The entries for October 24, 1805, capture one of the more dramatic navigational decisions of the descent: William Clark’s choice to run the Short Narrows of the Columbia rather than attempt a portage of the canoes. The three surviving narrators for this day — Clark, John Ordway, and Patrick Gass — all record the passage and the night’s encampment at a substantial Indian village, but the level of detail and the rhetorical pitch of each account vary considerably. Read together, the entries also expose the familiar pattern by which the sergeants’ journals echo, compress, or quietly diverge from the captain’s record.
The Passage of the Narrows
Clark’s entry is by far the most elaborated. He measures the channel at “about 45 yards,” tracks distances in fractions of miles, and frames the decision to run the rapid as a calculated risk:
in those narrows the water was agitated in a most Shocking manner boils Swell & whorl pools, we passed with great risque It being impossible to make a portage of the Canoes
His prudence is operational rather than merely descriptive — he notes that he “put all the men who Could not Swim on Shore” and offloaded “guns & papers” before committing the boats. Clark also reveals, through editorial footnote, that the passage “excited the astonishment of the neighboring Indians, who gathered on the rock above to view the performance.”
Ordway, writing as a sergeant, compresses Clark’s careful survey into a single rapid sentence, recording that the party “went through a narrows where the river is all confined in a narrow channel of about 20 [45] yds and verry rapid and bad whorl pools.” The bracketed “[45]” in the printed text suggests an editorial reconciliation with Clark’s measurement; Ordway’s original “20” hints either at independent estimation or at a misheard figure passed along the line of canoes. His phrase “went on verry well” flattens the danger that Clark dramatizes.
Gass takes a third path. He omits the running of the Short Narrows almost entirely, noting only that the party went “4 miles below the narrows” before halting at a second, more confined gorge “At the head of these narrows.” Where Clark dwells on the hydraulics, Gass attends to the rocks: they are “higher” here, and the village stands at the head of the channel rather than within a deep basin.
The Village and Its Houses
All three men describe the semi-subterranean lodges, and the convergence of their language is striking. Ordway calls the houses “made half under the surface of the ground and the upper part well formed and covred with white ceeder bark,” judging them “verry comfortable houses.” Gass writes that “one story of which is sunk under ground and lined with flag mats; The upper part about 4 feet above ground is covered over with cedar bark,” and pronounces them “tolerably comfortable houses.” The shared adjective and parallel construction suggest either direct comparison of notes or a shared vocabulary worked out in camp conversation.
Clark, characteristically, supplies the measurements the sergeants do not: the houses are “20 feet Square and Sunk 8 feet under ground & Covered with bark with a Small door round at top rose about 18 Inches above ground, to keep out the Snow.” He alone records the fishery’s scale — “107 parcels of fish Stacked, and great quantites in the houses” — a quantitative detail that neither sergeant attempts.
Sea Otters, Cranberries, and Diplomacy
Gass is the only narrator to claim that the party “saw a great many sea otters swimming in the river, and killed some, but could not get them as they sunk to the bottom.” Clark notes “Great numbers of Sea Orter Pole Cats about those fishories” but does not mention the hunt; Ordway omits the otters altogether. The animals were almost certainly harbor seals or river otters, but the discrepancy is instructive: Gass, less burdened with diplomatic and cartographic responsibilities, has time to record a hunting episode the captain passes over.
The berries the party purchased puzzle Gass — “some call them cranberries; whether of the real kind or not I am not certain” — while Ordway accepts the identification without hedging (“crambries and white cakes of root bread”). Clark, meanwhile, devotes his second entry of the day entirely to the diplomatic problem of the two Nez Perce chiefs who wished to turn back, recording their speech in quoted form and explaining the captains’ strategy of detaining them “untill we Should pass the next falls.” Neither sergeant mentions the negotiation. The division of labor is clear: Clark carries the diplomatic and topographic record, while Ordway and Gass register the textures of camp life — the dogs purchased, the violin played for visiting headmen, the bark-roofed lodges along the river.
