The entries for 24 August 1806 present a striking case study in how three members of the Corps of Discovery could witness an identical day on the Missouri and produce records of dramatically different texture. Patrick Gass, John Ordway, and William Clark all note the same interruption — a strong wind that forced the descending party ashore for roughly three hours — but the surrounding observations diverge according to each man’s role, training, and apparent intended audience.
The Shared Spine: Wind, Halt, Resumption
The structural backbone of the day is identical across all three journals. Gass records the party going
well till noon, when the wind rose and blew so strong that we were obliged to halt. Having lain by three hours we again proceeded, but did not go far before we were obliged on account of the wind, again to stop, and encamp for the night.
Ordway gives essentially the same skeleton:
out eairly and procd on verry well about noon the wind rose high from S. W. which detained us about three hours then procd on though the work against us. Camped on N. Side.
Even the language of detention — “obliged to halt,” “detained us” — and the precise three-hour duration align closely. Clark, however, places the wind’s onset at “2 P M” rather than noon and identifies it as coming from the N.W., where Ordway logs S.W. The discrepancy is small but instructive: Gass and Ordway, both sergeants whose journals frequently echo one another, agree on midday and a southwesterly direction; Clark, writing the captain’s log, supplies a later and contrary reading. Whether Ordway’s S.W. is a transcription slip or a genuinely different observation, the divergence cautions against treating sergeant-level journals as fully independent witnesses.
Clark Alone Sees the Geology, the Game, and the Sioux
The deepest contrast lies in everything the sergeants omit. Clark’s entry runs to several hundred words and catalogues three named islands — La-hoo-catts, Good hope, and Caution — none of which Gass or Ordway mention. He pauses at a bluff to investigate its mineralogy:
near the top of the Bluff I observed a Stratea of White stone I landed and examined it found it to be a Soft White Stone containing very fine grit, when expd. to the Sun and become Dry this Stone will Crumble
This is the captain’s habitual scientific register — a register entirely absent from the sergeants’ accounts. Clark also records faunal observations (“the deer on this pt. of the Missouri is mostly the Mule or black tail Species”; “we Saw only 6 buffalow to day”) and offers a strategic inference about Native movements:
the Sieoux have been laterly encamped on the river and have Secured the most of the game opp. a large trail has passed on a derection to the enterance of the Chyenne this probably is the trail of a war party.
None of this — neither the diminished game, nor the war-party trail, nor the unsuccessful hunter sent ashore — appears in Gass or Ordway. The sergeants’ silence on the Sioux question is particularly notable given how consequential such an inference would be for the party’s security. It suggests that Clark either kept such reasoning to himself in the moment or that the sergeants simply did not consider geopolitical interpretation part of their journal-keeping duty.
Register, Rank, and the Editor’s Footnote
Gass’s published prose is the most polished of the three — unsurprising, given that his journal was the first to reach print and was edited for a reading public. Ordway’s manuscript preserves its phonetic spellings (“eairly,” “verry,” “procd”) and its terse, log-like rhythm. Clark’s entry, while marked by his characteristic orthography (“Stratea,” “Sieoux,” “derection”), is the only one to provide precise mileage — “haveing made 43 miles to day” — and to anchor the camp by reference to the outward journey: “4 miles above of our outward bound encampment of the 1st of October 1804.” This retrospective navigation, tying the homeward leg to the previous autumn’s progress, is a captain’s habit; the sergeants record only that they camped on the north side.
The editorial apparatus surrounding Ordway’s entry confirms the pattern: a footnote keyed to Ordway’s vague “N. Side” cites Clark to locate the camp precisely “on the gouge of the lookout bend.” Modern readers, in other words, must triangulate through Clark even to know where Ordway slept. For 24 August 1806, the day exists in three voices — but only one of them carries the freight of mineralogy, ethnography, and chart-keeping that makes the expedition’s record what it became.
