The expedition’s passage of the Great Falls of the Columbia on October 23, 1805 produced three independent accounts that, read side by side, reveal how information traveled through the Corps of Discovery and how each journalist filtered a single day’s labor through his own interests and register. John Ordway, Patrick Gass, and William Clark all record the portage on the larboard side, the breaking loose of a canoe, the latitude observation, the purchase of dogs, and the warning of an intended attack. Yet the entries differ markedly in their measurements, their sensory texture, and their handling of danger.
Shared Numbers, Diverging Measurements
All three narrators report Lewis’s latitude observation identically, a clear sign that the figure circulated among the journalists from a single source. Clark records it as 45° 42′ 57 3/10″ North
, and both Ordway and Gass reproduce 45° 42′ 57. 3.
almost verbatim. The total height of the falls — 37 feet 8 inches — likewise appears in Ordway and Gass without variation, suggesting that Lewis’s or Clark’s figures were shared at camp.
The portage distance, however, is not stable. Clark, who supervised the work, gives 457 yards
in his expanded entry. Gass rounds to 450 yards
, and Ordway estimates only about a quarter of a mile
. The height of the first pitch also wobbles: Ordway calls it a perpinticular fall of 22 feet
, while Gass writes 20 feet perpendicular
. These small discrepancies suggest that the enlisted men were working from observation and memory rather than copying Clark’s notes, even as they absorbed the officers’ astronomical data.
Fleas, Otters, and the Texture of Labor
The most striking difference among the three accounts lies in sensory detail. Ordway notes that the flies at this time are verry numerous and trouble us verry much, as the ground is covred with them
— though he writes “flies,” the context (and Clark’s parallel entry) makes clear he means fleas. Clark elaborates this misery into one of the most vivid passages of the day: the men were nearly covered with flees which were So thick amongst the Straw and fish Skins at the upper part of the portage
, forcing every man of the party
to Strip naked dureing the time of takeing over the canoes, that they might have an oppertunity of brushing the flees of their legs and bodies
. Gass, by contrast, omits the fleas entirely. His account is the most orderly of the three, focused on engineering details — the confinement of the river to not more than 70 yards wide
, the 48-foot high-water mark below the falls versus only 10 feet four inches
above — and on the terrifying aesthetics of the place, where vast rocks, and the river below the pitch, foaming through different channels
produced an appearance
that was terrifying
.
Clark alone records shooting a sea otter in the narrow channel and losing it, and only Clark mentions exchanging the expedition’s small canoe for a large & a very new one built for riding the waves
— a logistical decision of real consequence for the rapids ahead that Ordway and Gass let pass unremarked.
The Rumored Attack
All three journalists note the warning that downstream Indians intended to kill the party, but they handle it with revealing differences in register. Ordway is brief and slightly breathless: one of our chiefs Signed to us that the natives had a disign to kill us in the night, So we prepared for them. &C.
Gass omits the rumor altogether, a notable silence given his usual attentiveness to the party’s security. Clark, the commanding officer, gives the fullest and coolest account, attributing the intelligence to one of the old Chiefs who had accompanied us from the head of the river
, describing the response (we examined all the arms &c. complete the amunition to 100 rounds
), and weighing the evidence: the early departure of the local visitors, he writes, gives a Shadow of Confirmation to the information of our Old Chief
. He closes with characteristic command-level composure: we are at all times & places on our guard, are under no greater apprehention than is common
.
Read together, the three entries show Ordway as the most conversational reporter, Gass as the systematic technician with a taste for the sublime, and Clark as the synthetic observer who alone weaves labor, ethnography, natural history, and command judgment into a single narrative.
