August 22, 1806, finds the Corps of Discovery breaking camp at an Arikara village during their rapid downstream return. Two narrators describe the day, but the entries by Sergeant John Ordway and Captain William Clark diverge so sharply in scope and substance that they read almost as accounts of different events. The contrast illuminates how command responsibility, audience, and access shaped expedition record-keeping in its final weeks.
Two Scales of Observation
Ordway’s entry is brief and operational. He notes that he Slept in the village
, summarizes the chiefs’ refusal to descend the Missouri with the expedition, marks the weather clearing around 10 A.M., and tracks the day’s movement to the foot of Prairie Island:
About 10 A. M. cleared off fair and we Set out and procd on a fiew miles and halted to dry dry our baggage and bedding &C. we delayed about 3 hours and procd on to the foot of prarie Island and Camped on N. Side.
Clark’s entry, by contrast, runs to several hundred words and reconstructs an entire diplomatic morning. He records being summoned to the principal chief at 8 A.M., the chief’s explanation that he would Stay and take Care of the village and prevent the young men from doing rong
, and parallel speeches by the Grey Eyes and the second chief. Clark also relays intelligence from the interpreter Garrow, who assured me that they had no intention of going down untill the return of the Cheif who went down last Spring was a year.
Where Ordway flatly states the chiefs are all afraid to go down with us
, Clark transmits the Arikaras’ own reasoning: they needed to trade with the Sioux one more time to get guns and powder
, after which they would never again have any thing to do with them.
The sergeant compresses an outcome; the captain preserves the negotiation.
What Only Clark Sees
Several events on August 22 appear in Clark’s journal alone. The Cheyennes from two Lodges on the Main S E. Shore Came and Smoked with me
before the 11 A.M. departure—an encounter Ordway omits entirely, likely because he remained occupied with baggage rather than council. Clark also records the addition of a new traveler: a French former engagé named Rokey, discharged at the Mandans on the outbound voyage, who had Spend all his wages
and requested passage downriver. Such personnel decisions fell to the captains, and Ordway, not party to them, makes no mention.
Clark closes with an extended ethnographic description of the Cheyennes—their complexion, dress, and ornaments—observing that they wear Bears Claws about their necks, Strips of otter Skin (which they as well as the ricaras are excessively fond of) around their neck falling back behind.
This sustained ethnographic register is characteristic of Clark’s late-expedition entries and absent from Ordway’s terser logs.
Shared Hardship, Different Emphasis
Both narrators record the practical misery of the morning and the long midday halt to dry gear. Ordway notes the three-hour delay matter-of-factly. Clark situates it in fuller context: rained all the last night every person and all our bedding wet
, and later, after passing the Maropa and Weterhoo Rivers, the party delayed untill 6 P M. and dryed our things which were much Spoiled.
The shared detail confirms the day’s weather and pace, and the parallel measurement—Clark’s 17 Miles to day
against Ordway’s fiew miles
—suggests Ordway either lacked Clark’s distance estimate or saw no need to repeat it.
Notably, Ordway does not appear to be copying Clark here, nor Clark from Ordway. The two entries share a skeleton of facts—the late start, the delay to dry baggage, the camp at Prairie Island—but the flesh is independently observed. Ordway writes from the ranks, recording what a sergeant on baggage detail would know; Clark writes from command, with access to chiefs, interpreters, and visiting Cheyennes. Read together, the entries offer a fuller portrait of August 22 than either alone: the operational tempo from below, the diplomatic substance from above, and a final glimpse of Arikara political calculation as the expedition pushed downstream.
