The arrival of Sheheke (Big White), principal chief of the lower Mandan village, at the gates of Fort Mandan on the morning of December 7, 1804, set in motion a communal buffalo hunt that three expedition journalists chose to record. Patrick Gass, John Ordway, and William Clark all describe the same event, but each filters it through a different lens — military, logistical, and ethnographic — producing a layered portrait of cross-cultural cooperation on the frozen Missouri.
The Chief’s Errand and the Captains’ Response
All three narrators agree on the precipitating event. Gass writes that the white head chief, of the first village of the Mandans, came to our garrison and told us that the buffaloe were in the prairie coming into the bottom.
Ordway adds urgency and identifies the chief by name:
the head chief of the lst vil1 of the Mandans called the Big White came to our Garrison in Great haste on horse back & Informed us that the Buffalow were comming towards the River in large Gangs and that the praries a little back was covered with Game.
Clark, writing in retrospective summary form, frames the visit as a formal invitation: the Big White Came and informed us that a large Drove of Buffalow was near and his people was wating for us to join them in a Chase.
The party size differs across the accounts — Gass counts Captain Lewis and eleven more of us
, Ordway says Lewis Started with 12 men
, and Clark records that Capt. Lewis took 15 men
. Such discrepancies are characteristic: enlisted men typically counted from within their own group, while Clark, writing as commander, reckoned the full detachment.
Mounted Hunters and the Question of Yield
Gass, ever attentive to martial technique, offers the day’s most vivid description of Mandan hunting craft:
They shoot them with bows and arrows, and have their horses so trained that they will advance very near and suddenly wheel and fly off in case the wounded buffaloe attempt an attack.
Neither Ordway nor Clark matches this observational detail about horsemanship, though Clark notes the Mandans were Killing the Buffalows on Horseback with arrows which they done with great dexterity.
The kill counts vary considerably. Gass reports the Indians killed 30 or 40
and the expedition killed eleven
. Ordway, characteristically the most numerically precise, tallies upwards of 20 buffalow
taken by the Mandans and abt 12
by the corps. Clark records only the corps’ take: his party killed 14 Buffalow, five of which we got to the fort.
Ordway’s logistical mind also captures a detail the others omit — the cow driven over the riverbank: the men run one off a Steep bank in to the River which we got out with a chord, and hailed it down on the Ice to our landing.
Clark corroborates this incident in different language: one Cow was killed on the ice after drawing her out of a vacancey in the ice in which She had fallen.
Gass passes over the episode entirely.
Property, Wolves, and Frostbite
Where the accounts most clearly diverge in register is in their treatment of indigenous custom and bodily suffering. Clark alone records the Mandan rule of carcass ownership:
those we did not get in was taken by the indians under a Custon which is established amongst them i e. any person Seeing a buffalow lying without an arrow Sticking in him, or Some purticular mark takes possesion.
Ordway, by contrast, registers the loss in plainer terms — they found that the Savvage had carried off 3 of them
— without explaining the underlying convention. The difference is telling: Clark, the negotiator, frames the appropriation as lawful custom; Ordway, recording the day’s working accounts, frames it as theft. Gass omits the matter altogether.
The cold draws comparable attention from Ordway and Clark. Ordway notes that 2 of our men Got their feet frost Bitten & one Got his Ear frost bitten this day,
consoled at evening by a half Gill of Taffee.
Clark records three men frost bit badly to day
and the thermometer at 1 d. below o
. Both also mention wolves; Clark warns that all meat which is left out all night falls to the Wolves which are in great numbers.
Read together, the three entries demonstrate how a single day’s labor on the Northern Plains generated overlapping but non-redundant testimony. Gass supplied the ethnographic close-up of trained horses, Ordway the granular ledger of kills and casualties, and Clark the diplomatic framing of Mandan property law. None of the three appears to have copied another; each was writing for his own purposes.
