The journals of Patrick Gass, Joseph Whitehouse, and William Clark for September 10, 1804, converge on a single astonishing object: a petrified vertebrate skeleton, forty-five feet long, found atop a bluff on the south side of the Missouri opposite Cedar Island, near present-day Chamberlain, South Dakota. The fossil — almost certainly the remains of a mosasaur or plesiosaur from the Cretaceous Pierre Shale that outcrops in the region — was significant enough that, as Gass notes, “part of these bones were sent to the city of Washington.” Yet the three narrators describe the discovery in strikingly different registers, and the variations illuminate the chain of authority and observation that structured the expedition’s record-keeping.
A Single Measurement, Three Frames
All three writers agree on the headline figure: forty-five feet. Whitehouse, whose entry is the briefest of the three, condenses the find to a single sentence:
we Saw a ruck of Bones on the Bank S. S. which appeared to be the Bones of a monstrous large fish the Back Bone is 45 feet long.
The word “monstrous” is Whitehouse’s own flourish; neither Gass nor Clark reaches for it. Gass, by contrast, writes with the measured cadence of a sergeant accustomed to reporting:
On the top of these bluffs we found the skeleton or back bones of a fish, 45 feet long, and petrified: part of these bones were sent to the city of Washington.
Gass alone records the fossil’s onward journey to Washington — a detail that suggests either a later editorial addition to his published 1807 narrative or knowledge gathered from the captains’ instructions. Whitehouse and Clark, writing in the field, do not mention the shipment.
Clark, predictably, supplies the most anatomical specificity. In his first draft he notes “a back bone with the most of the entire laying Connected for 45 feet… Some teeth & ribs also Connected.” In his fair-copy entry he refines the description further: “the back bone of a fish, 45 feet long tapering to the tale, &c. those joints were Seperated and all petrefied.” The progression from “Connected” in the field notes to “Seperated” in the fair copy is not a contradiction so much as a clarification — the vertebrae lay in articulated sequence, but each joint had petrified individually.
What Gass and Whitehouse Miss
Beyond the fossil, the day’s record diverges sharply. Clark devotes substantial prose to navigation — courses, island sequences, the lower point of Cedar Island, the configuration of the Mud Islands where the party camped. He also records two salt springs on the south-west bank, the larger of which produces water “excesiv Salt, and is 11/2 miles from the river.” Gass mentions the salt spring but credits its discovery to “One of our sergeants” — a detail Clark omits, perhaps because the captains took the report for granted.
Whitehouse, characteristically, compresses the day to its hunting tally: “the hunters killed three Buffalow & a Deer.” Gass reports the same hunt but adds the elk swimming the river and the periogue left behind for the butchering party. Clark’s hunt count agrees with Whitehouse — “3 Buffalow & one Elk” — but Gass writes that the party “killed one buffaloe” at the island camp, suggesting he is counting only the final kill rather than the day’s total.
Register and Reliance
The three entries together demonstrate the layered structure of expedition documentation. Clark provides the navigational and scientific armature; Gass, writing for eventual publication, polishes the narrative and supplies institutional context (the bones sent to Washington, the sergeant’s discovery); Whitehouse offers the enlisted man’s shorthand, faithful to the central facts but stripped of geography and measurement. Whitehouse’s phrase “a ruck of Bones” — using the older sense of ruck as a heap or pile — is the kind of vernacular detail that rarely survives into Clark’s more formal prose.
The fossil itself, weighted against the day’s salt springs, swimming elk, and rainy night camp at a creek mouth, reminds readers that the Corps was simultaneously a military unit, a hunting party, a navigational survey, and — unintentionally — a paleontological reconnaissance. Only by reading the three narrators against one another does the full texture of September 10 emerge.
