A Storm Recorded Five Ways
The day opened with a thunderstorm at daybreak, and each journalist registered it on a different scale. Clark gives the fullest account, noting he was woken “before day light this morning by the guard prepareing the boat to receve an apparent Storm which threttened violence from the West.” The storm lasted about an hour. Floyd condenses the same event into a single phrase — “a verry hard Storm thunder and Rain wind from the West” — while Whitehouse frames it functionally, observing that the rain “Interup‘ our Starting at the usal hour” until the sky cleared at seven. Ordway folds the storm into a fragment carried over from the prior entry: “of rain & high wind from N.E. Thunder and lightning.” Gass, characteristically terse, omits the storm entirely and begins with the resumed voyage.
The directional disagreement is worth flagging: Clark, Floyd, and Whitehouse place the wind from the west; Ordway records it from the northeast. Given that Clark’s entry is the navigational record of the boat and Floyd corroborates it, Ordway’s N.E. is likely a slip or refers to a later shift.
What Each Narrator Uniquely Preserves
Clark alone preserves the day’s most striking scientific datum:
at 3 oClock P M. Ferents Thermometer Stood at 87°: = to 11 d above Summer heat
No other journalist mentions the thermometer. Whitehouse, however, supplies the human 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.” Read together, the two entries give both the instrument reading and the felt experience; read separately, each is incomplete.
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 detail no one else records. Gass mentions the bear without attribution: “one of our men went out and killed a large bear.” Ordway and Floyd skip the bear for June 22 entirely, though Ordway’s spillover entry into June 23 mentions Drouillard taking two deer and a bear the following day.
The reunion with the shore hunters Shields and Collins, absent since the 19th, appears only in Clark and Whitehouse. Clark notes they “inform that they Pass’d thro Some fine Lands, and well watered”; Whitehouse confirms their names and adds that they brought “part of One deer girk‘” — jerked — with them. Gass, Ordway, and Floyd note the camp at Fire Prairie but not the rejoining.
The Creek That Wouldn’t Stay Named
Fire Prairie Creek receives four different treatments. Clark calls it “River of the Fire Prarie.” Gass writes “Fire-prairie” and gives its width as 60 yards. Floyd splits it in two — “Littel Fire Creek” on the south side and “Big Fire Creek” on the north, the latter “about 50 yards wide.” Ordway agrees with Floyd’s split, naming both “little fire Creek” and “Big fire Creek.” The discrepancy between Clark’s single creek and the two-creek accounts of Floyd and Ordway is the kind of cartographic noise that complicated later reconstruction; the editorial footnote attached to Ordway’s entry concedes the puzzle.
The Ordway-Whitehouse relationship, often a copy pattern, diverges here. Whitehouse’s entry contains observational material — the heat complaint, the bear’s weight, Shields and Collins by name — that Ordway lacks. On this date Whitehouse is the more independent witness, and his entry runs into the 23rd with the detail that Clark “Could not Get aboard the wind blew so strong,” stranding the captain ashore overnight. Gass writes shortest; Clark writes twice, producing both a course-and-distance log and a narrative version of the same day. The five entries together yield a fuller record than any single one — the thermometer from Clark, the bear’s weight from Whitehouse, the creek’s width from Gass, the wind direction confirmed by Floyd, and the prairie’s name fixed by all.
