January 2, 1806, at Fort Clatsop. Three published journals in this corpus record the day: John Ordway’s, William Clark’s, and Meriwether Lewis’s. A party brought in elk killed the day before; visiting Indians left at one in the afternoon; Drewyer checked traps and found an otter; the new huts already had fleas. No published Patrick Gass journal for this date survives in this corpus.
Ordway’s two facts
Ordway is short, and he is the only one of the three to write the garrison order. His fragment, stripped of the printed page header, is essentially this: “continues this morning”; “14 men went out and brought in the meat”; “our officers issued an order for the regulation of the Garrison at this place, charging the party to treat the natives will &C.” He does not mention fleas, otters, waterfowl, Willard and Wiser, or the hour the Indians left. He does count the meat party at fourteen. Clark’s first draft of the same retrieval says twelve men, back at eleven o’clock. Lewis, and Clark’s second draft, say only “a party of men.” The enlisted count and the captains’ counts do not match.
That Ordway alone preserves the regulations is a reminder that the captains’ pages, however full, are not exhaustive. The order is an administrative act of the first days in the fort. Lewis and Clark pass over it on January 2 and write fleas, birds, and fur instead.
Clark’s two drafts, Lewis’s one
Clark’s entry for the day is two texts in one source. The first opens as a weather log Clark does not copy from Lewis:
A Cloudy rainey morning after a wet night. dispatched 12 Men for the two Elk Killed yesterday which they brought in at 11 oClock. the day proved Cloudy and wet, the Indians left us at 1 oClock P. M, Drewyer visited his traps which had one otter in one of them. The flees are verry troublesom, our huts have alreadey Sworms of those disagreeable insects in them, and I fear we Shall not get rid of them dureing our delay at this place.
Then a second block, dated “Thursday 2nd of January 1806,” runs nearly word for word with Lewis. Compare Clark’s complaint —
we are infestd. with Sworms of flees already in our new habatations; the presumption is therefore Strong that we Shall not devest our Selves of this intolerably troublesom vermin dureing our residence here.
— with Lewis’s:
we are infested with swarms of flees already in our new habitations; the presumption is therefore strong that we shall not devest ourselves of this intolerably troublesome vermin during our residence here.
The sentences are the same apart from spelling. So is the catalogue of waterfowl still in the neighborhood — large and small or whistling swan, sandhill crane, large and small geese, brown and white brant, cormorant, mallard, canvasback, and other ducks, “not as plenty as on our first arrival.” So is the note that Willard and Wiser have not returned, nor the hunters who set out on December 26. So is the Indians’ departure at 1 p.m. after trading “roots and berries” for “a fiew fishing hooks and Some other Small articles.”
Two small tails then part. Clark’s second draft adds raccoon to the fur list: “the fur of both the beaver and otter as also the rackoon in this countrey are extreemly good,” plenty near the sea coast and up to the grand rapids. Lewis names beaver and otter only, then adds a comparison Clark does not: those animals “are by no means as much so as on the upper part of the Missouri.” Trailing differences of that kind often mark where the copying pen stopped and the composing pen went on.
What each man thought worth a line
Beyond the copied sentences, the three entries differ in what they notice. Ordway writes as a sergeant of the garrison: fourteen men for meat, and an order to treat the natives well. Clark’s first draft writes weather, a numbered detail, an hour of return, and fleas already in the huts. Clark’s second draft and Lewis write as naturalists of a wet winter: swans and brant still present, otter in a trap, fur quality, the prospect of vermin “dureing our residence here.” The visitors of the previous day remain unnamed in all three — a transactional notice, not a portrait.
Read in parallel, January 2 is a shared set of facts filtered through rank and habit, with the captains’ second pages showing the mutual copying that marks much of the Fort Clatsop winter. The enlisted page is thinner, and it is the only one that bothers to record that the fort had been placed under written regulation that day.
