The arrival at the mouth of the Yellowstone River — the “Roche Johne,” “Roshjone,” or “river Jaune” in the variant orthographies of the captains and their sergeants — was a milestone the expedition had anticipated for weeks. Four journal-keepers recorded the day, and their entries, when read in parallel, expose the division of labor and temperament within the Corps’s documentary practice.
Measurement, Botany, and the Captains’ Division of Labor
Lewis and Clark, traveling separately that morning, produced complementary reports. Lewis, encamped a short distance up the Yellowstone, devoted his entry almost entirely to the natural history of the confluence: the elevation of the bottom lands, the species of timber, and an extended catalogue of understory plants. He notes that the point “is of the common elivation, say from twelve to 18 feet above the level of the water, and of course not liable to be overflown except in extreem high water,” then proceeds to inventory cottonwood, elm, ash, boxalder, small-leafed willow, rose, redberry, serviceberry, gooseberry, chokecherry, purple currant, honeysuckle, and wild hyssop. The passage reads as a reconnaissance report aimed at future settlement and scientific record.
Clark, meanwhile, performed the surveying. His entry gives the river widths with characteristic precision: “The Missouri is 520 yards wide above the point of yellow Stone and the water covers 330 yards; the YellowStone River is 858 yards wide includeing its Sand bar, the water covers 297 yards and the deepest part is 12 feet water.” He also relays Indigenous geographic intelligence — that the Yellowstone “is navagable for Perogues to near its Source in the Rocky Mountains” and receives the Tongue and Bighorn — information Lewis does not record. Clark’s hydrographic and ethnographic data and Lewis’s botanical survey form a deliberately divided field report.
The Sergeants Compress and Translate
Patrick Gass and John Ordway, both sergeants writing for a wider eventual readership, compress the captains’ specialized observations into more accessible prose. Gass borrows Clark’s measurements almost wholesale, but rounds and reformats them: “Captain Clarke while I was absent measured both rivers: and found the breadth of the Missouri to be 337 yards of water, and 190 of a sand beach; total 527 yards.” The 337-yard figure differs slightly from Clark’s own 330 — a small discrepancy that suggests Gass may have copied from an intermediate source or recalled the number imperfectly. Gass also adds the cumulative mileage from St. Louis, Fort Mandan, and the Little Missouri, a bookkeeping gesture that frames the day as a measurable progression.
Ordway gives the fullest narrative of the day’s events, capturing incidents the captains either omit or mention only briefly. He alone records that “Capt Lewises dog Scamon took after them [a flock of swimming pronghorn] caught one in the River. Drowned & killed it and Swam to Shore with it.” Neither Lewis, Clark, nor Gass mentions Seaman’s exploit. Ordway also identifies the man dispatched up the Yellowstone — Joseph Fields — and the live buffalo calf that followed him back to camp, a detail Gass attributes more vaguely to “Captain Lewis with his party.”
The Evening’s Celebration: A Shared Phrase
The clearest evidence of textual relationship between journals appears in the descriptions of the evening’s celebration. Lewis writes that the men were “much pleased at having arrived at this long wished for spot, and in order to add in some measure to the general pleasure which seemed to pervade our little community, we ordered a dram to be issued to each person.” Ordway’s phrasing converges almost exactly: “our officers Gave out one Gill of ardent Spirits per man. So we made merry fidled and danced.” The shared formula — “long-wished-for spot,” “general pleasure,” the issuing of a dram — suggests Ordway either heard Lewis articulate the sentiment aloud or later consulted his journal. Gass, by contrast, omits the celebration entirely, ending with the laconic “We encamped on the point all night.”
Clark himself does not describe the dram or the dancing, focusing instead on the buffalo cow and calves taken on the sand bar at the point: “the Cows are pore, Calves fine veele.” Gass and Ordway both echo the “veal” observation, indicating it was a remark passed in conversation around the fire. The four entries together demonstrate how a single day at the Yellowstone became four overlapping but distinct documents — a surveyor’s report, a naturalist’s catalogue, a sergeant’s compressed digest, and a more sociable chronicle of the men’s daily life.
