The journal entries for December 15, 1804, illustrate how dramatically a single day at Fort Mandan could be refracted through three different narrators. William Clark, Patrick Gass, and John Ordway all describe the same set of events — a fruitless buffalo hunt, the return to the fort, visiting Mandan chiefs — but the proportions and priorities of each account diverge sharply, with Ordway producing one of the most detailed early descriptions of a Mandan game in the expedition record.
The Hunt That Wasn’t
Clark, leading the hunting party, gives the most compressed account. His entry is essentially a logistical note: a cold clear morning, no buffalo in sight, a decision to turn back, hunting both banks of the river on the return, and no success. He measures the previous night’s snowfall at an inch and a half and notes the wind from the north. The entry closes with the spare observation that on returning to the fort he "found Several Chiefs there."
a Cold Clear morning, Saw no buffalow, I concluded to return to the Fort & hunt on each Side of the river on our return which we did without Success
Gass, who remained at the fort, supplies what Clark omits — that the visiting Mandans "brought presents of meat to the commanding officers" — and adds the explanatory detail that "The buffaloe were gone from the river." Gass typically condenses, and his entry here functions almost as a summary headline of the day’s two parallel events: a successful diplomatic visit at the fort, and an unsuccessful hunt upriver. Ordway echoes the same explanation in his own idiom: the buffalo "are all back in the praries."
Ordway’s Ethnographic Eye
The striking divergence is Ordway’s. While Clark accounts for his own movements and Gass condenses the day’s outline, Ordway devotes the bulk of his entry to a detailed description of a Mandan game observed at the first and second villages, where members of the party had gone to trade for corn. He notes the storage practice in passing — corn kept "in holes made in the Ground close in front of their lodges" — before turning to the game itself, which he cannot name ("[blank in Ms.]") but observes with care.
they had feattish rings made out of clay Stone & two men had Sticks abt 4 feet long with 2 Short peaces across the fore end of it… they had a place fixed across their green from the head chiefs house across abt 50 yds to the 2 chiefs lodge, which was Smothe as a house flour
Ordway describes the equipment, the playing surface, the action of the game (two men running together, one carrying the ring, both sliding their sticks after it), and a "Battery fixed for the rings to Stop against." He admits the limit of his understanding — "they had marks made for the Game but I do not understand how they count the game" — a methodological honesty that distinguishes his ethnographic notes from less careful observers. He closes with the hospitality the visitors received: "they gave us different kinds of victules & made us eat in everry lodge that we went in."
This is the chunked-stick game (often called tchung-kee in later sources), and Ordway’s description is among the earliest documentary accounts. Neither Clark nor Gass mentions it. Clark was absent from the village; Gass, present at the fort, evidently did not accompany the trading party.
Registers of Witness
The three entries together demonstrate how the expedition’s documentary value depended on multiple narrators occupying different physical locations. Clark’s officer-register entry tracks command decisions and weather data. Gass, working at one remove from both the hunt and the village visit, produces a synthesizing summary that captures what neither participant alone could see — the simultaneity of the meat-gift at the fort and the buffalo’s absence on the river. Ordway, the enlisted sergeant who actually walked into the villages, produces the day’s richest cultural record. That Ordway’s curiosity ran toward Mandan material culture, sport, and hospitality — and that he was willing to commit several hundred words to a single afternoon’s observations — makes his journal an indispensable counterweight to the captains’ more instrumental record-keeping.
