The expedition’s descent of the lower Snake River on October 13, 1805, produced three overlapping accounts of a single difficult day. Patrick Gass, John Ordway, and William Clark each describe running a series of rapids near present-day Lewiston, Idaho, but the entries diverge sharply in detail, focus, and narrative voice. Read together, they illustrate how rank and role shaped what each man recorded.
The Same Rapid, Three Registers
All three narrators agree on the basic chronology: rain in the morning, a delay until late morning, canoes lowered through the rapids one or two at a time, and a safe passage. Gass offers the most compressed version, treating the event almost as a logistical bulletin:
not set out till 11 o’clock: we then proceeded with two canoes at a time over the rapids, which are about 2 miles in length; and in about two hours got all over safe.
Ordway, by contrast, notices the human detail Gass omits — that nonswimmers were sent overland with the baggage:
took down one canoe at a time below the rapids, all the men who could not swim carried each a load of baggage by land, about 12 we got safe below the rapids
This is a recurring pattern across the journals: Ordway, a sergeant closer to the daily labor of the men, frequently registers the practical accommodations the captains streamline out of their own entries. Clark mentions only that the canoes passed “without any injurey,” subordinating the operational details to a broader strategic reflection.
What Clark Sees That the Others Don’t
Clark’s entry is by far the longest and most layered, and it contains two observations that have no parallel in Gass or Ordway. The first is his celebrated remark on Sacagawea’s diplomatic value:
The wife of Shabono our interpetr we find reconsiles all the Indians, as to our friendly intentions a woman with a party of men is a token of peace
Neither Gass nor Ordway records this insight on this date, though all three men were traveling together. The observation belongs to Clark’s role as co-commander and ethnographer; it is the kind of generalization a sergeant or private had little occasion to formulate in writing.
The second is Clark’s evident interest in the Native fishing infrastructure. He notes “the timbers of Several houses piled up, and a number of wholes of fish,” and concludes that “the bottom appears to have been made use of as a place of deposit for their fish for ages past.” Ordway sees the same scene and describes it in nearly equivalent terms:
Saw a great number of fishing camps where the natives fish everry Spring, they raft all their wood down the River a long distance and they put it up on Scaffels and take great care of it.
The convergence here is notable. Ordway and Clark both register the rafted wood, the scaffolds, and the seasonal pattern; Gass mentions none of it, recording only “high dry prairie” and “one handsome creek.” Whether Ordway drew on Clark’s observations (or vice versa) cannot be determined from these entries alone, but the parallel phrasing — both men singling out wood transport and storage — suggests shared conversation in camp rather than independent observation.
The Mill-Race Channel
The day’s most dramatic geographic feature is a constricted channel where the Snake squeezes between rock walls. Ordway describes it vividly:
passed through a place in the River where it was all confined in a narrow channel of about 15 yards wide for about 2 miles and ran like a mill race
Clark records the same feature with slightly different measurements — “a Chanel of about 20 yards between rugid rocks for the distance of a mile and a half” — and adds the seasoned riverman’s judgment: “This must be a verry bad place in high water.” Gass passes over the channel entirely, folding it into a generic reference to “more bad rapids.”
The discrepancy in width (15 yards versus 20) is typical of the expedition’s parallel records, where eyeball estimates rarely align precisely. What matters is the consistency of the larger picture: a narrow gorge, a mill-race current, and a major Native fishery just below. Three narrators, three vantage points, one river — and a documentary record richer for the disagreements than any single journal could be.
