One of the simpler discoveries that emerges from a full cross-narrator read of the expedition journals is that Lewis and Clark wrote nearly identical entries on the return trip, and very different entries on the outbound. April 26, 1806 is a clean example. Reading Lewis and Clark side by side that day produces what is essentially the same paragraph — slight spelling differences, the same observations in the same order, the same scientific aside about a chub a young Walla Walla boy caught with a bone hook.
Two near-identical entries
Compare:
Clark: “This morning early we proceeded on and at the distance of three miles entered a low leavel plain Country of great extent. here the river hills are low and receed a great distance from the river…”
Lewis: “This morning early we set forward and at the distance of three miles entered a low level plain country of great extent. here the river hills are low and receede a great distance from the river…”
The captains describe the same 12 miles to a willow-fueled dinner of dog meat and jerked elk; the same encounter with several Walla Walla families on horseback whose horses crowded into the column; the same encampment a mile below three lodges of “the Wollah wollah nation”; the same boy fishing with a bone hook. The chub gets the same fin-ray count from both pens (10 dorsal and ventral, 9 by the gills, 12 near the tail) — Lewis takes the description further into pure natural history; Clark stops at the count.
Why this matters
The outbound journey shows the captains writing different things on the same day, often miles apart. The return journey, particularly from spring 1806 onward, shows them writing in chorus. Three reasons are worth considering:
1. Reduced division of labor. By April 1806 the party was rarely split. The split-party scouting that produced the diverging entries of August 13, 1805 was a westbound mission necessity. On the way home, with horses, known routes, and known Indigenous nations, the captains traveled together and observed the same thing.
2. Lewis’s writing rhythm had stabilized. Lewis’s silent period (mid-August 1805 through the start of January 1806) ended at Fort Clatsop. By April 1806 he had been writing daily for four months. The cadence between captains had locked in.
3. Editorial coordination. Modern scholarship (Moulton, Coues) has long suggested the captains discussed and harmonized their entries on portions of the return — preparing what would eventually become the published narrative. April 26 is consistent with that hypothesis: the entries are too close to be coincidence and too distinct to be a copy.
The supporting view
The two sergeants who wrote on April 26 — Gass and Ordway — give shorter, separate accounts. Gass notes a botanical detail the captains do not: “On these plains there is a species of clover, as large as any I have seen, and has a large red handsome blossom… seven and eight leaves on a branch.” A multi-leaf clover, not in the captains’ record. Ordway mentions watching some of the natives “going over the rockey mountn to kill buffaloe” — strategic information about Walla Walla seasonal travel that Lewis and Clark omit.
The pattern across the full expedition is consistent: even when the captains write together, the sergeants preserve details the captains miss. The April 26 chub gets two captain descriptions; the seven-leaf clover gets only Gass’s.
