The fourteenth of May 1805 produced two of the most dramatic incidents of the expedition’s ascent of the Missouri: a wounded grizzly that scattered six armed hunters, and a sudden squall that nearly sent the white pirogue—loaded with instruments, papers, medicine, and trade goods—to the bottom of the river. Four narrators present that day (Patrick Gass, John Ordway, Joseph Whitehouse, and William Clark) recorded both events, but their accounts diverge sharply in tone, detail, and what each chose to dwell upon.
The Bear Hunt: Escalating Detail Among the Enlisted Men
Gass offers the most compressed version of the encounter, summarizing in a single tight passage that the bear, only wounded, “made battle and was near seizing some of them, but they all fortunately escaped, and at length succeeded in dispatching it.” His sergeant’s prose generalizes the moral: “These bears are very bold and ferocious; and very large and powerful. The natives say they have killed a number of their brave men.”
Ordway and Whitehouse, by contrast, give nearly parallel blow-by-blow narratives—so close in structure and phrasing that the textual relationship is unmistakable. Ordway records that the bear
chased 2 of them into a canoe, and another into the River and they Steady fireing at him. after Shooting eight balls in his body Some of them through the lites [lungs], he took the River and was near catching the Man he chased in, but he went up against the Stream and the bear being wounded could not git to him.
Whitehouse echoes the same sequence almost beat for beat, but adds anatomical particulars Ordway omits: “his feet was nine Inches across the ball, and 13 in length… his nales was Seven Inches Jong.” Whitehouse also raises the ball count from eight to nine. The two journals are clearly drawing on shared conversation or a common source, with Whitehouse expanding for vividness.
Clark, remarkably, treats the entire bear episode as a brief afterthought to his pirogue narrative: “Six good hunters of the party fired at a Brown or Yellow Bear Several times before they killed him, & indeed he had like to have defeated the whole party.” His estimate of the animal’s weight—”about 500 wt”—is a detail none of the enlisted men supply.
The Pirogue: Clark’s Crisis, the Others’ Incident
The register reverses sharply when the narrators turn to the squall that struck the white pirogue. For Gass, it is an inconvenience reported in two sentences: the men “turned it again and got it to shore, full of water,” and a “great part of the medicine, and other articles spoiled.” Ordway is somewhat fuller, crediting the awning with preventing capsize, and noting the fortunate timing of the douse. Whitehouse adds the specific damage—”the Medicine Spoiled or damaged very much Some of the paper and nearly all the books got wet”—and concludes with the small, telling detail that “our officers gave each man a draghm of ardent Spirits.”
Clark, however, treats the moment as the day’s true catastrophe and devotes the bulk of his entry to it. Where the enlisted journals describe a wet boat, Clark articulates the strategic stakes:
in this perogue were embarked our papers, Instruments, books, medicine, a great proportion of our merchandize, and in short almost every article indispensibly necessary to further the views, or insure the success of the enterprize in which, we are now launched to the distance of 2,200 miles.
Clark alone names the actors. He preserves the heroism of Cruzatte, who “by repeated threats so far brought Charbono the Sternman to his recollection that he did his duty,” and credits “the Squar”—Sacagawea—with catching the floating articles from the rear of the boat. None of Gass, Ordway, or Whitehouse mention Charbonneau’s panic, Cruzatte’s threats, or Sacagawea’s composure, though all three were almost certainly aware of these particulars. The enlisted journals reduce the event to weather and damage; Clark renders it as character.
Patterns of Witness
The day reveals a consistent division of labor among these narrators. Gass compresses and moralizes. Ordway and Whitehouse track each other closely on shared physical action—gunshots, chases, butchering—with Whitehouse routinely adding measurements and superlatives. Clark, writing as a captain, reserves his fullest prose for events bearing on the expedition’s survival and command. The grizzly nearly killed several men; the pirogue nearly killed the mission. Each narrator weighted the two crises accordingly.
