An Editor’s Confession
The July 13 record opens with one of the most candid methodological admissions in the entire expedition archive. Clark begins not with observation but with apology:
My notes of the 13th of July by a Most unfortunate accident blew over Board in a Storm in the morning of the 14th obliges me to refur to the Journals of Serjeants, and my own recollection the accurrences Courses Distance &c. of that day
This single sentence reframes how the day’s record should be read. Clark’s polished entry — with its measured prose about the "Butifull & extensive plain, Cover’d with Grass resembling Timothy except the Seed which resembles Flax Seed" — is a reconstruction, not a contemporaneous field note. The sergeants’ journals (Ordway, Floyd, Gass) thus become the primary witnesses, and Clark the secondary compiler. For a corps that normally inverts that hierarchy, this is a reversal worth pausing on.
What the Sergeants Independently Preserve
Comparing the four surviving non-Clark accounts reveals which details were robust enough to surface in multiple notebooks. The overnight storm is the most consistently reported event. Ordway records it striking "last night at 10 O’Clock a violent Storm from the N.N. E. which lasted for one hour, a small Shower succeded." Floyd echoes nearly the same language: "a verry hard Storm Last night from the N. E. which Lasted for about one ouer proseded with a Small S[h]ouer of Rain." The phrasing similarity — direction, duration, the trailing shower — suggests either shared conversation among the sergeants or, more likely given the documented pattern, Floyd and Ordway drawing on a common observational moment recorded close in time.
Clark’s reconstructed entry incorporates the same storm but places it in a separate concluding paragraph, almost as a footnote: "Last night at about 10 oClock a violent Storm of wind from the N. N. E. which lasted with Great violence for about one hour." The verbal echo of Ordway is close enough that Ordway’s journal is the probable source Clark consulted.
Gass, characteristically, compresses everything to a sentence: "a fair wind. The day was fine. We passed a creek on the north side, and having made 20 miles and an half, encamped on a large sand bar." No storm, no grapes, no goslings. Gass’s terseness on a day when Clark’s notes were lost is a reminder of how thin the record could have been had only one or two journals survived.
Whitehouse, the Tarkio Crossing, and Divergent Mileage
Whitehouse alone preserves a logistical detail the others omit: "Got under way Early and Swim the horses across a Creek Tarkia, for the hunters." The hunters were operating with horses on shore, and the Tarkio — described by Floyd as "about 40 yads wide and verry mirey for Horses to Cross" — required swimming the animals across. Neither Clark’s reconstruction nor Ordway’s entry mentions this. Floyd notes the mire but not the crossing itself; Whitehouse names the action.
Whitehouse also gives the day’s mileage as 27, against Gass’s 20½, Floyd’s 20¼, and Ordway’s "about 20." The cluster around 20 is tight enough that Whitehouse’s 27 is likely an error or a different reckoning, but it stands as a reminder that even basic figures vary across the corps.
Ordway provides the day’s most ethnographically suggestive observation, noting the prairie’s "amence Site of Grapes, wild Rye" and offering a geographic generalization the others do not attempt: "Since passing the Nodaway River the hills could only be seen in a fiew places at a great Distance from the River on the North Side… But on the South Side their is high Land." Clark’s reconstruction picks up exactly this point — "the high lands on the S. S. has only been Seen at a Distance above the Nordaway River" — strong evidence that Ordway’s notebook was open on the table when Clark rebuilt his entry on July 14.
A Day Visible Only in Aggregate
July 13 is the rare entry where the cross-narrator method is not merely useful but necessary. Clark’s reconstruction reads as authoritative, but its authority is borrowed. The grass-like-timothy observation, the goslings, the storm timing, the geography of the receding hills — each can be traced to a sergeant’s notebook or to plausible recollection. Without Ordway, Floyd, Gass, and Whitehouse, the day would survive only as Clark’s apology and an empty page.
