The October 14, 1806 entries from the Lewis and Clark Expedition present a striking asymmetry between the two extant narrators. Patrick Gass produces one of his most ethnographically detailed entries of the return journey, while John Ordway’s surviving text is reduced to a single fragment:
we Soon found it again.
Without surrounding context, Ordway’s line cannot be reliably matched to any of the events Gass describes — whether a strayed horse, a misplaced item, or a lost trail. The contrast underscores how much of the expedition’s documentary record depends on the survival and legibility of individual manuscripts.
Gass’s Crowded Day on the Clearwater
Gass opens with weather and labor:
some white frost. Three hunters went over very early to the north side of the river. All the rest of the men. were employed in collecting our horses and taking over the bargage.
The party was encamped at what Gass identifies as
the remains of an ancient village on the north side of the Koos-koos-ke river
— the Clearwater, in present-day Idaho. By noon the baggage and horses were across, and the hunters returned with news of two bears killed at a distance.
The day’s bear tally is remarkable. Gass reports two bears in the initial hunt and three more by evening,
all of the grizly kind
— five grizzlies in a single day. Where Lewis on the outbound journey had recorded grizzly encounters with apprehension and dramatic flourish, Gass’s register is matter-of-fact, the prose of a working carpenter-sergeant accustomed to logging quantities and outcomes.
Nez Perce Knowledge: Gelding and Stone Cookery
Two ethnographic passages elevate this entry. First, Gass describes the gelding of the expedition’s horses by a Nez Perce specialist:
In the afternoon we had an operation performed on seven of our horses, to render them more peaceable ; which was done by one of the natives upon all but one.
The detail that the native practitioner handled six of the seven animals — the captains’ party retaining one — implies an acknowledged superiority of method that Gass records without further comment.
Second, Gass documents a stone-cooking technique used by the Nez Perce visitors who shared the bear meat:
They: first collected some stones and heated them, upon which they placed.a part of the meat, and upon the meat some sma -brugh, and so alternately. meat and brush, until all the meat was
The OCR breaks down before the procedure concludes, but the layered pit-cooking method Gass attempts to describe is consistent with regional Plateau practice. That Gass devotes paragraphs to culinary procedure — where Lewis or Clark might have given a sentence — reflects his characteristic attention to craft and process.
The Six-Thumbed Scalp and the War-Mallet
The entry’s most arresting passage concerns a visiting warrior who wore
on his neck a scalp of an Indian, with six thumbs
— apparently meaning the dried thumbs of multiple slain enemies attached to a scalp trophy. Gass uses the moment to launch into a regional reflection:
these two nations have been long at war and destroyed great numbers of each other in a few years
He follows with a description of regional weaponry, particularly
The war-mallet
, which he characterizes as
a club with a large. head of wood or stone; those of stone are generally covered with leather, and fastened to the end of the club with thongs or strings of leather: and the sinews of animals.
A publisher’s footnote — preserved in the printed edition rather than original manuscript — adds that a similar stone head was later examined near Pittsburgh on the Allegheny, with Gass himself confirming its resemblance to weapons seen
to the westward
. This editorial intrusion is a reminder that Gass’s journal reached the public through Pittsburgh printer David M’Keehan in 1807, well before the Biddle edition of Lewis and Clark’s narrative.
What Ordway’s Silence May Mean
Ordway’s terse fragment cannot be cross-referenced to specific events Gass describes. Where typically Ordway and Gass corroborate each other on routine matters — campsite, weather, distance — here the textual record is broken. Researchers should treat Ordway’s October 14 entry as effectively non-extant for analytic purposes, and rely on Gass as the primary witness for the day, supplemented where possible by Lewis and Clark’s own entries from this period at the Long Camp.
