July 28, 1804, on the Missouri above the Nodaway. Four published journals in this corpus record the day: Clark, Ordway, Gass, and Whitehouse. No Floyd journal is published here for this date. The four agree they are in high country and that a hunter came in with an Indian; they do not agree on the creek’s name, the visitor’s nation, or much else.
A creek without a settled name
Ordway describes the high ground in detail — “a nomber of high round knobs on those hills which are bare from Timber” — and assigns the tributary the name Round Knob Creek. Whitehouse is close in phrasing (“the hills make in close to the River verry high & Steep”) and keeps the same creek name, though he drops the knobs themselves. Gass, in the 1807 printed prose, compresses both into “a creek called Round-Knob creek, on the north side; and high bluffs on the south.” Clark, working independently as geographer, names it Indian Knob Creek: “as this Creek has no name call it Indian Knob Creek”, “15 yds. wide”, “the first high land above the Nodaway aproaching the river on that Side”. The two names sit on the same water. Clark’s choice seems to anticipate the day’s human encounter rather than merely describe the knobs.
Wind is another split. Clark has it “from the N W. by N. a Dark Smokey morning Some rain”. Ordway and Whitehouse both have a hard wind from the N. E. Gass gives no weather at all.
Drouillard returns with an informant
The day’s weight is not the creek but what George Drouillard brought in from the prairie. Gass offers only the bare fact: “two of our hunters came to us, accompanied by one of the Oto Indians.” Whitehouse adds a clock time — “G. Drewyer joined us at 11 oC with one Deer” — and, later, “the hunterers Comin and Brought one indian with them.” Ordway preserves the contact itself:
G. Drewyer found three of the Zotau Indians Dressing an Elk. they were friendly and Gave him a part of it and one of them came with him in order to find the Boat.
That is the only cited account of the meeting on the prairie: three men dressing an elk, sharing meat with a stranger, one walking back to find the boat. Ordway’s “Zotau” is his rendering of Otoe. Gass’s printed line follows that identification: an Oto.
Clark, alone among the four, says the visitor is not an Otoe. “This Indian is one of the fiew remaining of that nation, & lives with the Otteauz” — a Missouri. He also extracts intelligence the others do not: the main body of the nation is “hunting the Buffalow in the Plains”; the visitor’s smaller party is “about 20 Lodges” (the other draft: “about 20 familey Hunting the Elk”) camped four miles off; farther on, “a nother Camp where there was a french man, who lived in the nation”. Clark even registers pronunciation: the man “appeared to make use of the Same pronouncation of the Osarge, Calling a Chief Inca”.
What each narrator keeps alone
Clark alone records the gunfire heard to the southwest by the shore party — “they heard two Guns to the S. W.” — a detail that tells who else might be hunting nearby. His entry then runs into July 29, when “one frenchman le Liberty & the Indian” were sent “to the Camp to envite the party to meet us at the next bend of High Land”. That invitation belongs to the morning after; it is the diplomatic sequel of the 28th, not a second encounter. Whitehouse alone supplies the navigational mishap: “the Barge Struck a Sand Bare on the Side of the River on the StarBord S.” Whitehouse also gives the day’s mileage as ten. Gass, Ordway, and Whitehouse camp on the north side; Clark camps on the S. S. below an island — the same bank in his starboard notation, if not in the enlisted wording.
Read across the four, the day is not a single story with four copies. Gass prints an Oto at Round-Knob creek. Ordway has three Zotau at an elk. Whitehouse has a sandbar, ten miles, and an unnamed Indian at eleven o’clock. Clark names Indian Knob Creek, hears two guns, and writes a Missouri living among the Otoes who calls a chief Inca. That last identification is the one that would shape the council still ahead.
