The first day of 1806 finds the Corps of Discovery newly settled at Fort Clatsop, the fortification just completed and a formal garrison order about to be issued. Four narrators — Patrick Gass, John Ordway, William Clark, and Meriwether Lewis — leave entries for the date, and the comparison reveals as much about each writer’s habits of mind as it does about the day itself.
A Volley at Daybreak: Four Registers of the Same Event
Every journalist except Gass mentions the small-arms salute that opened the year. Ordway, writing from the enlisted men’s perspective, situates himself among the celebrants:
day break this morning by firing at their quarters as a remem-brence of the new year a pleasant morning.
Clark records the same moment from the officers’ quarters, casting the men as a courteous external party:
at Day we wer Saluted from the party without, wishing us a “hapy new year” a Shout and discharge of their armsno Indians to be Seen this morning-
Lewis elevates the episode into formal prose:
This morning I was awoke at an early hour by the discharge of a volley of small arms, which were fired by our party in front of our quarters to usher in the new year; this was the only mark of rispect which we had it in our power to pay this celebrated day.
Gass, characteristically, omits the celebration entirely. His full entry — “men went out in the morning and brought the meat of the elk into the Fort” — reduces the day to logistics. Where Lewis reaches for sentiment and Ordway for ethnographic detail, Gass tracks calories.
Clark’s Borrowing from Lewis
The most striking textual relationship of the day is between the two captains. Clark’s entry on the New Year’s repast is almost word-for-word Lewis’s, with minor spelling variants and one revealing slip. Lewis writes that the party will “enjoy the repast which the hand of civilization has prepared for us”; Clark, copying, drops the verb and produces the awkward “we Shall Completely, both mentally and Corparally, the repast which the hand of Civilization has produced for us.” The omission strongly suggests Clark transcribed from Lewis’s draft rather than composing independently — a pattern Lewis-and-Clark scholars have long observed for the Fort Clatsop winter, when the captains’ entries frequently converge.
Yet Clark is not a passive copyist. He alone notes that the visiting Clatsops “did not trade but Continued all night,” and he locates the slain elk “about 3 miles distant” — concrete details Lewis omits. Lewis, in turn, adds an anxiety Clark suppresses: the missing saltmakers’ messengers Willard and Wiser, “dispatched on the 28th ulto…. their not having returned induces us to believe it probable that they have missed their way.”
Ordway’s Ethnographic Eye
If Lewis supplies the day’s literary set-piece and Clark its administrative summary, Ordway provides its most sustained ethnographic observation. While the captains note only that “a few of the Clotsops” brought roots and berries to trade, Ordway lingers on the visitors’ dress and economy:
they go bare leged all winter and bare footed Some kind of a little Robe over their Shoulders &C. the women have Short peticoats made of Some kind of grass Some of which are twisted like twine, and are nearly naked otherways the general part of them are verry poor and ask a large price for any thing they have to part with
The complaint about prices is telling: the captains, conducting trade as a diplomatic instrument, do not editorialize, but Ordway — closer to the bargaining — registers frustration. His description of twisted-grass petticoats anticipates the more systematic ethnography Lewis would compose later in the winter, suggesting that observations circulating among the men fed upward into the captains’ formal accounts.
The Garrison Order
Both captains close the day by referencing the new fort regulations, and Lewis transcribes the order in full: a sergeant and three privates on guard, a sentinel posted before the officers’ quarters, and explicit instructions to “treat the natives in a friendly manner,” with force permitted only in response to assault. The order codifies, for the winter ahead, the diplomatic posture Ordway’s entry shows already under strain. Where Lewis’s narrative voice reaches forward to January 1, 1807, and the “bosom of our friends,” his administrative voice braces for several more months at Fort Clatsop — months in which Gass’s elk-meat ledger may prove the most honest forecast of all.
