitehouse writes of ascending
a verry high moun-tain, about 4 miles from the forks of the creek to the top of it went Some distance on the top then descended it about 6 miles. Some places verry Steep.
Ordway records the identical sequence:
assended a verry high mountain about 4 miles further to the top of it and verry steep, came some distance on the top then descended down about 6 miles some places verry steep
The shared phrasing — the four-mile ascent, the indeterminate “some distance” along the ridge, the six-mile descent, the repeated “verry steep” — suggests either direct copying between the two sergeants and privates or a shared evening practice of comparing notes. Both men also describe the Native fishing weirs in nearly identical terms, with Whitehouse calling them weirs “worked in with willows verry injeanously” and Ordway noting the structures were “worked in with willows where they catch a great quantity of Sammon in the Spring.” Both attribute the salmon information to the guide — almost certainly Old Toby.
Clark’s Captain’s Eye
William Clark’s entry stands apart in register and content. Where the enlisted men measure the day in segments of ascent and descent, Clark gives a topographer’s summary: a six-mile crossing to the forks of Glade Creek, a nine-mile traverse over a “verry high Steep mountain,” and a final two miles to camp. He alone names features, christening the tributary Colt Killed Creek and giving the river — actually the Lochsa — the name “Flathead River.”
Clark also alone identifies the builders of the weirs:
at a place the Tushepaws or Flat head Indians have made 2 wears across to Catch Sammon and have but latterly left the place I could see no fish, and the grass entirely eaten out by the horses
Where Whitehouse and Ordway report the guide’s general claim that natives “catch a great nomber of Sam[mon],” Clark records the empirical disappointment: no fish were visible, and the forage was already exhausted. His botanical inventory of the timber — “Pine Spruc fur Hackmatak & Tamerack” — has no counterpart in the other journals.
The Colt and the Question of Hunger
The day’s defining event was the killing of a colt for food. Clark is most explicit about the necessity:
here we wer compelled to kill a Colt for our men & Selves to eat for the want of meat
Ordway echoes the desperation while adding a small note of grim satisfaction: “we being hungry for a fat colt which eat verry well at this time.” Whitehouse opens his entry with the bare fact — “we eat the last of our meat” — but his surviving fragment breaks off before reaching the colt. Patrick Gass, strikingly, omits the colt killing entirely. His entry is also markedly shorter and seems to describe a different day’s pace, recording only six miles of travel after a delayed 4 p.m. start to recover a missing horse, and noting that “our hunters came in but had killed nothing.”
The discrepancy between Gass’s brief account and the other three is notable. Gass mentions cherries in the bottoms and remarks that “The mountains are not so high, as at some distance back” — an assessment directly contradicted by Clark, who calls these mountains “much worst than yesterday.” One possibility is that Gass’s published 1807 narrative compressed or misaligned dates; the editorial header in the Whitehouse and Ordway texts flagging “Sept. 15” suggests the date attribution itself was contested in early printings.
Convergent Testimony
Despite the differences, all four narrators agree on the essentials: a cloudy and difficult day, repeated steep crossings, abandoned Native fishing infrastructure, and a party in real distress for food. The shared phrasing among the enlisted men points to collaborative journal-keeping practices, while Clark’s entry preserves the toponymic record — Colt Killed Creek remains the name on modern maps — and the captain’s particular burden of accounting for men, horses, and miles in country that punished all three.
