The entries for October 19, 1804, offer an unusually clear case study in how three members of the Corps of Discovery processed the same day. William Clark, John Ordway, and Patrick Gass all record a fair southeasterly breeze, a successful hunt, and a camp on the south (or larboard) side of the Missouri. Beyond that shared skeleton, however, each narrator builds a markedly different account.
Clark’s Landscape: Conical Hills and a Calumet Bird
Clark’s two versions of the entry — a field draft and a fuller fair copy — are by far the richest. He alone leaves the boats to walk the high ground on the larboard side, and he alone produces the day’s most striking number:
I counted in view at one time 52 gangues of Buffalow & 3 of Elk, besides Deer & goats &c.
That tally — fifty-two herds visible at once — is the kind of detail neither Ordway nor Gass attempts. Clark also catalogs the brackish runs descending from the hills, comparing their effect on the drinker to Globesalts (Glauber’s salts), and pauses over a cluster of remarkable high Conocal hills,
one ninety feet tall. He records what an Arikara chief traveling with the party tells him about these formations:
the Indian Chief Say that the Callemet Bird live in the hollows of those hills, which holes are made by the water passing from the top
Clark then notes the ruins of a fortified village atop a ninety-foot point, identified by the same chief as Mandan — what he marks in the fair copy as Here first saw ruins of Mandan nation.
The fair copy adds details absent from the draft: a pelican among the game killed, swans in a pond, and above 10 wolves
seen during his walk. The expansion shows Clark revising upward, gathering ethnographic, geological, and zoological observation into a single layered entry.
Ordway’s Ledger and Gass’s Summary
Ordway, by contrast, writes as the boats’ bookkeeper of meat and men. His entry tracks hunters as discrete parties dispatched and recovered: two on the starboard, two on the north side, then Clark and two more on the starboard, then a final rendezvous in the evening. He notes precisely when an elk is brought aboard (in a flew minutes
), when the boats halt (abt 1 o.C.
), and how the day’s yield is distributed:
the Skins were all Given out to the party &.C.
Ordway’s totals — two elk, then three deer, then four more deer joining earlier kills — read like a running tally. He says nothing of conical hills, brackish water, the calumet bird, or the Mandan ruin. The landscape Clark walks through scarcely registers; what matters is the count and the disposition of the hides.
Gass occupies a third position. His entry is the shortest and the most retrospective in tone, reaching back to the previous day to mention about three hundred goats, and some buffaloe
he had seen while hunting. His one comparative observation — Deer are not so plenty here as lower down the river, but elk, buffaloe and goats, are very numerous
— generalizes across the recent stretch of river rather than fixing on this particular day. His final tally diverges slightly from Ordway’s: Gass reports 7 deer and three elk,
while Clark’s fair copy gives 4 Elk 6 Deer & a pelican.
The discrepancy is small but characteristic; Gass, writing at greater remove, smooths the day into round numbers.
Patterns of Attention
The three entries together show how labor and temperament shape the record. Clark, walking the bluffs with an Arikara informant, produces the day’s geology, ethnography, and natural history. Ordway, stationed with the boats, tracks the hunters as a logistical system. Gass, writing in a more literary register for an eventual reader, condenses. Only Clark notes the calumet bird, the salt efflorescence, the Mandan fortification, and the wolves; only Ordway notes that the skins were distributed to the party; only Gass reaches back to yesterday’s three hundred goats. Where the three converge — on the wind, the hunt, the camp — they confirm the day’s bare events. Where they diverge, they reveal what each man thought worth writing down.
