By late February 1805, the Corps of Discovery had turned its full attention to the coming spring journey upriver. The journal entries for February 27 from John Ordway, Patrick Gass, and William Clark show three narrators occupying the same fort on the same day, yet each recording a strikingly different layer of activity. Read together, they reconstruct a working day more completely than any single account could.
The Boatbuilding Detail: Ordway’s Logistical Eye
Sergeant Ordway provides by far the most technical entry of the three, and his attention to the mechanics of preparation is characteristic of his journal throughout the Fort Mandan winter. He explains how the keelboat was secured and why the smaller craft were repositioned:
fixed Skids under the Barge So as to have hir lay Safe without takeing any Injury, moved the 2 perogues along the N. Side of the line of huts So as to keep the Sun from cracking them.
Ordway then details the labor allocation—”16 men Got their tools in order to make 4 perogues 4 men destined to make each perogue”—and even relays the captains’ strategic intent:
the commanding officers mean to leave the Barge here in the Spring, and go on with 5 perogues one old one as they will be much better to go from this place to the head of the Missouri.
This is the kind of operational reasoning that Lewis and Clark themselves often left implicit. Ordway, perhaps because he was responsible for transmitting orders down the chain to the enlisted men, records both the what and the why. His entry effectively documents a turning point in the expedition’s plan: the keelboat would not continue west.
Gass’s Spare Hunting Note
Sergeant Gass, by contrast, offers only a fragmentary line on the 27th. He notes the weather and the food supply:
there was a high wind. The remainder of the meat was brought in, and one of the men killed 2. deer.
The contrast in register is striking. Where Ordway dwells on carpentry assignments, Gass attends to the commissary—meat brought in, deer killed. Notably, neither Ordway nor Clark mentions the high wind or the deer, and neither Gass nor Clark mentions the pirogue work in detail. Each sergeant seems to have specialized, in practice, in the kind of information he found most worth preserving: Ordway the administrator, Gass the practical woodsman tracking subsistence.
Clark at the Drafting Table—and a Memorable Visitor
Captain Clark’s entry confirms the boatbuilding activity in a single phrase—”prepareing the Tools to make perogues all day”—but quickly turns to two items neither sergeant records. The first is cartographic:
I commence a Map of the Countrey on the Missouries & its waters &c. &c.-
This is a significant notation. The Fort Mandan map, synthesizing Indigenous geographic knowledge gathered over the winter with the expedition’s own observations, would become one of the most important products of the wintering. Clark marks its beginning here almost in passing.
The second detail Clark records that the others omit is human:
a feiw Indians visit us to day, one the largest Indian I ever Saw, & as large a man as ever I Saw
The doubled superlative—largest Indian he ever saw, and as large a man as he ever saw—is unusual emphasis from Clark, who tends toward economical description. That neither Ordway nor Gass mentions this visitor is itself revealing: visits from Mandan and Hidatsa neighbors were so routine by late February that the sergeants no longer felt obliged to note them, while Clark, whose role included diplomatic exchange, still registered the individuals.
Cross-Narrator Patterns
Three patterns emerge from this single day. First, there is no evidence of copying among the journalists on the 27th; the entries share no phrasing and only minimal overlap of subject matter. Second, the division of attention reflects rank and role: Clark records command-level concerns (mapping, diplomatic contact, overall character of the day as “a fine day”), Ordway records the organization of labor, and Gass records weather and provisions. Third, the entries are complementary rather than redundant. A reader relying on Clark alone would miss the keelboat decision; relying on Ordway alone would miss the map’s inception; relying on Gass alone would know almost nothing of the day at all. The Fort Mandan record’s value lies precisely in this layering.
