The August 21, 1805 record is unusual because the captains were physically separated, producing two distinct narrative streams. Lewis, Ordway, and Whitehouse describe a frigid morning at Camp Fortunate devoted to caching baggage and preparing for the portage over the divide. Clark, ahead with Cameahwait’s band, files an ethnographic report on Shoshone fishing technology and social structure. Gass, traveling with Clark’s advance party, supplies the day’s only sustained landscape narration.
The Cold at Camp Fortunate
Three narrators open with nearly identical sentences about the frost. Lewis writes that
the ice 1/4 of an inch thick on the water which stood in the vessels exposed to the air. some wet deerskins that had been spread the grass last evening are stiffly frozen. the ink feizes in my pen.
Ordway records the same details — quarter-inch ice, frozen deerskins, ink freezing in the pen — and Whitehouse’s entry is essentially a transcription of Ordway’s, including the identical phrasing about deerskins “Spread out wet last night.” The Whitehouse-from-Ordway copying pattern is on clear display: Whitehouse adds only that some men found ice “14 of an Inch thick” in standing water at 8 a.m., and he records Lewis’s latitude observation as 43°44’19” N where Ordway gives 44°35’28” N. The discrepancy is unresolved in the entries themselves.
Lewis alone notes the day’s thermal whiplash:
notwithstanding the coldness of the last night the day has proved excessively warm.
He also alone explains the strategic purpose of the cache — concealment from the Shoshone — though Ordway and Whitehouse both grasp the secrecy. Ordway: the baggage was carried after dark
to hide undiscovred from the natives.
Whitehouse echoes that the Indians “need not discover us, or mistrust that we are going to berry any thing.” The men understood the diplomatic delicacy of caching trade goods in the territory of hosts whose horses they needed.
Clark’s Ethnography, Gass’s Geography
Clark’s entry is the day’s richest, and it is essentially a standalone field report. He describes a Shoshone weir with baskets “Set in different derections So as to take the fish either decending or assending,” then catalogs the bone gig in mechanical detail: a pole, a foot-long string tied to the middle of a four-to-six-inch bone, sharpened at one end, that detaches on impact so the fish is held crosswise. Gass independently confirms the fishing economy at a less technical register, noting that one of the men accompanied Indians to the fishing place and returned with five salmon, and that the party itself “shot a salmon about 6 pounds weight.”
Clark’s social observations are the entry’s most striking material. He calls the Shoshone
mild in their disposition appear Sincere in their friendship, punctial, and decided
and emphasizes their poverty — no tents, no axes, elk-horn wedges in place of iron tools — attributing it to enemy raids on their horses. Then comes the observation no other narrator approaches:
The women are held Sacred and appear to have an equal Shere in all Conversation, which is not the Case in any othe nation I have Seen.
The entry breaks off mid-sentence about the inclusion of children in council. Whether Clark’s reading is accurate or filtered through brief contact, he is the only narrator on this date even attempting social analysis.
Parallel Catalogs of Dress
Lewis and Clark, separated by miles, both turn to Shoshone clothing — a coincidence that suggests prior conversation about dividing the ethnographic labor. Lewis describes moccasins (one seam on the outer edge, sewn up behind, sometimes trimmed with polecat skins trailing at the heel) and the women’s chemise in extraordinary tailoring detail, including the open sides for nursing mothers and the underarm openings that allow an arm to be slipped free. Clark catalogs the materials — beaver, bear, buffalo, wolf, panther, ibex, sheep, deer, most commonly antelope — and the ornaments of otter skin, sea shells, and white weasel tails. The two accounts complement rather than overlap: Lewis on construction, Clark on materials and adornment.
Gass, meanwhile, supplies what neither captain records — the route. He measures the day at twenty miles, notes where the valley narrows and forces the party onto high ground for six miles, and identifies a tributary entering where the valley opens to four or five miles wide. The river at the night’s camp is “about 70 yards wide.” Gass remains the expedition’s most reliable surveyor of distances when the captains are absorbed in other subjects.
