The 26th of February 1805 found the Corps of Discovery engaged in one of the most physically demanding tasks of their winter at Fort Mandan: extricating the keelboat — referred to throughout the journals as the “Barge” — from the river ice and dragging it onto the upper bank in preparation for the spring departure. Three narrators recorded the day’s labor, and a comparison of their entries reveals how differently each man processed the same shared experience.
Mechanical Detail Versus Command Summary
Sergeant John Ordway, ever attentive to the practical mechanics of expedition labor, produces the most procedurally detailed account. He notes the specific equipment and stages of the operation:
ployed Gitting more Timber to raise the Barge, doubled the Rope & raised up the Barge. Got the windless Going. Got hir Started again and moved hir a little at a time untill with much difficulty Got hir Safe up on the upper bank, and left hir laying beside the pickets, without being Injured as perseveable.
Ordway’s entry reads almost as a workman’s log. He records the doubling of the rope, the deployment of the windlass, the incremental nature of the movement (“a little at a time”), and — crucially — the final disposition of the vessel “beside the pickets” of the fort. His closing phrase, “without being Injured as perseveable,” suggests the central anxiety of the operation: damaging the hull they would soon need to send back downriver.
Captain William Clark, by contrast, writes from a commander’s vantage. His shorter field note compresses the entire ordeal into a single line:
Drew up the Boat & perogus, after Cutting them out of the ice with great Dificuelty & trouble
Clark’s expanded entry adds temporal framing — “Commencd verry early” and “at Sunset by repeated exertions the whole day we accomplished this troublesom task” — but omits the mechanical particulars Ordway preserves. Where Ordway writes as a participant in the work, Clark writes as the officer surveying its outcome.
The Detail Only Clark Records
One of the most dramatic moments of the day appears in only a single journal. Clark alone notes the timing of the ice’s collapse:
just as we were fixed for having the Boat the ice gave away near us for about 100 yds in length
The near-miss — a hundred-yard span of river ice breaking apart immediately after the boat had been hauled to safety — goes entirely unmentioned by Ordway, who instead emphasizes that the barge was left uninjured. Clark also records an audience absent from the other accounts: “a number of Indians here to day to See the Boat rise on the Bank.” This Mandan presence, the public character of the operation, surfaces only in the captain’s pen.
Gass and the Fragmentary Witness
Sergeant Patrick Gass’s entry for the 26th, as preserved in this transcription, is partially obscured by OCR damage and appears interleaved with the entry for the following day. What can be read describes parallel activity rather than the boat-raising itself: three hunters dispatched toward the Medicine River for elk, the completion of the “burying place,” and the readiness of the party “to start as soon as Capt. Clarke returns.” Gass writes:
We finished the burying place, so that we will be ready to start as soon as capt. Clarke returns.
Notably, Gass’s reference to Clark’s anticipated return signals that the sergeant was writing — or later revising — with awareness of Clark’s movements separate from the fort. His attention to the cache (“burying place”) for goods left behind complements rather than duplicates the boat narrative: while Ordway and Clark document the vessel’s removal from the ice, Gass documents the parallel preparation of the supplies that would not travel west.
Patterns Across the Three Accounts
Read together, the three entries illustrate a recurring pattern in the expedition record. Ordway tends to preserve the texture of labor — ropes, windlasses, incremental movement. Clark frames events in terms of duration, difficulty, and consequence, and is alone in registering the Mandan onlookers and the breaking ice. Gass, working in a more compressed and reflective register, situates the day within the larger arc of departure preparations. No single narrator captures the full picture; the boat-raising of 26 February 1805 emerges only when the three accounts are placed side by side.
