The encounter on 17 September 1806 between the descending Corps of Discovery and Captain John McClallen’s upbound keelboat produced three distinct journal entries that, read together, illuminate how rank and access shaped what each narrator could record. McClallen — a former U.S. Army artillery captain ascending the Missouri with fifteen hands, an interpreter, and a clerk — was bound on a speculative venture to open trade between the Pawnees, the Spanish settlements of New Mexico, and ultimately the United States. All three writers grasped the outline of the plan; only Clark, the officer, recorded its political architecture.
Three Registers, One Encounter
William Clark’s entry is by far the most elaborate, running to a paragraph-length précis of McClallen’s commercial design. Clark identifies the man as late a Capt. of Artily of the U States Army
and an acquaintance of my friend Capt. Lewis
— a personal connection that opened the conversation and kept the two parties talking untill near mid night.
Clark’s account alone names Governor Wilkinson as the source of McClallen’s introductory Speach
to the Pawnees and Otoes, and only Clark records the geopolitical nuance that the trader hoped to draw Spanish merchants into Louisiana Territory rather than crossing into New Mexico himself.
Sergeant John Ordway, by contrast, captures the commercial logic in plainer mercantile language: the Spaniards are full of money and no goods among them of any account.
Ordway also looks ahead with a touch of national optimism, predicting that if Mr McLanen has Success this voiage no doubt but that trade will be advantageous to the United States hereafter.
Where Clark describes diplomatic stagecraft — McClallen appearing in a stile calculated to atract the Spanish government
— Ordway reduces the matter to horses, silver, and goods exchanged.
Patrick Gass, working from notes that would later be polished by his editor David McKeehan, gives the briefest version. He correctly identifies the captain, the fifteen hands, an interpreter and a black,
and the plan to discharge the men on this side of the mountain
and recruit Ponis
to accompany the trader to Santa Fe. Gass alone among the three mentions a Black member of McClallen’s crew — a detail Ordway and Clark omit.
Sergeants in Parallel
The Gass and Ordway entries share a striking structural parallelism that suggests the two sergeants compared notes or drew on a common conversational source. Both open with the previous night’s catfish — Gass calling it a large catfish, supposed to weigh 100 pounds
and Ordway recording a fish which is judfg]ed to weigh a hundred weight.
Both then describe the dangerous sawyer-choked passage, both fix the meeting at about two in the afternoon
or about 2 oClock P. M.,
and both close with the dispatch of hunters ahead in two small canoes and McClallen’s gift of whiskey and biscuit. Their phrasing for the gift is nearly identical: Gass writes that McClallen gave all our party as much whiskey as they could drink, and a bag of biscuit,
while Ordway records that he gave our party as much whiskey as they would drink
and a bag of Buiscuit.
Clark’s account of the same exchange is materially different. He notes that the Corps received Buisquit, Chocolate Sugar & whiskey
— adding chocolate and sugar to the inventory — and uniquely records the reciprocity: for which we made a return of a barrel of corn.
The sergeants saw the gifts; the captain saw the trade.
The Bad Passage and What Each Man Names
The morning’s hazardous river stretch also reveals differing geographic vocabularies. Clark places the danger at the Island of the little Osage Village,
which he reports the river’s navigators consider the worst place in it,
and he describes the hydrology in detail: a narrow channel for more than 2 miles which is crouded with Snags in maney places quite across.
Ordway names riffle Isld
and petzaw Island
— toponyms absent from Clark’s entry — while Gass offers no place-name at all, only that it was so filled with sawyers that we could hardly find room to pass through safe.
Read together, the three entries map a familiar hierarchy. Clark records politics, personalities, and reciprocal exchange; Ordway frames commerce and national interest; Gass — or his editor — distills the day into incident and atmosphere. McClallen’s later fate on the upper Missouri would prove the speculative venture far more dangerous than any of them suspected, but on this September evening the meeting brought news from a country that, as McClallen told them, had almost forgotton
the expedition.
