Source: Patrick Gass, A Journal of the Voyages and Travels of a Corps of Discovery (Pittsburgh, 1807). Public domain. McKeehan’s published prose, not Gass’s lost original notebook. The 1807 book ends on this day; Gass published no October–December 1806 daily journal.

The post Patrick Gass: September 23, 1806 appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Library.

Three Registers of the Same Morning

Gass, characteristically, gives the barest skeleton. His sergeant’s log notes only the rain of the previous day, the unfavorable wind, a three-hour halt to hunt, and four deer killed before the party encamped at sunset. He says nothing of McClellan, nothing of Clark’s illness, nothing of the timber on the bottoms. His entry is the kind of compressed military summary he had been producing since the winter at Fort Mandan.

Ordway, by contrast, opens with the social texture Gass omits. He records the leave-taking from McClellan’s party in some detail:

our party as much whiskey as they would drink and gave our officers three bottles of wine and we took our leave of them

Where Gass counted four deer, Ordway counts five — a small discrepancy typical of the enlisted journals, where tallies were often jotted from memory after the fact. Ordway’s account of the day is otherwise brief, conceding only that they “detained along at different places to hunt” and “Camped having made but a Short distance this day.”

Clark’s Expansive Eye

Clark’s entry dwarfs the other two and is the only one to explain why the day was short. He names McClellan, records the morning dram, fixes the time of the wind’s interference, and gives the practical reason for laying by:

the wind being too high for us to proceed in Safty through the emecity of Snags which was imediately below

Neither Gass nor Ordway mentions the snags at all. Clark also alone reports his own ill health and McClellan’s gift of chocolate:

I felt my Self very unwell and derected a little Chocolate which Mr. McClellen gave us, prepared of which I drank about a pint and found great relief

This is one of the small medical asides that distinguish Clark’s homeward journals. He also alone preserves the day’s minor mishap — that George Shannon, the same young soldier who had been lost on the prairie in 1804, left his horn, pouch, powder, ball, and knife behind and did not realize it until nightfall.

The Botanist of the Bottom

The most striking divergence comes at the close of Clark’s entry, where he turns from event to environment. Having walked in the bottom while the hunters worked, he produces a catalogue of vegetation and birds that has no counterpart in the other journals:

cotton wood, Sycamore, ash mulberry, Elm of different Species, walnut, hickory, horn beem, pappaw arrow wood willow, prickly ash, &c and Grape vines, pees of 3 species

His comparison is telling — he calls this “the Growth of timber Common to the Illinois.” The expedition is now within a recognizable eastern forest, and Clark registers the homecoming through species rather than sentiment. Ordway’s two men, sent into the same bottom, had returned only with a turkey and the report “that the rushes was so high and thick that it was impossible to kill any deer.” Where the hunters saw an obstruction, Clark saw a flora worth listing.

Patterns of Attention

The three entries together illustrate a pattern visible across the homeward leg. Gass abbreviates; Ordway preserves social and ceremonial detail (the whiskey, the wine, the leave-taking) that the officers’ journals sometimes pass over; and Clark, even when unwell, expands into natural-historical observation. None of the three appears to be copying another on this date — the deer count differs, the noted details do not align, and Clark’s botanical list is wholly his own. The day’s eighteen miles are short by the standards of the descent, but the convergence of three independent voices on a single wind-bound afternoon offers an unusually full record of how the captains and their sergeants divided the labor of remembering.

The post Wind, Whiskey, and a Pint of Chocolate: Three Views of a Slow Day on the Lower Missouri appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Library.

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 S^t 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.

The post Whiskey, Biscuit, and the Phantom Kanzas: Three Accounts of a Riverside Encounter appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Library.

Compression Versus Expansion

Gass condenses the entire day into a single sentence:

early. Ina short time we killed a fine large elk; at 11 o’clock passed the Kanzon river, and encamped at sunset.

Three events—elk, river mouth, camp—frame the whole. Gass’s spelling of “Kanzon” preserves a phonetic rendering distinct from Ordway’s “Kanzas” and Clark’s “Kanzas,” suggesting Gass either heard the name differently or did not consult the captains’ notebooks before recording.

Ordway’s entry, by contrast, is observationally dense. He notes the headwind “as usal,” specifies that the elk was “a buck” shot “from their canoe on the lower point of an Isld,” and adds a second buck shot from a canoe later in the day. Ordway is also the only narrator to give a count of game seen but not taken—”about 20 deer on the shores this day”—and the only one to record the rattlesnake episode at the pawpaw grove:

an emence Site of pappaws & as the men were gathering them Saw a number of rattle Snakes and killed one of them and saved the skin.

Clark mentions the pawpaw stop in passing—”we landed one time only to let the men geather Pappaws or the Custard apple of which this Country abounds, and the men are very fond of”—but says nothing of snakes. The detail is Ordway’s alone, consistent with his pattern throughout the return voyage of recording incidents involving the enlisted men that the captains either omit or generalize.

Clark the Surveyor and Climatologist

Where Ordway counts and Gass compresses, Clark interprets. His entry is the longest of the three and is structured around two extended digressions that have no parallel in the other journals. The first is a reconnaissance of military terrain:

about a mile below we landed and Capt Lewis and my Self assended a hill which appeared to have a Commanding Situation for a fort, the Shore is bold and rocky imediately at the foot of the hill, from the top of the hill you have a perfect Command of the river

Neither Gass nor Ordway records this ascent, though it occupied both captains and presumably required the boats to wait. The omission is telling: the hill’s strategic value was a captains’ concern, not a sergeant’s, and the enlisted journalists had no reason to log it.

Clark’s second digression is climatological. He observes that the party is no longer “tormented by the Musquetors” as it had been above the Platte, and offers a meteorological explanation for the discomfort the men feel in the lower river:

Comeing out of a northern Country open and Cool between the Latd. Of 46° and 49° North in which we had been for nearly two years, rapidly decending into a woody Country in a wormer Climate between the Latds. 38°& 39° North is probably the Cause of our experiencing the heat much more Senceable than those who have Continued within the parralel of Latitude.

This is Clark in scientific mode, framing bodily sensation as a problem of latitude and acclimatization. Ordway registers the same general fact—the wind is “a head as usal”—but offers no analysis. Gass says nothing of weather at all.

Convergences and a Missing Scene

The three accounts agree on the essentials: an early start, the Kansas River passed at 11, an elk killed, sunset camp. Clark and Ordway agree the elk was a buck and that it was taken on an island; Clark names the hunters as “the 2 fields and Shannon,” a specificity Ordway lacks. Gass alone calls the animal “a fine large elk” without naming hunters or location.

Notably, the editorial footnote attached to Ordway’s entry reports that Clark elsewhere placed the camp on an island and noted the men “received a dram and Sung Songs untill 11 oClock at night in the greatest harmoney.” That convivial scene appears in none of the three entries transcribed here—a reminder that any single day in the expedition’s record is assembled from overlapping but incomplete fragments, and that the cheerful camp on the lower Missouri survives only because one narrator, on one occasion, chose to write it down.

The post Pawpaws, an Elk, and a Commanding Hill: Three Views of the Kansas River Mouth appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Library.

A Shared Itinerary, Three Registers

All three accounts agree on the basic sequence: an early start, a morning meeting with a pirogue bound for the Pawnees on the Platte, a second meeting near midday with a keelboat and two canoes, and an evening camp on an island. Patrick Gass, characteristically terse, compresses the entire day into five sentences:

ceeded on early, and at 9 o’clock met a large periogue with eight men, going to trade with the Ponis nation of Indians on the river Platte about seventy or eighty miles from its mouth. At 11 we met a batteaux and two canoes going up to the Kanowas nation, who live on a river of the same name.

Gass supplies useful geographic detail — the distance of the Pawnee trading destination from the mouth of the Platte — but suppresses every diplomatic and political dimension of the encounter. For Gass, these are simply boats met and passed.

John Ordway and William Clark, by contrast, both linger over the second meeting. Ordway names the proprietor as “Mr Reubode of Su1d57 Louis” and notes that the keelboat “was under the charge of Mr Reubados Son.” Clark identifies him as “young Mr. Bobidoux” — both narrators are wrestling with the surname Robidoux. Ordway’s count of “about 20 frenchman in Company” gives the encounter a scale that Clark omits.

The Passport Problem

The most revealing convergence between Ordway and Clark concerns the captains’ inspection of the trader’s license, an episode Gass entirely ignores. Clark, writing in the register of a commanding officer assessing legal documents, expresses pointed skepticism:

the licenes of this young man was to trade with the Panias Mahars and ottoes reather an extroadanary a license for young a man and without the Seal of the teritory anexed, as Genl. Wilkensons Signeture was not to this instrement we were Somewhat doubtfull of it. Mr. Browns Signeture we were not acquainted with without the Teritorial Seal.

Clark’s concerns are procedural and bureaucratic: the breadth of the license, the missing territorial seal, the unfamiliar signature of “Mr Brown” in place of General Wilkinson’s. Ordway preserves the diplomatic content of the captains’ response — the substance of the warning delivered to the young trader:

our officers gave instructions to this trador after reading his passport directing them not to speak against the government of the United States to the Indians as his brothers did to the Zotoes last winter

Clark echoes this in slightly softer language, recording that the captains “Cautioned him against prosueing the Steps of his brother in attempting to degrade the American Charector in the eyes of the Indians.” The two accounts reinforce one another: Ordway, the sergeant, captures the directive as instruction (“directing them not to speak against the government”); Clark, the officer who delivered it, frames it as caution against degrading “the American Charector.” Both versions point to a recent incident the previous winter involving Robidoux’s brother and the Otoes — a piece of intelligence the Corps had evidently absorbed during its westward journey or its winter at Fort Mandan.

Heat, Distance, and What Each Man Notices

Beyond the trading encounters, each journalist preserves details the others omit. Clark alone tabulates the day’s mileage (“haveing Came 52 miles only to day”) and locates the evening camp by reference to an earlier outbound campsite (“a little above our encampment of the 16th & 17th of June 1804”) — a navigational habit that distinguishes the captains’ journals from the enlisted men’s. Clark and Ordway both register the oppressive heat; Ordway notes “the day verry warm indeed,” while Clark elaborates that “the men rowed but little” because of it.

Ordway alone records two further encounters: a meeting with two French hunters whose canoe came out to the boats, bringing word that “an american Boat was on their way coming up Some distance below,” and a glimpse of “a black bear which run [into] a thicket of bushes.” These details suggest Ordway’s journal-keeping practice on this date was the most attentive to incidental observation, while Gass economized ruthlessly and Clark prioritized the official and the navigational.

The post Three Boats on the Homeward River: Traders, Licenses, and a Suspect Passport appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Library.

Three Registers, One Encounter

William Clark’s entry is by far the most elaborate, running to a paragraph-length précis of McClallen’s commercial design. Clark identifies the man as late a Capt. of Artily of the U States Army and an acquaintance of my friend Capt. Lewis — a personal connection that opened the conversation and kept the two parties talking untill near mid night. Clark’s account alone names Governor Wilkinson as the source of McClallen’s introductory Speach to the Pawnees and Otoes, and only Clark records the geopolitical nuance that the trader hoped to draw Spanish merchants into Louisiana Territory rather than crossing into New Mexico himself.

Sergeant John Ordway, by contrast, captures the commercial logic in plainer mercantile language: the Spaniards are full of money and no goods among them of any account. Ordway also looks ahead with a touch of national optimism, predicting that if Mr McLanen has Success this voiage no doubt but that trade will be advantageous to the United States hereafter. Where Clark describes diplomatic stagecraft — McClallen appearing in a stile calculated to atract the Spanish government — Ordway reduces the matter to horses, silver, and goods exchanged.

Patrick Gass, working from notes that would later be polished by his editor David McKeehan, gives the briefest version. He correctly identifies the captain, the fifteen hands, an interpreter and a black, and the plan to discharge the men on this side of the mountain and recruit Ponis to accompany the trader to Santa Fe. Gass alone among the three mentions a Black member of McClallen’s crew — a detail Ordway and Clark omit.

Sergeants in Parallel

The Gass and Ordway entries share a striking structural parallelism that suggests the two sergeants compared notes or drew on a common conversational source. Both open with the previous night’s catfish — Gass calling it a large catfish, supposed to weigh 100 pounds and Ordway recording a fish which is judfg]ed to weigh a hundred weight. Both then describe the dangerous sawyer-choked passage, both fix the meeting at about two in the afternoon or about 2 oClock P. M., and both close with the dispatch of hunters ahead in two small canoes and McClallen’s gift of whiskey and biscuit. Their phrasing for the gift is nearly identical: Gass writes that McClallen gave all our party as much whiskey as they could drink, and a bag of biscuit, while Ordway records that he gave our party as much whiskey as they would drink and a bag of Buiscuit.

Clark’s account of the same exchange is materially different. He notes that the Corps received Buisquit, Chocolate Sugar & whiskey — adding chocolate and sugar to the inventory — and uniquely records the reciprocity: for which we made a return of a barrel of corn. The sergeants saw the gifts; the captain saw the trade.

The Bad Passage and What Each Man Names

The morning’s hazardous river stretch also reveals differing geographic vocabularies. Clark places the danger at the Island of the little Osage Village, which he reports the river’s navigators consider the worst place in it, and he describes the hydrology in detail: a narrow channel for more than 2 miles which is crouded with Snags in maney places quite across. Ordway names riffle Isld and petzaw Island — toponyms absent from Clark’s entry — while Gass offers no place-name at all, only that it was so filled with sawyers that we could hardly find room to pass through safe.

Read together, the three entries map a familiar hierarchy. Clark records politics, personalities, and reciprocal exchange; Ordway frames commerce and national interest; Gass — or his editor — distills the day into incident and atmosphere. McClallen’s later fate on the upper Missouri would prove the speculative venture far more dangerous than any of them suspected, but on this September evening the meeting brought news from a country that, as McClallen told them, had almost forgotton the expedition.

The post Meeting Captain McClallen: Three Accounts of a Speculative Encounter appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Library.

Parallel Sergeants, Diverging Captain

Ordway and Gass produce nearly interchangeable entries. Ordway writes that the party

Set out eairly and proceeded on Soon passd the Mouth of Grand river. Soon after we overtook our hunters they had killed nothing So we procd on all day without detaining to hunt Saw a fiew Turkeys gathered Some pappaws which the party in general are fond of. in the evening we Camped on an Island.

Gass’s version follows the same armature almost beat for beat:

passed the mouth of the river Grand, and soon after overtook the hunters, who had not killed any thing. We continued our voyage all day without waiting to hunt; gathering some papaws on the shores, and in the evening encamped on an island.

The shared sequence — Grand River, hunters with nothing, no delay, pawpaws, island camp — and even shared phrasing (“overtook,” “without [waiting/detaining] to hunt”) suggest the kind of cross-pollination long suspected among the enlisted journalists, whether through shared evening conversation or direct consultation. Notably, Gass’s published version smooths Ordway’s manuscript orthography (“detaining” becomes “waiting”; “pappaws” becomes “papaws”) in keeping with David McKeehan’s 1807 editorial polish.

Where the sergeants summarize, Clark expands. His entry alone preserves the texture of the day: the 7 A.M. timing of the Grand River passage, the 10 o’clock halt to gather food, the “charming Oake bottom” above the two Chariton rivers, and a precise mileage of fifty-two.

Hunger Hidden and Hunger Recorded

The most striking divergence concerns the party’s provisions. Ordway notes only that the men are “fond of” pawpaws. Gass mentions the fruit in passing. Clark, by contrast, makes scarcity the central subject of the entry:

we have nothing but a fiew Buisquit to eate and are partly compelled to eate poppows which we find in great quantities on the Shores… our party entirely out of provisions Subsisting on poppaws. we divide the buiskit which amounted to nearly one buisket per man, this in addition to the poppaws is to last is down to the Settlement’s which is 150 miles

The contrast is instructive. The sergeants’ framing — pawpaws as a pleasant gathering, the men “fond” of them — domesticates a situation Clark records as compulsion. Whether the sergeants downplayed hardship out of habit, morale, or the conventions of their genre, Clark’s command perspective registers the arithmetic of hunger: one biscuit per man, 150 miles to go.

Clark also alone notes the physical toll of the descent. He records that

J. Potts complains very much of one of his eyes which is burnt by the Sun from exposeing his face without a cover from the Sun. Shannon also complains of his face & eyes &c.

Neither Ordway nor Gass mentions Potts’s or Shannon’s afflictions. The sergeants’ silence on individual suffering, paired with their parallel cheerfulness about pawpaws, reinforces a pattern visible elsewhere in the homeward journey: the enlisted journals tend toward collective, forward-moving narration, while Clark itemizes risks, distances, and the condition of named men.

Morale at the Edge of the Settlements

One detail unites all three narrators in spirit if not in wording: the party’s willingness to press on without hunting. Clark concludes that “the party appear perfectly contented and tell us that they can live very well on the pappaws.” This sentiment — the men choosing speed over a full belly within 150 miles of St. Louis — is precisely what Ordway and Gass capture by omission, treating the pawpaw diet as unremarkable. Gass’s journal, indeed, telescopes the next five days into a single sentence ending with the triumphal arrival on the 23rd “after an absence of two years, four months and ten days.” The sergeants write as men already home; Clark, still in command, counts the biscuits.

The post Pawpaws and Biscuit: Subsistence on the Final Descent appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Library.

Shared Pace, Different Numbers

Both narrators emphasize the party’s reluctance to pause. Ordway notes that the men spotted game but pressed on regardless:

Saw a number of Turkeys but we being anxious to git down do not detain to hunt, gathered Some pappaws which our party are fond of and are a kind of fruit which abound in these bottoms and are now ripe

Clark records the same impulse in more deliberative prose, framing the haste as a calculated plan rather than mere eagerness:

our anxiety as also the wish of the party to proceed on as expeditiously as possible to the Illinois enduce us to continue on without halting to hunt. we Calculate on ariveing at the first Settlements on tomorrow evening which is 140 miles, and objecet of our party is to divide the distance into two days, this day to the Osarge River, and tomorrow to the Charriton

The two accounts agree on the destination — the mouth of the Osage — and on the pawpaw-gathering as the only authorized stop. They diverge, however, on distance traveled. Ordway claims the party made 84 miles; Clark logs 72. Such discrepancies are common in the expedition record, where Clark, the official cartographer, generally produced the more conservative and considered figure. Ordway, writing as a sergeant keeping a personal log, may have rounded generously or estimated by elapsed time rather than river bends. The 12-mile gap is a useful reminder that even within a single command, mileage was a matter of judgment rather than measurement.

What Only Clark Sees

The most striking divergence on this date is not in mileage but in scope of observation. Ordway closes his entry with the camp at the Osage and a deer killed late in the day. Clark, by contrast, devotes the bulk of his entry to a medical puzzle that Ordway does not mention at all:

a very singular disorder is takeing place amongst our party that of the Sore eyes. three of the party have their eyes inflamed and Sweled in Such a manner as to render them extreamly painfull, particularly when exposed to the light, the eye ball is much inflaimed and the lid appears burnt with the Sun

Clark’s role as the expedition’s de facto physician is on display here. He catalogs symptoms with clinical precision — inflammation, swelling, photophobia, the sunburned appearance of the lids — and then ventures a hypothesis:

the cause of this complaint of the eye I can’t account for. from it’s Sudden appearance I am willing to believe it may be owing to the reflection of the Sun on the water

The reasoning is sound for the period. Modern readers might recognize the cluster of symptoms as consistent with photokeratitis (so-called “snow blindness,” though here induced by water glare) or possibly a viral conjunctivitis spreading through close quarters. Clark’s willingness to admit ignorance — “I can’t account for” — and then to reason from sudden onset to environmental cause is characteristic of his observational method.

Register and Role

The contrast between the two entries illustrates how narrator role shaped narrator content. Ordway, writing in a brisk, event-focused register, gives a sergeant’s log: passed Mine River, gathered pawpaws, killed a deer, camped at the Osage, made 84 miles. The entry is complete on its own terms. Clark, writing as commander, cartographer, and medic, layers planning (the two-day division to the Chariton), historical reference (camping “on the Spot we had encamped on the 1st & 2d of June 1804”), and medical observation onto the same skeletal day.

Neither account appears to be copied from the other; they share the day’s structure because the party shared the day, but the textures are independent. For researchers, the pairing is instructive: Ordway confirms the pace and the pawpaws, while Clark alone preserves the first warning of an outbreak that would shadow the final descent to St. Louis.

The post Racing Downriver: Pawpaws, Mileage, and a Mysterious Affliction appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Library.

Shared Facts, Divergent Registers

Both Clark and Ordway anchor their entries on the same sequence of events: the abandonment of canoes because of incapacitated rowers, an early start, the meeting with French trappers ascending the river, the arrival at Charette near sunset, the three rounds of gunfire returned by boatsmen, and the eight-dollar transaction for two gallons of whiskey. The factual scaffolding is essentially identical—evidence that Ordway, as sergeant, was either present at or briefed on the same details Clark recorded as co-commander.

Yet the registers differ sharply. Ordway’s prose is compressed and transactional:

our officers got 2 gallons of Whiskey for which they had to pay eight dollars an extorinatable [extortionate] price they got us some pork Beef and flour &C. the french people gave us Some milk &C. &C.

Clark, writing with an eye toward the eventual official narrative, expands the same episode into a scene with named hosts, social courtesies, and political commentary:

we landed and were very politely received by two young Scotch men from Canada one in the employ of Mr. Aird a Mr. ____ and the other Mr. Reed… we purchased of a Citizen two gallons of Whiskey for our party for which we were obliged to give Eight dollars in Cash, an imposition on the part of the Citizen.

Both narrators flag the whiskey price as excessive—Ordway calls it “extorinatable,” Clark an “imposition”—but only Clark distinguishes between the welcoming Scotch traders and the price-gouging “Citizen,” preserving a social hierarchy of blame that Ordway collapses.

What Each Narrator Notices

Ordway, writing from the ranks, registers the men’s perspective: the milk supplied by French villagers, the practical relief of resupply. Clark, by contrast, devotes substantial paragraphs to matters Ordway omits entirely—the riverine geography of the day’s run (the low Osage, the mouth of the Gasconnade), the technical specifications of the Canadian batteaux, and the political grievances of American settlers in the territory:

The American inhabitants express great disgust for the govermt of this Teritory. from what I can lern it arises from a disapmt. of getting all the Spanish Grants Confirmed.

This is the kind of intelligence-gathering Lewis and Clark were instructed to perform, and Clark performs it even on a day of celebration. Ordway has no such reportorial obligation and accordingly skips the political ethnography.

Clark also captures the emotional texture more fully. The sight of cattle on the bank produces “a joyfull Sight to the party and Caused a Shout to be raised for joy”—a small but telling detail Ordway does not record. Clark notes that locals “informed us that we were Supposed to have been lost long Since, and were entirely given out by every person.” The expedition’s reentry into the world of news, it turns out, came with the discovery that they had been mourned.

Gass and the Indexical Trace

The fragment of Gass’s journal available here is an index rather than a daily entry, but its inclusion of “La Charette—first settlement, citizens cheer” as a discrete entry confirms that Gass, in his published 1807 account, treated this as a landmark moment. The indexical phrasing—”citizens cheer”—matches the public, civic register Gass’s editor David McKeehan favored, and contrasts with Ordway’s plainer “fired three rounds and was answered” and Clark’s more ceremonious “3 rounds with a harty Cheer.” Across all three narrators, the gunfire-and-cheer exchange functions as the symbolic threshold of return.

Pattern

Where Ordway records, Clark contextualizes, and Gass (via his editor) monumentalizes. The same moment becomes, respectively, a logistical note, a piece of frontier reportage, and an indexed civic event. Read together, the three accounts show how a single afternoon at a small French village could be inscribed simultaneously into private, official, and public memory.

The post Return to Charette: Three Voices at the Edge of Settlement appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Library.

Two Registers of Reunion

Both narrators emphasize that the inhabitants of the lower Missouri settlements believed the Corps had perished. Ordway records the bewilderment plainly:

the people of the Settlements were makeing inqueries of us & were Surprized to See us as they Said we had been given out for dead above a year ago.

He repeats the motif at St. Charles, noting that the townspeople "could hardly believe that it was us for they had heard and had believed that we were all dead and were forgotten." The doubled phrasing — dead and forgotten — gives Ordway’s entry an almost folkloric cadence, the sergeant registering the emotional weight of return.

Clark, by contrast, frames the same recognition through the visual and the social. He notes that "Saw Several persons also Stock of different kind on the bank which reviv’d the party very much," and on approach to St. Charles describes how "the party rejoiced at the Sight of this hospital village plyed thear ores with great dexterity." Where Ordway dwells on the settlers’ astonishment, Clark dwells on the party’s own animation. The captain’s prose is observational and managerial; the sergeant’s is communal.

Salutes, Hosts, and the Sunday Promenade

Both men record the ceremonial arrival. Ordway writes that the Corps "fired three rounds and Camped at the lower end of the Town," a compressed military notation. Clark expands the same moment into a tableau:

this day being Sunday we observed a number of Gentlemen and ladies walking on the bank, we Saluted the Village by three rounds from our blunderbuts and the Small arms of the party, and landed near the lower part of the town.

Clark alone notes that the day is Sunday and that the riverbank promenade is a feature of village leisure — a detail Ordway omits entirely. Clark also alone names hosts: "a Mr. Proulx, Taboe, Decett, Tice Dejonah & Quarie," recording who extended invitations and which two (Proulx and Deucett) the captains were able to visit. Ordway records only that "the most of the party got quarters in Town and refreshments" — the enlisted men’s perspective on the same hospitality, undifferentiated by household.

The contrast is characteristic. Clark, as co-commander, is curating a record of obligations incurred and civilities exchanged; the named gentlemen are future correspondents and creditors of goodwill. Ordway, writing for himself and a probable popular readership, collapses the social register into a single line about quarters and refreshment, and then attends to what Clark omits altogether: the weather. "late in the evening hard rain commend and continued hard during the night," Ordway closes — a detail entirely absent from Clark’s entry, which ends instead with a mileage note and an editorial aside that "The banks of the river thinly Settled &c."

Complementary Silences

Neither account is derivative of the other; the divergences are too consistent. Ordway notes the Indian canoes "mooving up the River" without specifying the nation, while Clark identifies them as "12 canoes of Kickapoos assending on a hunting expedition" and adds the encounter at 3 P.M. with "two large boats assending" — ascending traders Ordway does not mention. Conversely, Ordway’s closing weather observation and his repeated emphasis on the settlers’ disbelief preserve atmospheric and emotional information that Clark’s more administrative entry lets pass.

For the date 21 September 1806, the two journals function as deliberate complements. Clark supplies the ethnographic specificity — names of hosts, identity of the ascending Indians, the Sunday promenade — that the captain’s record was expected to preserve. Ordway supplies the human texture of return: the repeated motif of being thought dead, the hard rain on the first night under a roof in over two years. Used together, they reconstruct an arrival neither entry, alone, fully conveys.

The post Returned from the Dead: Arrival at St. Charles appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Library.