March 5, 1806, at Fort Clatsop. Three published journals survive for the day in this corpus: John Ordway in one sentence, William Clark and Meriwether Lewis at length and nearly in lockstep. Patrick Gass has no published journal for this date here.
Ordway’s trade line
Ordway writes only:
natives came to the fort and brought us some little fish and Stur- geon &C.
He names the sturgeon. He does not mention a hat, skins, elk, hunters, or a plan to leave. That is the entire enlisted record.
The captains in near-lockstep
Clark and Lewis produce entries that are nearly identical. Clark’s opening:
This morning we were visited by two parties of Clatsops they brought Some fish, a hat and Some Skins for Sale most of which we purchased
Lewis:
This morning we were visited by two parties of Clatsops. they brought some fish a hat and some skins for sale most of which we purchased.
Clark adds that the visitors “returned to their Village in the evening with the returning tide.” Lewis has the return to the village and omits the tide. Then both men record the hunters coming back late from Clark’s “Kil-haw-d nack-kle River” (Lewis: “kil-haw-a-nack-kle”), having “neither killed nor Seen any Elk.” The elk had “gorn off to the mountains” in Clark, “gone off” in Lewis. Both call the news unwelcome and “reather alarming” (Lewis: “allarming”). Provisions: two days on hand, nearly spoiled.
The response is shared. They make up a small assortment of trade articles. Clark names “Sergt Natl. Pryor” to set out in the morning in a canoe with two men, to “assend the Columbia to the resort of the Indians fishermen and purchase Some fish”; Lewis has “Sergt. Pryor” and the same errand. Two hunting parties are to renew the chase, one up the Netul and the other toward Point Adams. If the elk have left, they will ascend the river slowly through March in the woody country rather than try the open plains, where there is “no fuel except a fiew Small dry Shrubs.” They will not leave Fort Clatsop before the first of April “unless the want of Subsistance compels us to that measure.” That contingency is the day’s news, and it is only in the captains’ books. Ordway’s visitors and fish sit beside it without the alarm.
Where Clark continues
After the elk crisis both men turn to birds. They share the common snipe of the marshes, the small sand snipe, the sparrow of the woody country, and the sparrows of the Columbia plains, like those of the Missouri but less abundant. Neither has seen “the little Singing lark or the large brown Curloe” so common to the Missouri plains (Lewis: “Curloo”). Both believe the curlew summers here from Indian information; Clark alone adds “their attemps to mimick the notes of this fowl.” Both think many summer and autumn species “had departed before our arrival.”
Clark then adds an aquatic catalogue Lewis does not write this day:
the large blue and brown heron, fishing Hawk, blue crested fisher, Gulls of Several Species of the Coast, the large grey Gull of the Columbia, Comorant, loons of two Species, white and the brown brant, Small and large Geese, small and large Swans, the Duckinmallard, canvis back Duck, red headed fishing Duck
and further ducks, divers, teal, and plovers. He also keeps a topographic report Lewis omits:
a very Considerable fall in the Kit-haw-a-nack-kle River on its main western fork at which place it falls abt. 100 feet from the Side of a mountain
southeast about six miles from Fort Clatsop, and nearly fifteen from the bay by the river’s meanders. He adds a high mountain south 60° west, about eighteen miles from the fort, with snow on it since November. On this date Clark is the longer naturalist and the one who preserves the waterfall. Ordway’s sturgeon is the enlisted name the captains flatten to “some fish.” Read together, the three texts give the Clatsop visit, the empty hunt, and, only in the captains, the plan that would move the party if subsistence failed.
