June 22, 1804, on the Missouri. Four published journals in this corpus record the day: Clark, Floyd, Ordway, and Whitehouse. No Gass journal is published here for this date. The morning opened with a thunderstorm, and the four pens do not agree on the wind, the creeks, or whether a bear belonged to the day at all.
A storm recorded four ways
Clark gives the fullest account of the blow. He was “waken’d before day light this morning by the guard prepareing the boat to receve an apparent Storm which threttened violence from the West”; at daylight “a violent wind accompanied with rain cam from the W. and lasted about one hour”. Floyd condenses the same opening: “Set out at 7 oclock after a verry hard Storm thunder and Rain wind from the West”. Whitehouse frames it as lost time: the rain “Interup’ our Starting at the usal hour” until “the day cleard Up at 7 Oclock”. Ordway folds weather into a fragment that may run on from the prior entry: “of rain & high wind from N.E. Thunder and lightning”.
The directional disagreement is worth keeping. Clark and Floyd place the storm wind from the west; Ordway records it from the northeast. Whitehouse does not give the storm a compass point. After the gust, Clark and Floyd both proceed “under a gentle Breeze from the N. W.” Given that Clark is keeping the boat’s navigational record and Floyd corroborates the west wind, Ordway’s N.E. is likely a slip or a later shift.
Heat, a bear, and the shore hunters
Clark alone keeps the instrument: “at 3 oClock P M. Ferents Thermometer Stood at 87°: = to 11 d above Summer heat”. No other journalist this day mentions the thermometer. Whitehouse supplies the felt consequence Clark omits:
the two latter days was the hotist that has been seen Or felt along time. the water was Strong with the heat of the day which made the times disagreeble to the party.
Clark also has “Capt Lewis went out in this Prarie & walked Several miles” — Lewis as walker, not as journalist. Ordway and Clark both have a goose killed (Clark: “Ord Killed a goose”).
Clark and Whitehouse alone name Drouillard as the bear’s killer (“G D. Killed a fine Bear”, “G. Drewyer kill a large Male Bare”). Whitehouse adds the weight — “Neer 5 hundre’ Wt” — a figure no one else records. Ordway and Floyd skip the bear for June 22 entirely. Whitehouse’s manuscript runs into the 23rd, when “G. Drewyr went out and kill 2 deers and one Bare befor Night” — the next day’s tally, not this one.
The reunion with the shore hunters Shields and Collins, absent since the 19th, is named only in Clark and Whitehouse. Clark notes they “inform that they Pass’d thro Some fine Lands, and well watered”. Whitehouse confirms the names and adds that they brought “part of One deer girk'” with them. Ordway does not name the men, but he does have hunters waiting: “Big fire Creek where our hunters waiting for us.” Floyd camps at the Fire prairie and does not mention the rejoining.
The creeks that would not stay named
Fire Prairie water receives three treatments among these four pens. Clark calls it one stream, the “River of the Fire Prarie”, and comes to on the larboard side opposite its mouth. Floyd splits it: “Littel Fire Creek” on the south side and “Big Fire Creek” on the north, the latter “about 50 yards wide”. Ordway agrees with the split, naming “little fire Creek” on the south and “Big fire Creek”. Whitehouse does not divide the water; he only “Incamp* at the fire perarie” and gives the day’s work as “Roe’ 12 Miles”. Floyd is the only cited journalist who measures a width.
On this date Whitehouse is not a shadow of Ordway. He has the heat complaint, the bear’s weight, and Shields and Collins by name — none of which Ordway keeps. His 23rd continuation adds that Clark “Could not Get aboard the wind blew so strong”, stranding the captain ashore overnight. Clark writes the day twice, a course-and-distance log and a narrative version. The four entries together still yield more than any single one: the thermometer from Clark, the bear’s weight from Whitehouse, the creek width from Floyd, and a west wind Clark and Floyd both felt.
