The journal entries for March 9, 1805, offer a useful case study in how rank, location, and audience shaped what each Corps of Discovery journalist chose to record. On this day a senior Hidatsa (Minetarre) leader visited Fort Mandan during the captains’ final preparations for the spring departure. Sergeant John Ordway and Captain William Clark both noted the visit, but from quite different positions — Ordway inside the fort observing the encounter directly, Clark only catching the chief on the road and reconstructing events afterward.
Ordway Inside the Fort: Spectacle and “Great Medicine”
Ordway’s entry is brief but vivid in its emphasis on display. He notes Clark’s absence — “Capt Clark went up to the perogue party for to See the perogues” — and then turns to the diplomatic theatre unfolding at the fort itself:
a nomber of the Savages called the Big Belleys, chiefs1 came to the Fort to See the commanding officers Capt Lewis Shewed them the air Gun quadron [quadrant] & Spy Glass &.C. which they thought was Great Medicines.
Ordway, an enlisted observer, fastens on the moment of wonder. The air gun, quadrant, and spyglass were standard items in Lewis’s diplomatic kit, and the sergeant’s phrase “Great Medicines” — capitalized, almost reverent — captures what the rank-and-file thought mattered: the visible impression made on Native visitors. Ordway records no gifts, no speeches, and no names. For him the encounter is a piece of stagecraft.
Clark on the Road: Protocol, Gifts, and Names
Clark’s account is longer, more procedural, and concerned almost entirely with the apparatus of formal diplomacy. His shorter recap frames the day in plainly official language:
on the 9th of March we were Visited by the Grand Chief of the Minetarres, to whome we gave a medal & Some Cloths & a flag. Sent a French Man & a Indian with a letter to Mr. Tabboe informing them the Ricarras of the desire the Mandans had to See them &. &.
His expanded field entry then narrates the day in motion. Clark sets out in cold north wind to inspect the pirogue-builders five miles upriver, meets the chief with four companions on the trail, and redirects him to the fort under interpreter escort. He inspects the canoes — noting candidly that “the timber verry bad” — visits the upper Mandan village, and smokes a pipe with its chief, which he glosses for his readers as “the greatest mark of friendship and attention.”
Returning to Fort Mandan, Clark catches the Hidatsa chief about to depart and itemizes the gifts Lewis had presented in his absence:
having recieved of Captain M. Lewis a medel Gorget armbans, a Flag Shirt, Scarlet &c. &c. &c. for which he was much pleased Those Things were given in place of Sundery articles Sent to him which he Sais he did not receive 2 guns were fired for this Great man
The two-gun salute and the careful inventory of medal, gorget, armbands, flag, shirt, and scarlet cloth show Clark documenting the encounter for the official record. The chief’s complaint that earlier presents had not reached him is telling: the captains were repairing a diplomatic slight, almost certainly tied to the contested middleman role of the trader Tabeau and the Arikara network referenced in Clark’s shorter note.
What Each Narrator Misses
Read together, the entries are nearly complementary. Ordway witnesses what Clark cannot — the air gun and instrument demonstrations Lewis performed inside the fort — while Clark, who was absent at the critical moment, never mentions them. Conversely, Ordway omits the gifts, the salute, and the diplomatic backstory about undelivered presents, all of which Clark records in detail. Neither names the chief, a common silence in the journals when Hidatsa leaders visited.
The register difference is also striking. Ordway’s “Great Medicines” is the language of impression and wonder; Clark’s “medel Gorget armbans… 2 guns were fired for this Great man” is the language of protocol. Where the captain catalogues, the sergeant marvels. The same March morning at Fort Mandan thus survives in two voices — one watching the show, the other accounting for the diplomacy that the show was meant to serve.
