December 23, 1804 found the Corps of Discovery pressing forward with the construction of Fort Mandan’s defensive pickets while simultaneously hosting a steady stream of Mandan visitors bearing corn and beans to trade. The day’s journal entries — preserved by Patrick Gass, John Ordway, Joseph Whitehouse, and William Clark — offer a useful case study in how four men sharing the same hours nonetheless produced four distinct documentary records.
The Sergeants’ Spare Register
Gass and Whitehouse, the two enlisted journalists writing on this Sunday, both reduce the day to its labor. Gass writes only that the party
proceeded in our operations in setting up the pickets.
Whitehouse echoes the same content almost verbatim, prefacing it with a brief weather note:
a clear pleasant day. we continued our work Setting up the pickets &c.
The near-identical phrasing — “setting up the pickets” in both entries — is characteristic of the close textual relationship scholars have long observed between the Gass and Whitehouse journals during the Fort Mandan winter. Whether one is copying the other, or both are drawing on a shared sergeant’s notebook or daily orderly summary, the pattern recurs throughout this season. Neither man mentions the Mandan visitors at all. For Gass and Whitehouse, this is a workday, and the work is the picketing.
Ordway’s Friction, Clark’s Hospitality
Ordway, also a sergeant, breaks from the Gass-Whitehouse template to register the human texture of the day. He notes the same construction work but immediately turns to the Mandan presence:
raiseing our pickets the Savages came in large crowds the Squaw[s] loaded with corn & Beans, we found them troublesome in our huts.
Ordway’s word “troublesome” registers the practical irritation of soldiers trying to work while a crowded trade goes on around them. His perspective is that of a man whose huts are full of unwanted company.
Clark, writing from the officer’s vantage, records the same crowds in an entirely different key. Where Ordway sees congestion, Clark sees diplomacy and abundance:
a fine Day great numbers of indians of all discriptions Came to the fort many of them bringing Corn to trade, the little Crow, loadd. his wife & Sun with corn for us, Cap. Lewis gave him a few presents as also his wife
The contrast in register between Ordway and Clark on this single day is instructive. Both observe a large Mandan presence inside the fort. One frames it as a nuisance to the working party; the other frames it as a cultivated exchange of gifts between captains and a named Mandan leader, the Little Crow, whose wife and son are explicitly credited as porters.
The Detail Only Clark Records
Clark’s entry alone preserves the day’s most ethnographically valuable observation. After describing the trade, he turns to a meal prepared by the Little Crow’s wife:
She made a Kettle of boild Simnins, beens, Corn & Choke Cherris with the Stones which was paletable This Dish is Considered, as a treat among those people
“Simnins” — a variant of “simlins,” an early American term for squash or pumpkin — combined with beans, corn, and whole chokecherries (stones included) gives a recipe-level glimpse of Mandan winter cuisine that none of the other three journalists captured. Clark even attempts a small piece of cultural framing, noting that the dish is regarded as “a treat” locally. He closes with another social observation absent from his companions’ pages:
The Chiefs of the Mandans are fond of Stayin & Sleeping in the fort
Taken together, the four entries demonstrate how the Fort Mandan record stratifies by rank and intent. Gass and Whitehouse log the labor in nearly shared language. Ordway adds the soldier’s-eye view of crowded quarters. Clark, hosting visitors and exchanging presents alongside Lewis, records the diplomacy, the named individuals, the gifted foodstuffs, and a memorable kettle of boiled squash and chokecherries. Without Clark’s entry, the day would survive only as picket-work; without the sergeants’, the construction context for the Mandan visits would be lost.
