February 18, 1805. The Corps was in two places. John Ordway was downriver with Captain Lewis’s hunting camp. William Clark was at Fort Mandan. Those are the two published journals for the date in this corpus. Patrick Gass has no published journal for this date here.
Ordway at the meat pen
Ordway’s day is a camp move, a cache, and a marrow supper. Hunters went out early. The rest of the party
moved the camp about 5 mh down the River to a bottom where cap* Clarks party had some time before been a hunting, and had made a pen and put up 2 Elk and 11 Deer which we found Safe as they left it.
The pen is Clark’s earlier hunt turned into a store: two elk and eleven deer, still there. Several men pack in meat killed the day before. They fix the new camp “at an old Indian cabbin near the meat pen” — a standing structure reused, not a site described further. Hunters come in with one elk and seven deer. When the meat is packed, Lewis decides they will start for the fort the next morning. Evening:
we {leased the meat from the bones and eat the marrow out of them.
The opening mark in the manuscript is as printed. The sentence is still the day’s close: strip the bones, eat the marrow. Ordway’s numbers are exact — five miles, two elk and eleven deer in the pen, one elk and seven deer new, start tomorrow. He does not mention weather, visitors at the fort, or a shortage there. He is not at the fort.
Clark at Fort Mandan
Clark’s entry is the other operation:
a cloudy morning Some Snow, Several Indians here today Mr. McKinsey leave me, the after part of the day fine I am much engaged makeing a discriptive List of the Rivers from Information our Store of Meat is out to day
Cloudy, some snow, then a fine afternoon: weather Ordway never writes. “Several Indians here today” is fort traffic, not the old cabin by the pen. “Mr. McKinsey” is Charles McKenzie of the North West Company, leaving Clark after a visit Clark does not describe. The labor that takes the day is desk work: a “discriptive List of the Rivers from Information” — Hidatsa and Mandan geography for the maps, taken by questioning, not by walking the Knife. The last clause is the one that explains Lewis’s camp: “our Store of Meat is out to day.”
Read against Ordway, that line is not a routine inventory. On the day the fort larder is empty, the field camp has recovered Clark’s own pen of two elk and eleven deer, packed yesterday’s kill, added one elk and seven deer, and been told by Lewis to start home in the morning. Clark at the fort does not know, in this sentence, that the pen was found safe. Ordway in the bottoms does not know, in his sentence, that the store at the fort is out. The two pages are what make the split visible.
What two pens leave out
Clark names McKenzie and the river list and does not name Lewis, the cabin, the pen, or marrow. Ordway names Lewis, Clark’s old pen, the cabin, and the marrow and does not name McKenzie, snow, or an empty store. Neither man writes Gass’s day, because Gass did not leave a published journal for February 18 in this corpus. What remains is enough: a hunting camp packing meat for a fort that, the same day, had none.
