The entries of September 22, 1806, capture the Corps of Discovery’s first encounter with a United States military installation that had not existed when they ascended the Missouri more than two years earlier. Cantonment Bellefontaine, established in 1805 near the mouth of Coldwater Creek, marked a tangible symbol of how the frontier had advanced in the party’s absence. Both John Ordway and William Clark recorded the day’s arrival and ceremonial reception, but their accounts diverge in revealing ways that reflect the differing perspectives of an enlisted sergeant and the expedition’s co-commander.
A Shared Event, Different Emphases
Clark frames the morning around weather and hospitality, noting that the party remained sheltered at the house of Mr. Proulx until the rain abated. He used the delay productively:
This morning being very wet and the rain Still Continueing hard, and our party being all Sheltered in the houses of those hospitable people, we did not think proper to proceed on untill after the rain was over… I took this oppertunity of writeing to my friends in Kentucky &c.
Ordway makes no mention of Proulx, of letters home, or of the morning’s deliberations. His entry compresses the hours before departure into a single clause — the party was collected “about 11 Oclock A. M.” — and moves quickly to the arrival at “Bell fountain a Fort or cantonement on South Side which was built since we ascended the Missourie & a handsome place.” Where Clark, with his officer’s awareness of geography and command, specifies the cantonment’s location “at Coldwater Creek about 3 miles up the Missouri on it’s Southern banks,” Ordway is content with a general impression of place.
Reception, Rank, and the Salute
The most striking divergence concerns the ceremonial welcome. Both men note an artillery salute, but their accounts differ in detail and in social orientation. Ordway, attentive to the mechanics of the reception and to his own peers, records:
the Company of Artillery who lay at this fort fired 17 Rounds with the field peaces the most of our party was Quartered in the cantonment… a number of these Soldiers are acquaintances of ours &C.
The detail of seventeen rounds is precisely the kind of specific that a sergeant — concerned with drill, ordnance, and the protocols of garrison life — would notice and preserve. Equally telling is Ordway’s closing observation that many of the artillerists were old acquaintances, a reminder that the enlisted men of the Corps were rejoining a familiar professional community.
Clark, by contrast, leaves the number of guns blank in his manuscript — “we were honored with a Salute of ____ Guns” — and devotes his attention instead to the officers and ladies of the post:
at this place we found Colo. Hunt & a Lieut Peters & one Company of Artillerists we were kindly received by the Gentlemen of this place. Mrs. Wilkinson the Lady of the Govr. & Genl. we wer Sorry to find in delicate health.
Clark’s social world at Bellefontaine is one of named officers and the wife of General James Wilkinson, then governor of the Louisiana Territory. His concern for Mrs. Wilkinson’s health, the named identification of Colonel Thomas Hunt and Lieutenant George Peters, and his interest in the “publick Store” reportedly holding “60000$ worth of indian Goods” all reflect the priorities of a commander returning to the world of territorial administration, Indian policy, and official correspondence.
Two Registers of Homecoming
Read together, the entries demonstrate how a single day in the expedition’s record can refract through differing registers. Ordway preserves what Clark omits: the precise number of rounds fired, the presence of newly built flat boats at the cantonment, and the human warmth of reuniting with fellow soldiers. Clark preserves what Ordway omits: the names of the post’s officers, the condition of Mrs. Wilkinson, the commercial valuation of the Indian-trade store, and his own attention to private correspondence.
Neither narrator appears to be copying the other on this date — a pattern that distinguishes the homeward leg from earlier stretches of the journey, when Ordway’s entries sometimes echo the captains’ phrasing closely. As the party drew within a day’s travel of St. Louis, each man wrote increasingly from his own social vantage, and the cross-narrator record grows correspondingly richer for it.
