The entries for 17 May 1804 from St. Charles, Missouri, illustrate one of the most striking patterns in the expedition’s documentary record: the radical disparity between the journals kept by the captains (and their senior sergeant) and those of the enlisted men. On a day that produced one of the Corps’ first formal court-martials, three of the four extant narrators say almost nothing at all.
Brevity Among the Enlisted Men
Sergeant Charles Floyd’s entire entry reads:
a fair day but Rainey Night
Private Joseph Whitehouse offers only marginally more, noting weather and the company’s holding pattern:
a pleasant morning. we are waiting here the arival of Cap! Lewis, the evening rainy.
John Ordway, in the daily portion of his journal, writes that nothing "occured worthy of notice this day"—a remarkable statement given that Ordway himself presided over a court-martial that very morning. The disjunction is telling. Floyd and Whitehouse appear to have had no knowledge of, or no interest in recording, the disciplinary proceedings; Ordway evidently regarded the court-martial as belonging to a separate documentary genre—the orderly book—rather than to the narrative journal. The pattern suggests that for the enlisted diarists at this early stage of the journey, the "journal" was primarily a weather log and travel record, not a venue for institutional events.
Clark’s Dual Register
William Clark, by contrast, produced two versions of the day’s entry, and together they document the fullest range of his concerns. In one, he records scientific and social activity alongside the discipline:
a fine Day 3 men Confined for misconduct, I had a Court martial & punishment Several Indians, who informed me that the Saukees had lately Crossed to war against the Osage Nation
He then proceeds to celestial observation ("equal altitudes made the m a. to be 84° 39′ 15""), a measurement of the Missouri’s width at St. Charles ("720 yards wide, in Banks"), the arrival of a keel boat, the partial execution of Hall’s sentence, and a sociable supper:
Suped with Mr. Ducett an agreeable man more agreeable Lady, this Gentleman has a Delightfull Situation & garden.
Clark’s parallel field entry adds the arrival of George Drouillard and notes that "Several of the inhabitents Came abord to day receved Several Speces of Vegatables from the inhabitents to day." The duplication is characteristic of Clark’s compositional habits: he often drafted entries twice, with slightly different emphases, and details that appear in one version (Drouillard, the vegetables) sometimes drop out of the other (the Ducett supper, the Sauk-Osage intelligence).
Ordway as Orderly-Book Keeper
The fullest record of the day comes not from any narrative journal but from Ordway’s transcription of the court-martial itself. The orders, signed "W. Clark Comdg.," convened a court of five—Ordway as president, with Reuben Fields, Richard Windsor, Joseph Whitehouse, and John Potts as members—to try William Warner and Hugh Hall for absence without leave, and John Collins on three charges:
1st for being absent without leave 2nd for behaveing in an unbecomeing manner at the Ball last night 3rdly for Speaking in a language last night after his return tending to bring into disrespect the orders of the Commanding officer
Warner and Hall pleaded guilty and were sentenced to twenty-five lashes each, with the court recommending them "from their former Good conduct, to the mercy of the commanding officer." Collins pleaded guilty only to the first charge but was convicted on all three.
What makes this record especially valuable is the cross-narrator triangulation it permits. Whitehouse, who sat as a member of the court, says nothing of it in his journal. Ordway, who presided, declares the day unworthy of notice in his narrative entry while preserving the proceedings verbatim in the orderly book. Clark records the punishment of Hall—"I punished Hall agreeable to his Sentence in part"—but not the names of the court’s members or the details of Collins’s offense at the ball. Only by reading the four narrators together does the full shape of 17 May 1804 emerge: a fair day, a rainy night, a court convened, three men flogged, vegetables shared, a Sauk war party rumored, and an agreeable supper at the Ducetts’.
