The entries of September 7, 1805, find the Corps of Discovery descending from the punishing crossing of Lost Trail Pass into what would become the Bitterroot Valley. The day’s records — left by Patrick Gass, John Ordway, Joseph Whitehouse, and William Clark — offer an unusually clear case study in how the expedition’s journalists worked: who borrowed from whom, who looked up at the mountains, and who looked down at the soil.
Twin Texts: Ordway and Whitehouse
The closest textual relationship on this date is between Sergeant Ordway and Private Whitehouse. Their entries are nearly identical in structure, sequence, and phrasing, suggesting Whitehouse copied from Ordway (or both from a shared source). Compare Ordway’s opening:
we set out eairly and proceeded on down the creek, our hunter who stayed out last night over took us had lost his horse
with Whitehouse’s:
we Set out eairly, and proceeded on down the creek. our hunter came up who Stayed out last night. had lost his horse.
Both record the same game tally — two deer, a goose, a crane, several pheasants, and a hawk — and both close with the identical mileage figure of 18 miles and a camp on the creek bank. Whitehouse, however, adds details Ordway omits: the morning is “cloudy cold,” the mountains to the larboard are “covred with pitch pine,” the soil is “verry indifferent,” and the day’s general course is “N. west.” These additions suggest Whitehouse was not merely transcribing but enriching Ordway’s framework with his own observations or with information gathered from others in camp.
Gass’s Botanical Eye
Sergeant Gass’s entry stands apart for its attention to the valley floor. Where Ordway and Whitehouse note timber and terrain in general terms, Gass catalogues the vegetation with a settler’s practical interest:
a great quantity of sweet roots and herbs, such as sweet myrrh, angelica and several other, that the natives make use of, and of the names of which I am unacquainted. There is also timothy grass growing in it
This botanical specificity is entirely absent from the other three accounts. Gass also alone provides the day’s culinary drama — the party “about to make use of the last of our flour” before a hunter’s deer rescues the meal — and alone names the Indigenous band encountered at journey’s end, the “Tussapa band of the Flathead nation.” The editorial footnote to Gass’s published journal acknowledges Clark’s alternative designation (“Oleachshoot band of the Tucknapax”) and concedes that “without an interpreter it was very difficult to ascertain them with any degree of certainty.” The discrepancy underscores how unstable ethnonyms were in these first-contact records.
Notably, Gass is the only journalist on this date who explicitly registers the meeting with the Flathead Salish as the day’s terminal event: “we came to the Tussapa band… and we encamped with them.” Ordway, Whitehouse, and Clark all camp on the creek without mention of Indigenous hosts, though the encounter is well documented in entries from surrounding days.
Clark’s Working Captain’s Log
Clark’s entry is the shortest and the most utilitarian. Where the sergeants count game and the private notes soil quality, Clark records the day as a logistical problem:
we did not make Camp untill dark, for the want of a good place, one of our hunters did not join us this evening. he haveing killed an elk packed his horses & could not overtake us
Clark alone explains why a hunter is missing — Whitehouse merely notes that “one of our hunters did not join us this evening,” without the elk or the packing — suggesting Clark had access to information (perhaps a returning party member or a runner) the enlisted journalists did not. Clark also alone records the curious detail of “2 horses left by the Indians” that “were as wild a Elk,” a glimpse of the long Indigenous presence in the valley that the other narrators pass over in silence.
Clark’s weather report — “A Cloudy & rainie Day the greater Part of the Day dark & Drisley” — agrees with Whitehouse’s “Several Small Showers of rain” and contradicts Gass’s claim that “the morning was cloudy” without rain. The discrepancy may simply reflect when each man wrote: Gass perhaps drafting from morning memory, Clark and Whitehouse incorporating the full day’s weather.
Patterns of Authorship
Taken together, the four entries illustrate the stratified authorship of the expedition’s records. Ordway and Whitehouse share a working text. Gass writes independently and with a craftsman’s interest in useful plants and named peoples. Clark, with the captain’s burden, records what affects the company’s progress — a missing hunter, a campsite found in the dark, wild horses on the trail. Each narrator’s silences are as instructive as his sentences.
