On the fourteenth of September 1806, somewhere below the old Kanzas village in the stretch of river the expedition had ascended more than two years earlier, the homeward-bound Corps of Discovery encountered three keelboats pushing upstream with trade goods. The meeting is recorded by three journalists — Patrick Gass, John Ordway, and William Clark — and the differences among their accounts illustrate how rank, literacy, and narrative purpose shaped what each man chose to commit to paper.
A Shared Event, Three Registers
The bare facts agree across all three journals: the party set out early, met three large boats from St. Louis, halted roughly two hours, received whiskey and provisions, killed deer along the banks, and camped on an island. Gass, the carpenter-sergeant whose published journal favors brevity, compresses the encounter into a single sentence of hospitality:
The people in them were very glad to see us, and gave us some whiskey, pork, and biscuit. We remained with them two hours and again went on.
Ordway, often Gass’s closest parallel, supplies more texture. He notes that the boats were first sighted under sail, that the party “put to Shore Spread our flags,” and that the traders were a mixed company — “tradors from St Louis and frenchman but could Some of them Speak English.” He alone names the destination as “the Mahars nations” and itemizes the gifts as “ardent spirits buiscuits and cheese &C. onion.” Ordway’s eye for the practical — the flags, the language barrier, the cheese — gives his entry a sergeant’s-eye specificity that Gass’s printed prose smooths away.
Clark, by contrast, writes as a captain composing a record of state. He alone names the proprietors of the boats — “Mr. Lacroy, Mr. Aiten & Mr. Coutau all from St. Louis” — and identifies their two destinations as “the Yanktons and Mahars.” His entry runs longer than Gass’s and Ordway’s combined, and it frames the day in terms neither sergeant supplies.
The Kanzas Threat Only Clark Records
The most striking divergence is Clark’s opening paragraph, which has no counterpart in either Gass or Ordway. Before the boats appear, Clark explains the strategic anxiety of the morning:
this being the part of the Missouri the Kanzas nation resort to at this Season of the year for the purpose of robbing the perogues passing up to other nations above… it is probable they may wish to take those liberties with us, which we are deturmined not to allow of and for the Smallest insult we Shall fire on them.
Ordway, descending the same river, mentions only that the party “Soon passed the old village of the Kansers” — a geographic note shorn of menace. Gass omits the Kanzas entirely. Clark’s later remark that the upriver traders “were much affraid of meeting with the Kanzas” confirms that the apprehension was current along the river, not merely a captain’s caution; yet it surfaces in writing only under his pen. The pattern is consistent with what scholars have long observed: Clark’s journal carries the diplomatic and military framing of the expedition, while the sergeants’ journals record the day as experienced rather than as commanded.
Hunting, Distance, and the Evening’s Close
The deer-killing reports show another characteristic divergence. Gass writes simply, “We killed five deer on the bank to-day.” Ordway specifies that the hunters “killd Several deer from their canoes about 3 oClock P. M.” and adds a separate note that “Gibson shot an other deer from his canoe at dark.” Clark gives the totals with a quartermaster’s precision — “we Saw 37 Deer on the banks and in the river to Day 5 of which we killed” — and offers a judgment the others omit: “those deer were Meager.”
Only Clark records the day’s mileage (“haveing decended only 53 miles”) and the celebratory aftermath. Gass closes at sunset with the island camp; Ordway ends at dark on the north side. Clark alone writes that
our party received a dram and Sung Songs untill 11 oClock at night in the greatest harmoney.
That closing image — whiskey shared out from the traders’ stores, the men singing into the late hours after weeks of hard descent — appears nowhere in the other journals. It is a reminder that even on a day when three witnesses agree on the essential events, the texture of the expedition survives in the gaps among them: Gass’s economy, Ordway’s inventory, and Clark’s blend of strategic wariness and human warmth.
