The entries for October 7, 1804 offer an unusually clear specimen of how information flowed among the expedition’s journal-keepers. Four narrators—William Clark, Patrick Gass, John Ordway, and Joseph Whitehouse—describe the same river mouth, the same encounter with two Sioux men, and the same hunt on a grassy island. Yet the four accounts vary dramatically in detail, suggesting a chain of transmission radiating outward from Clark’s field observations.
A Captain’s Reconnaissance and Its Echoes
Clark is the only narrator who personally walked up the Sur-war-kar-na (Moreau) River and inspected the abandoned Arikara wintering camp. His entry is rich with ethnographic specifics the others lack: the willow and straw mats, the buffalo-skin canoes, the circular fortification. Clark writes that the camp:
appears to have been inhabited last winter, many of their willow & Straw mats, Baskets & Buffalow Skin Canoes remain intire within the Camp
Gass and Whitehouse, who did not accompany Clark up the tributary, reduce this scene to a single shared formula. Gass records that “At the mouth of this river is a wintering camp of the Rickarees of 60 lodges,” while Whitehouse writes nearly identical words: “at the mouth of this River is a wintering camp of the Rickarees having about 60 lodges.” The verbal closeness—right down to the figure of sixty lodges, which Clark also gives—suggests Whitehouse and Gass were drawing on a common source, likely a shared evening conversation or a circulated note from one of the captains. Whitehouse’s entry is the most abbreviated of the four, and his phrasing tracks Gass’s almost word for word.
Ordway, by contrast, was on the island hunt with Clark and writes from firsthand experience of that episode, though he leaves the river’s name and the creek’s name blank in his manuscript—gaps he presumably intended to fill in later from the captains’ records.
The Sioux Encounter: Diplomacy in Four Registers
All four narrators note the brief meeting with two Indians who asked for food. The accounts diverge instructively on identification. Gass and Whitehouse simply call them “Sioux.” Ordway agrees and adds that “their band was a going up to the Rickrees.” Clark, the diplomat, is most precise: he identifies them as “Tetons of the band we left below” in his first draft and, in his expanded entry, refines this to “part of the Beiffs De Medisons Lodge”—the Medicine Bull’s band. This progressive refinement within Clark’s own two versions of the day’s entry shows him reworking his field notes toward greater ethnographic accuracy, a habit absent in the enlisted men’s journals.
The response is uniform across all four accounts: the party gave the men meat and proceeded. Ordway specifies “Venison,” a small detail the others omit.
Grouse Island and the Black-Tailed Doe
The hunt on what Clark christens “Grous Island” produces the day’s most vivid natural-history observation, and here Clark’s eye for measurement separates him from his companions. Gass laconically reports that Clark “killed a deer and a prarow.” Whitehouse echoes the same bare facts. Ordway, present on the island, adds anatomical interest:
we killed a Black tailed Deer which was verry large especially the Ears. & a handsome Brarow which [the] Cap’s had the Bones & skin Saved in order to Send back to the States
Ordway alone records the crucial scientific detail that the badger’s skeleton and pelt were preserved as a specimen for shipment east—a fact of considerable importance to the expedition’s natural-history mission that Gass and Whitehouse entirely miss. Clark, meanwhile, focuses on the deer, calling it “the largest Doe I ever Saw” and noting the unusual “Black under her breast.” He also names the island for the abundant grouse, supplies its dimensions (“nearly 1¼ ms. Squar”), and describes its vegetation of grass and wild rye.
Patterns of Authority
Taken together, the four entries form a hierarchy of observational authority. Clark generates the original detail; Ordway, often physically present alongside the captains, supplements with his own firsthand notices; Gass produces a clean, edited summary; and Whitehouse follows Gass closely, sometimes verbatim. The day’s record is thus less a set of independent witnesses than a single observational event refracted through four pens of differing access and ambition.
