By mid-September 1806, the Corps of Discovery was driving downstream with the current and a fixed purpose: reach the first Euro-American settlements as quickly as possible. The journals of William Clark and John Ordway for September 19 capture the same day’s progress but reveal characteristic differences in detail, scope, and observational range.
Shared Pace, Different Numbers
Both narrators emphasize the party’s reluctance to pause. Ordway notes that the men spotted game but pressed on regardless:
Saw a number of Turkeys but we being anxious to git down do not detain to hunt, gathered Some pappaws which our party are fond of and are a kind of fruit which abound in these bottoms and are now ripe
Clark records the same impulse in more deliberative prose, framing the haste as a calculated plan rather than mere eagerness:
our anxiety as also the wish of the party to proceed on as expeditiously as possible to the Illinois enduce us to continue on without halting to hunt. we Calculate on ariveing at the first Settlements on tomorrow evening which is 140 miles, and objecet of our party is to divide the distance into two days, this day to the Osarge River, and tomorrow to the Charriton
The two accounts agree on the destination — the mouth of the Osage — and on the pawpaw-gathering as the only authorized stop. They diverge, however, on distance traveled. Ordway claims the party made 84 miles; Clark logs 72. Such discrepancies are common in the expedition record, where Clark, the official cartographer, generally produced the more conservative and considered figure. Ordway, writing as a sergeant keeping a personal log, may have rounded generously or estimated by elapsed time rather than river bends. The 12-mile gap is a useful reminder that even within a single command, mileage was a matter of judgment rather than measurement.
What Only Clark Sees
The most striking divergence on this date is not in mileage but in scope of observation. Ordway closes his entry with the camp at the Osage and a deer killed late in the day. Clark, by contrast, devotes the bulk of his entry to a medical puzzle that Ordway does not mention at all:
a very singular disorder is takeing place amongst our party that of the Sore eyes. three of the party have their eyes inflamed and Sweled in Such a manner as to render them extreamly painfull, particularly when exposed to the light, the eye ball is much inflaimed and the lid appears burnt with the Sun
Clark’s role as the expedition’s de facto physician is on display here. He catalogs symptoms with clinical precision — inflammation, swelling, photophobia, the sunburned appearance of the lids — and then ventures a hypothesis:
the cause of this complaint of the eye I can’t account for. from it’s Sudden appearance I am willing to believe it may be owing to the reflection of the Sun on the water
The reasoning is sound for the period. Modern readers might recognize the cluster of symptoms as consistent with photokeratitis (so-called “snow blindness,” though here induced by water glare) or possibly a viral conjunctivitis spreading through close quarters. Clark’s willingness to admit ignorance — “I can’t account for” — and then to reason from sudden onset to environmental cause is characteristic of his observational method.
Register and Role
The contrast between the two entries illustrates how narrator role shaped narrator content. Ordway, writing in a brisk, event-focused register, gives a sergeant’s log: passed Mine River, gathered pawpaws, killed a deer, camped at the Osage, made 84 miles. The entry is complete on its own terms. Clark, writing as commander, cartographer, and medic, layers planning (the two-day division to the Chariton), historical reference (camping “on the Spot we had encamped on the 1st & 2d of June 1804”), and medical observation onto the same skeletal day.
Neither account appears to be copied from the other; they share the day’s structure because the party shared the day, but the textures are independent. For researchers, the pairing is instructive: Ordway confirms the pace and the pawpaws, while Clark alone preserves the first warning of an outbreak that would shadow the final descent to St. Louis.
