The entries of Patrick Gass, John Ordway, and William Clark for 18 September 1806 describe an identical sequence of events: a morning farewell to Captain McClellan, passage of the Grand River, a rendezvous with empty-handed hunters, and an evening camp on an island opposite the Mine River. Yet the three accounts diverge dramatically in what each narrator considers worth recording. Read together, they expose both the working relationship between the sergeants’ journals and the markedly different register of the captain’s log.
Parallel Sergeants, Diverging Captain
Ordway and Gass produce nearly interchangeable entries. Ordway writes that the party
Set out eairly and proceeded on Soon passd the Mouth of Grand river. Soon after we overtook our hunters they had killed nothing So we procd on all day without detaining to hunt Saw a fiew Turkeys gathered Some pappaws which the party in general are fond of. in the evening we Camped on an Island.
Gass’s version follows the same armature almost beat for beat:
passed the mouth of the river Grand, and soon after overtook the hunters, who had not killed any thing. We continued our voyage all day without waiting to hunt; gathering some papaws on the shores, and in the evening encamped on an island.
The shared sequence — Grand River, hunters with nothing, no delay, pawpaws, island camp — and even shared phrasing (“overtook,” “without [waiting/detaining] to hunt”) suggest the kind of cross-pollination long suspected among the enlisted journalists, whether through shared evening conversation or direct consultation. Notably, Gass’s published version smooths Ordway’s manuscript orthography (“detaining” becomes “waiting”; “pappaws” becomes “papaws”) in keeping with David McKeehan’s 1807 editorial polish.
Where the sergeants summarize, Clark expands. His entry alone preserves the texture of the day: the 7 A.M. timing of the Grand River passage, the 10 o’clock halt to gather food, the “charming Oake bottom” above the two Chariton rivers, and a precise mileage of fifty-two.
Hunger Hidden and Hunger Recorded
The most striking divergence concerns the party’s provisions. Ordway notes only that the men are “fond of” pawpaws. Gass mentions the fruit in passing. Clark, by contrast, makes scarcity the central subject of the entry:
we have nothing but a fiew Buisquit to eate and are partly compelled to eate poppows which we find in great quantities on the Shores… our party entirely out of provisions Subsisting on poppaws. we divide the buiskit which amounted to nearly one buisket per man, this in addition to the poppaws is to last is down to the Settlement’s which is 150 miles
The contrast is instructive. The sergeants’ framing — pawpaws as a pleasant gathering, the men “fond” of them — domesticates a situation Clark records as compulsion. Whether the sergeants downplayed hardship out of habit, morale, or the conventions of their genre, Clark’s command perspective registers the arithmetic of hunger: one biscuit per man, 150 miles to go.
Clark also alone notes the physical toll of the descent. He records that
J. Potts complains very much of one of his eyes which is burnt by the Sun from exposeing his face without a cover from the Sun. Shannon also complains of his face & eyes &c.
Neither Ordway nor Gass mentions Potts’s or Shannon’s afflictions. The sergeants’ silence on individual suffering, paired with their parallel cheerfulness about pawpaws, reinforces a pattern visible elsewhere in the homeward journey: the enlisted journals tend toward collective, forward-moving narration, while Clark itemizes risks, distances, and the condition of named men.
Morale at the Edge of the Settlements
One detail unites all three narrators in spirit if not in wording: the party’s willingness to press on without hunting. Clark concludes that “the party appear perfectly contented and tell us that they can live very well on the pappaws.” This sentiment — the men choosing speed over a full belly within 150 miles of St. Louis — is precisely what Ordway and Gass capture by omission, treating the pawpaw diet as unremarkable. Gass’s journal, indeed, telescopes the next five days into a single sentence ending with the triumphal arrival on the 23rd “after an absence of two years, four months and ten days.” The sergeants write as men already home; Clark, still in command, counts the biscuits.
