October 7, 1805 marked a turning point for the Corps of Discovery: after weeks of overland suffering through the Bitterroots and a recuperative pause among the Nez Perce, the expedition committed its goods and bodies to newly hewn dugout canoes and pushed off down the Clearwater. The journals of William Clark and John Ordway both describe the launch from Canoe Camp. Patrick Gass’s published journal, however, presents an entirely different scene — a discrepancy that reveals as much about the editorial afterlife of these texts as it does about the day itself.
Clark’s Burdened Command
Clark’s entry is the densest of the three, written by a man who admits he is barely fit for duty. He opens with a confession of frailty and frustration:
I continu verry unwell but obliged to attend every thing all the Canoes put into the water and loaded… as we were about to Set out we missd. both of the Chiefs who promised to accompany us; I also missed my Pipe Tomahawk which Could not be found.
In a single breath Clark records illness, logistical responsibility, the absence of two Nez Perce chiefs, and a personal theft or loss. He then logs the day’s navigation in characteristic detail: ten dangerous rapids, a canoe struck and sprung in the third, twenty miles made, a small creek on the larboard side at nine miles, and — most revealing of his planner’s mind — a precise cache:
a Short distanc from the river at 2 feet 4 Inches N. of a dead toped pine Treee had burid 2 Lead Canisters of Powder
Clark closes by deferring his courses and distances until reaching “the forks,” and relays Indian intelligence that this is the last bad water before the great falls, ten days below, “where the white people live.” The entry shows Clark functioning as captain, navigator, quartermaster, and ethnographer simultaneously, even while sick.
Ordway’s Spare Confirmation
Ordway, writing as the senior sergeant, confirms the essential facts in his usual telegraphic register. He records the canoes “in readiness and loaded” and a 3 P.M. departure, the hauling of canoes over shoals, the alternating deep gentle stretches and constricting hills, old Indian camps on the larboard side, twenty-one miles, and a starboard camp. Where Clark counts ten rapids, Ordway summarizes “several Sholes and rapids where we hailed the canoes over sholes.” Where Clark notes the missing chiefs and tomahawk, Ordway is silent. The two entries agree on direction, mileage (within a mile), and the encampment side, which suggests Ordway was working from his own observation rather than copying Clark — sergeants’ journals on this expedition tend to converge in mileage but diverge sharply in incident, and that is the pattern visible here.
The Gass Anomaly
Patrick Gass’s published entry under this date describes something else entirely: a morning departure at 8 o’clock after parched corn, a mountain crossing, a deer killed by a hunter, descent into a small valley of “sweet myrrh, angelica” and timothy grass, and an encampment among the “Tussapa band of the Flathead nation.” The editor’s footnote concedes confusion, noting that
Captain Clarke in his letter to his brother, calls them the Oleachshoot band of the Tucknapax. It is of no very great importance, at present, to know by what names the several tribes and bands are distinguished.
This entry plainly belongs to an earlier date — the descent from the Bitterroots to the Nez Perce villages in late September — not to October 7, when the expedition had already been encamped at Canoe Camp for nearly two weeks building dugouts. The dislocation is almost certainly a product of David McKeehan’s 1807 editorial compression of Gass’s original field notes for publication. Where Clark and Ordway place themselves on the river, Gass (as printed) is still in the mountains. The discrepancy is a useful reminder that Gass’s journal, the first to reach print, was also the most heavily mediated, and that its dates cannot always be trusted against the manuscript record.
Patterns Across the Three
Three registers emerge clearly. Clark writes as commander: ailments, personnel, caches, intelligence, hazards. Ordway writes as logbook keeper: distances, river character, camp side. The printed Gass — when its chronology aligns — writes as ethnographic observer, attentive to plants, lodge construction, and Indigenous foodways in ways the captains often skip. On this date, only Clark and Ordway speak to the actual events on the Clearwater; Gass’s text speaks to the editorial history of the expedition’s first published journal.
