The expedition’s first day on the Missouri is preserved in at least four overlapping accounts, offering a rare opportunity to observe how news traveled through the Corps of Discovery’s literate ranks. Joseph Whitehouse and Charles Floyd, both writing as enlisted men, produced entries so similar in structure that direct copying — or shared dictation — seems likely. Sergeant John Ordway’s terser version and Captain William Clark’s more formal phrasing complete the picture.
Echoes Between Whitehouse and Floyd
The parallels between Whitehouse and Floyd are unmistakable. Floyd records the moment with characteristic economy:
Showery day Capt Clark Set out at 3 oclock P m for the western expidition the party consisted of 3 Serguntes and 38 working hands which maned the Batteow and two Perogues we Sailed up the missouria 6 miles and encamped on the N. side of the River
Whitehouse’s entry tracks the same sequence almost beat for beat — the 3 o’clock departure, the count of three sergeants and 38 men, the batteau and two pirogues, six miles sailed, camp on the north side:
about 3 oclock P.M. Cap! Clark and the party consisting of three Sergeants and 38 men who manned the Batteaux and 2 perogues… Sailed ab! 6 miles and Camped on the North Side.
The shared phrasing — “three Sergeants and 38 men,” the identical mileage, the matching campsite description — suggests that the enlisted journalists either consulted each other or drew from a common oral report circulating in camp that evening. Whitehouse, however, expands beyond Floyd in two notable directions. He situates Lewis’s absence (“Cap! Lewis is now at S! Louis but will join us at S! Charls”), and he preserves the human atmosphere of departure: “a number of the sitizens of Gotian Settlement came to see us Start,” the firing of the swivel gun on the bow, the hoisted sail, and the party setting out “in high Spirits.”
Divergent Departure Times and Captain’s Register
One of the most curious cross-narrator discrepancies appears in the recorded hour of departure. Floyd and Whitehouse both write “3 oclock,” while Ordway logs the launch at “4 oClock P.M.” — a timing Clark himself confirms in his own journal. Whether the enlisted men rounded down, marked the moment of boarding rather than casting off, or simply differed from their sergeant on the clock, the discrepancy illustrates how even an event witnessed by all hands could splinter in the telling.
Ordway’s brevity is striking. Where Whitehouse offers atmosphere and Floyd offers a roll call, Ordway compresses the entire afternoon into a single observation: “One Gun fired. Under a gentle breeze we went up the Missouri River.” His phrase “gentle breeze” notably echoes Clark’s own “jentle brease,” hinting that the senior sergeant may have been working close to his captain — or that this particular meteorological description was the agreed-upon shorthand of the day.
What Each Narrator Notices
Reading the four entries against one another sharpens each narrator’s distinctive eye. Floyd is the registrar, fixing the formal composition of the party. Ordway is the meteorologist and timekeeper, attentive to wind and hour. Clark, writing for posterity, foregrounds civic theater — “in the presence of many of the neighbouring inhabitents” — and adopts the elevated register of a commanding officer launching a national enterprise.
Whitehouse alone preserves the local color that gives the departure its texture. Only he names the Goshen Settlement spectators, only he describes the swivel gun’s report and the raised sail, and only he reports the morale of the men as “high Spirits.” Where Floyd counts and Ordway measures, Whitehouse narrates. The contrast underscores a pattern that recurs throughout the expedition’s documentary record: the enlisted journals, often dismissed as derivative of the captains’, frequently capture the embodied details — sound, weather, mood, onlookers — that the official accounts elide in favor of geography and command.
Taken together, the four entries demonstrate how a single afternoon on the Missouri produced not one history but several, each shaped by the rank, habits, and attention of its writer.
