The expedition’s second day ascending the Columbia after departing Fort Clatsop produced an unusually rich four-narrator record. Patrick Gass, John Ordway, William Clark, and Meriwether Lewis all describe the same sequence of events: a cold morning delay, headwinds and adverse tide, an encounter with Clatsops descending the river with dried fish and wapato, a stop at a Cathlahmah fishing camp where one of the party purchased a sea otter skin, and a windy evening landing at a small creek opposite their November 6th campsite. The convergence of detail across four pens offers a useful case study in how the expedition’s record was layered — and where each narrator’s voice asserts itself.
Shared Skeleton, Divergent Detail
The closest parallel is between Lewis and Clark, whose entries run nearly word-for-word through the afternoon’s events. Both describe the Cathlahmah lodge in identical terms: “3 men 2 women and a couple of boys, who from appearances had remained here some time for the purpose of taking sturgeon, which they do by trolling.” Both record “ten or douzen” (Lewis) or “10 or 12” (Clark) sturgeon, both note the “extravegent” prices that prevented purchase, and both record the sea otter transaction in matching language. The shared phrasing makes it clear one journal was copied from the other or both from a common field note — a pattern well documented in the captains’ Pacific journals.
Yet small divergences mark each captain’s hand. Clark closes with a precise “made 15 Miles” — a surveyor’s habit Lewis omits. Lewis, conversely, preserves the Chinookan word for the dried fish:
here some Clatsops came to us in a canoe loaded with dryed anchovies, which they call Olthen, Wappetoe and Sturgeon. they informed us that they had been up on a trading voyage to the Skillutes.
This ethnographic and linguistic note — the Indigenous term Olthen (eulachon) and the detail about a trading voyage to the Skillutes — appears nowhere in Clark’s parallel passage. Clark also identifies the bottom-land tree as “a Species of Arspine,” while Lewis confidently writes “cottonwood” — a small but telling difference in botanical certainty between the two captains.
The Sergeants’ Compressions
Ordway and Gass, writing in the enlisted register, compress the day’s events but occasionally preserve details the captains drop. Ordway is the only narrator to specify the Indigenous group at the first fishing camp as “the Cath le mahs” while also describing their catch with vivid emphasis: “they had a vast Site of Sturgeon.” He alone records the precise price paid for the otter skin in a clean transactional summary:
one of the men purchased a Sea otter Skin, the price of which was a dressed Elk Skin and a silk hankerchief
The captains both mention an “handkercheif” but Ordway’s specification of silk is unique to his entry — a detail likely drawn from his own observation of the trade goods.
Gass offers the most stripped-down account, characteristic of his published-for-print style. He omits the Cathlahmah name entirely, refers generically to “the natives,” and gives a single round number — “14 large ones” — for the sturgeon catch at the evening camp. Where Clark and Lewis describe two distinct fishing camps (a midday lodge and an evening encampment), Gass collapses the geography, mentioning only “an Indian lodge” in passing and the second camp at the creek mouth. His “good harbour for our canoes” matches Lewis’s “safe harbour from the wind” almost exactly in function but in plainer diction.
What Only One Narrator Saw
Several details survive in only one journal. Gass alone reports the precise count of “14 large” sturgeon at the evening camp. Clark alone notes the Wahkiakum visitors who came across the river that morning offering dogs and wapato that the party declined. Lewis alone records the eulachon’s Chinookan name and the Skillute trading route. Ordway alone specifies silk for the handkerchief. The captains alone catalogue the bottom-land flora — red willow, seven bark, gooseberry, green briar, and the “larged leafed thorn” then in bloom — a botanical inventory absent from both sergeants’ accounts.
The day thus illustrates the documentary architecture of the expedition: Lewis and Clark working from shared notes with the captains’ specialized additions (linguistic, geographic, botanical), Ordway maintaining an independent enlisted-eye record with sharp transactional detail, and Gass producing the spare narrative that would later be shaped for publication. Reading them together recovers a fuller picture than any single journal supplies.
