The entries of December 29, 1805, offer a striking case study in how three members of the Corps of Discovery filtered the same day through dramatically different narrative lenses. Patrick Gass, John Ordway, and William Clark all record the arrival of Chinook traders at the newly established Fort Clatsop, the purchase of wapato roots and dried salmon, and the ongoing work of erecting pickets. Yet only Clark expands the day into a wide-ranging meditation on trade, indigenous dress, fleas, and a whale rumored to have foundered on the coast.
Parallel Brevity in the Sergeants’ Journals
Gass and Ordway produce entries so close in structure and content that the influence of shared note-taking — or shared listening at the evening fire — is unmistakable. Gass writes that "several of the Chin-ook nation came to our fort with Wapto roots and dried salmon to trade," noting the supply was "seasonable as our meat on hand is somewhat spoiled." Ordway, with characteristic compression, records:
Several of the Chinock nation came to the fort with wapatoe roots and dry Sammon to trade we bought some from them. &C.
Both sergeants frame the day primarily as a labor entry: Gass notes the men are "engaged in finishing our small fortification," while Ordway records they were "employed gitting pickets." Neither mentions the whale, the gift of a medal, the visiting Wahkiakum chief, or the ethnographic observations that dominate Clark’s account. The pattern is consistent with what scholars have observed throughout the expedition’s journals — Gass and Ordway often share information but operate within a working-soldier’s register, recording weather, labor, and rations.
Clark’s Expansive Field Notebook
Clark’s entry, by contrast, sprawls across multiple subjects and reads almost as a draft ethnography. He opens with the same weather and trading framework as the sergeants but quickly moves into territory neither Gass nor Ordway records. He notes that "Pete Crusat Sick with a violent Cold," that Lewis "is been in readiness 2 days to go and Collect Some of the whale oyle" from a whale reported foundered to the northwest, and that the wind has prevented his departure. This rumored whale — which would eventually draw a famous expedition led by Lewis and Clark to the Tillamook coast — appears nowhere in the sergeants’ journals for the day.
Clark also documents a second visit that the sergeants miss entirely: a young Wahkiakum chief arrives in the evening with "4 men and 2 womin" bearing wapato and dressed elk skins. Clark records the diplomatic exchange in detail:
the Chief made me a present of about a half a bushel of those roots we gave him a medal of a Small Size and a piece of red ribin to tie around the top of his Hat which was made with a double Cone, the diameter of the upper about 3 Inches the lower a about 1 foot
The hat description — precise to the inch — typifies Clark’s draftsman’s eye. He follows it with a meditation on intertribal trade ("a considerable exchange of property is Continually Carried on between the Tribes and villages"), a comparative note on dress, and a frank — and by modern standards, judgmental — comparison of Chinook and Clatsop women.
The Spoiled Elk and the Fleas
Where Gass merely calls the meat "somewhat spoiled," Clark elaborates with visceral particularity, writing that the wapato roots "proved greatfull to us as we are now liveing on Spoiled Elk which is extreamly disagreeable to the Smel. as well as the taste." This intensification — from Gass’s neutral adjective to Clark’s two-sense complaint — is characteristic of the captains’ more confessional tone in the winter quarters journals.
Clark’s most memorable digression concerns fleas, which he notes the Corps first encountered "at the 1 s Great falls" of the Columbia. He describes indigenous strategies for managing the insects (multiple villages, frequent relocation) before lamenting his own situation:
I Scercely get to Sleep half the night Clear of the torments of those flees, with the precaution of haveing my blankets Serched and the flees killed every day
The juxtaposition is telling. Gass and Ordway end their entries with the trade transaction. Clark ends his with sleep deprivation, weather, and a small satisfaction: "we had but little rain in the Course of this day, not as much as would wet a person." For a captain who had endured weeks of Pacific deluge, the observation reads as quiet relief — a register of subjective experience entirely absent from his sergeants’ parallel records of the same Sunday.
