April 5, 1805, found the Corps of Discovery at Fort Mandan, packing stores into two pirogues and six canoes against a sharp northwest wind. The day’s logistical work generated three remarkably different journal entries, ranging from Clark’s terse logbook notation to Gass’s extended meta-commentary on the very nature of expedition journal-keeping. Comparing the three entries reveals not only the division of labor among the captains and sergeants but also the distinct authorial sensibilities each narrator brought to the page.
The Same Event, Three Registers
Clark, writing in his characteristic captain’s shorthand, summarizes the day in a single compressed sentence:
April the 5th 1805 Thursday we have our 2 perogues & Six Canoes loaded with our Stores & provisions, principally provisions. the wind verry high from the N W. a number of Mandans visit us to day
Clark notes the count of vessels, the nature of the cargo (“principally provisions”), the wind, and the Mandan visitors. Nothing else. Ordway, writing as sergeant, gives a slightly more procedural account that emphasizes method:
loading and divided a proportion of each sort for each perogue, and loaded all the perogues and got ready for a Start, on our Journey, the wind high from the N. W.
Where Clark records the result, Ordway records the procedure: each type of stores was divided proportionally across the boats — a sensible precaution against the loss of any single craft. Gass opens his entry with nearly identical language to Ordway’s:
We took all our goods, stores and baggage out, divided and put them aboard our craft, that we might be ready to continue our voyage.
The phrase “divided and put them aboard” closely echoes Ordway’s “divided a proportion of each sort for each perogue.” Given that Gass’s published journal was prepared for print by editor David McKeehan from Gass’s field notes, the parallel suggests either shared sergeant-level note-taking practices at Fort Mandan or a common source. Ordway and Gass — both sergeants charged with overseeing the men’s labor — naturally describe the loading from the standpoint of those who supervised it, while Clark records it from the standpoint of one who inventoried the result.
Gass’s Editorial Aside
What sets Gass’s entry apart is what follows. Having dispatched the day’s work in two lines, he turns directly to his prospective reader and offers a striking editorial reflection on what the journal will not contain:
If this brief Journal should happen to be preserved, and be ever thought worthy of appearing in print: some readers will perhaps expect, that, after our long friendly intercourse with these Indians, among whom we have spent the winter … we ought to be prepared now, when we are about to renew our voyage, to give some account of the fair sex of the Missouri: and entertain them with narratives of feats of love as well as of arms.
Gass — or McKeehan writing in Gass’s voice — anticipates a market appetite for sensational “feats of love” and explicitly declines to satisfy it, citing both prudence (“to keep the Journal of as small and portable a size as circumstances will make practicable”) and a higher purpose (“our views are directed to more useful information”). Yet having declined, he proceeds to describe Mandan sexual customs in unflinching terms, observing that “chastity is not very highly esteemed by these people” and recording venereal disease among them. He even offers a specific anecdote: that one of the men was “granted the honour of passing a night with the daughter of the head-chief of the Mandan nation” in exchange for an old tobacco box.
This passage is notable because Clark and Ordway record nothing of the sort for this date. Whether the editorial flourish reflects Gass’s own field notes or McKeehan’s later embellishment for a reading public, it illustrates how dramatically the Gass journal as published diverges from the more austere captains’ and sergeants’ records on which it overlapped.
Patterns Across the Three
Three patterns emerge from the April 5 entries. First, Clark and Ordway converge on a narrow set of facts — boats, stores, wind — while Gass uses the same facts as a launching point for commentary. Second, Ordway and Gass share procedural language about dividing cargo that Clark does not use, suggesting the sergeants’ shared vantage on the actual physical work. Third, the published Gass text repeatedly steps outside the day’s chronology to address a reading audience in a way the manuscript journals of Clark and Ordway never do — a reminder that Gass’s 1807 volume was the first expedition journal to reach print and was shaped accordingly.
