The expedition’s tense departure from Teton Sioux territory continued on September 29, 1804, as the Corps moved up the Missouri near the Cheyenne River confluence. Two narrators preserve the day’s events: Captain William Clark, writing in detailed dual drafts, and Private Joseph Whitehouse, whose enlisted-man’s terseness captures a strikingly different version of the same encounter. Read together, the entries illuminate how hierarchy within the Corps shaped the historical record itself.
Two Versions of a Refusal
Clark devotes the bulk of his entry to a careful diplomatic accounting. The second chief of the Tetons, accompanied by two principal men and a woman, appeared on shore and requested passage upriver to rejoin another part of his band. Clark records the Corps’ firm refusal:
we refused Stateing verry Sufhcint reasons and was plain with them on the Subject, they were not pleased observed that they would walk on Shore to the place we intended to Camp to night, we observed it was not our wish that they Should
Clark’s two drafts of the entry—the field notes and the expanded version—both stress the captains’ insistence that no additional Tetons board the keelboat, with the single exception of the chief already traveling with them. The expanded version adds a telling detail: the chief on board himself askd. for a twist of Tobacco for those men
, and Clark gave him half a twist, sending another along for the absent portion of the band.
Whitehouse compresses this entire diplomatic exchange into a different shape:
Saw Several Indians on Shore i or 2 of the brave men as they called themselves, wanted Some tobacco, the Officers gave them 2 carrits of tobacco but told them that we Should not Stop untill we Got to the RickRee I. Nations
Where Clark sees a chief and principal men negotiating passage, Whitehouse sees brave men as they called themselves
—a phrase whose skepticism carries the resentment of the rank-and-file who had endured the standoff at the Bad River days earlier. Whitehouse also records a different quantity of tobacco (two carrots versus Clark’s half-twist plus one), suggesting either that he saw a separate transaction, miscounted, or that Clark’s careful inventory understates what was actually given.
What Each Narrator Notices
The divergence extends beyond the encounter itself. Both men record passing an abandoned Arikara village at the mouth of a creek; Clark names it (a Small Creek Called No timber
) and explains the etymology, while Whitehouse simply notes an old village on S. S. where the RickaRees had lived 5 years ago, had raised corn beans
. Whitehouse’s interest in subsistence agriculture—the corn and beans—is characteristic of his journal’s attention to material life, a register the captains often skip.
Clark, by contrast, notes great numbers of Elk
at the creek mouth, a detail Whitehouse omits entirely. Clark also alone records the practical improvisation that closed the day: we Substitute large Stones for anchors in place of the one we lost
—a reference to the anchor lost during the Bad River confrontation. The detail signals that the captains were still managing the material consequences of that earlier crisis even as they pushed diplomatically away from it.
Camp on the Sand Bar
Both narrators end the day on a sand bar in the middle of the river, but only Clark explains why. Whitehouse writes simply that they Camped on a Sand beach on the S. Side
—locating the camp on the south side of the river. Clark places it more precisely on a Sand bar on about 1/2 mile from the main Shore
and adds that two sentinels stood watch through the night at anchor. The mid-river camp was a defensive choice, putting water between the Corps and any party that might approach by land—a precaution Whitehouse either did not register or did not think worth recording.
The pattern across both entries is consistent with what the journals show throughout the Teton episode: Clark documents the diplomacy and the defensive logic, while Whitehouse documents the transactions and the labor. Neither account is complete on its own. The half-twist of tobacco in Clark’s hand and the two carrots in Whitehouse’s memory may describe the same gift seen from different positions in the boat—or they may record two separate exchanges, one official and one not, that the captain chose not to fully report.
