The 22nd of March 1806 was the last full day the Corps of Discovery would spend at Fort Clatsop. Four narrators recorded it, and the differences among their entries illuminate how each man understood the work of journal-keeping at a moment of transition. Lewis and Clark, writing as commanders, attend to logistics, diplomacy, and natural history. Sergeants Ordway and Gass, writing in the noncommissioned register, condense the day to its operational essentials.
Parallel Texts: Lewis and Clark in Tandem
Lewis and Clark open their entries with nearly identical sentences, a pattern familiar throughout the expedition’s joint record. Lewis writes,
“Drewyer and the Feildses departed this morning agreably to the order of the last evening. we sent out seven hunters this morning in different directions on this side the Netul.”
Clark’s version is a near-mirror:
“Drewyer and the two Fieldses departed this morning agreably to the order of last evening. we Sent out Six hunters this morning in different directions on both Sides of the Netul.”
The shared phrasing reflects the captains’ practice of comparing notes, but the small divergences are telling. Lewis counts seven hunters dispatched on one side of the river; Clark counts six, working both banks. Such numerical discrepancies appear repeatedly in the joint journals and remind the reader that even the closest collaborators recorded the same morning slightly differently. Clark, ever the inventory-keeper, also itemizes the day’s purchases more fully than Lewis, noting that the dog was bought “for our Sick men,” the anchovies “to add to our Small Stock of provision’s,” and an otter skin “to cover my papers.” Lewis omits the otter skin entirely.
What Lewis Sees That the Others Miss
Lewis alone records the ceremonial transfer of Fort Clatsop itself. At noon, he writes,
“we were visited by Comowooll and 3 of the Clatsops. to this Cheif we left our houses and funiture. he has been much more kind an hospitable to us than any other indian in this neighbourhood.”
This is a significant diplomatic act — the formal cession of the winter quarters to a named Clatsop leader — and it appears in no other narrator’s entry for the day. Clark mentions the same chief, calling him “Que-ne-o alias Commorwool,” and notes that the Clatsops brought word of a sore-throat illness then circulating in the village, with one death reported. But Clark says nothing about the gift of the fort.
Lewis also closes his entry with a naturalist’s flourish:
“the leafing of the hucklebury riminds us of spring.”
The line is characteristic. Throughout the journals Lewis routinely registers seasonal markers — the first bud, the first migrating bird — where Clark records weather, distances, and trade. Here, on the cusp of departure, Lewis frames the day phenologically; Clark frames it commercially and epidemiologically.
The Sergeants’ Compression
Patrick Gass and John Ordway, working in the more compressed sergeant’s register, reduce the day almost entirely to the hunting parties and their results. Gass writes only that
“hunters were sent on ahead to remain at some good hunting ground until we should all come up; and six others to hunt near the fort. In the evening all these came in, except one, without any success.”
Ordway echoes the structure but adds the trade encounter:
“a number of the Clatsop Indians visited us Sold us a dog & Some Small dry fish and Some fancy Hats &C in the evening the hunters returned except one. had killed nothing.”
Both sergeants converge on the single most operationally relevant fact: one hunter — Colter, named only by Lewis and Clark — failed to return by nightfall. None of the four narrators expresses alarm, and indeed Colter’s habit of staying out alone would soon become a defining feature of his post-expedition career. Ordway’s mention of “fancy Hats” is a detail neither captain records, a reminder that the sergeants sometimes preserved material-culture observations the officers passed over.
Read together, the four entries for 22 March 1806 form a layered portrait: the captains writing in parallel but not in unison, Lewis attending to ceremony and season, Clark to ledger and disease, and the sergeants distilling the day to its hunting tally and trade goods. Tomorrow the canoes, stopped “temperarily with Mud,” would carry them away from the Pacific.
