The expedition’s passage of an abandoned Kansas village site on July 5, 1804, offers an unusually clear window into how information circulated among the Corps of Discovery’s literate members. Four narrators — William Clark, John Ordway, Charles Floyd, and Patrick Gass — recorded the day, and the textual relationships among their entries reveal a hierarchy of authorship in which Clark serves as the principal source and Ordway and Floyd as near-verbatim copyists.
A Shared Sentence and Its Sources
The most striking feature of the day’s record is a passage that appears, with only minor variation, in three separate journals. Clark writes that the cause of the Kansas removal
I cannot learn, but naterally conclude that War has reduced their nation & compelled them to retire further into the Plains with a view of defending themselves & opposeing their enemey (more effectuall) on hors back
Ordway’s version is nearly identical: “we cannot learn, but naturly conclude that war has reduced their nation and compelled them to retire further into the plains with a view of defending themselves.” Floyd, whose orthography is the most idiosyncratic of the four, renders the same sentence as
the couse of the Indians moving from this place I cant Larn but natreley Concluded that war has reduced thair nation and Compelled them to Retir further in to the Plaines with a view of Defending themselves and to operserve their enemey and to Defende them Selves on Horse Back
The verbal overlap — “naturally conclude,” “reduced their nation,” “retire further into the plains,” “on horseback” — is far too close to be independent. Either Clark dictated or shared his observations at the evening camp, or Ordway and Floyd transcribed from a common field note. Floyd preserves the closing phrase about defense on horseback that Ordway omits, suggesting Floyd may have copied directly from Clark rather than from Ordway.
What Clark Adds — and What Gass Leaves Out
Clark’s second, expanded entry for the day is the only one to engage with prior published sources on the region. He challenges Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz’s description of cane along the Missouri (“we have not Seen one Stalk of reed or cane on the Missouries”) and recounts Étienne de Veniard de Bourgmont’s 1724 visit to the village with “300 Warriers, 500 young people & 300 Dogs of burthen.” None of the other journalists attempt this kind of historical contextualization. Where Ordway and Floyd preserve only the bare conclusion that war had displaced the Kansas, Clark situates that inference within a documented colonial encounter eighty years earlier.
Clark also supplies the day’s sole charming detail about the dinner stop at a beaver house: “Cap Lewis’s Dog Seamon went in & drove them out.” Ordway notes only that “we came too at a beaver house for Dinner.” Floyd omits the beaver house entirely, as does Gass.
Patrick Gass’s surviving entry is the most abbreviated of the four. He records that the party
went through a large bend full of sand bars where we had some difficulty in passing; and encamped on the south side at high prairie land
Gass mentions neither the abandoned village, nor the speculation about its inhabitants, nor the beaver house, nor Yellow Ocher Creek. His register is consistently that of a working sergeant logging navigation hazards and campsite terrain — a useful corrective reminder that the rich ethnographic and historical material in Clark’s journal reflects the captain’s particular interests rather than a shared expedition consciousness.
Register and Reliability
The day also illustrates differences in observational register. Ordway describes the previous day’s lake — overlooked in his July 4 entry — as containing “a great quantity of fish and Goslings from which it takes its name.” Clark, supplying the same retroactive note, specifies “Sun fish & Gosling’s,” naming the species. Clark alone gives the latitude (39° 25′ 41″ North), the parenthetical numbering of landmarks (1) and (2), and the natural-history coda on grapes, berries, roses, and diminishing deer sign. The cross-narrator comparison thus confirms what students of the journals have long recognized: on this stretch of river, Clark is the documentary engine, and the enlisted journalists’ entries are best read as derivative witnesses whose value lies in their occasional independent details and in the orthographic texture they preserve.
