The halt and the hunt

All five narrators agree on the day’s purpose and weather, but the bookkeeping varies. Clark fixes the latitude at

46° 48′ 28″

and tallies the hunters’ return at

4 deer a Beaver & 3 Grouse

. Gass, writing more impressionistically, records only

2 deer

killed at midday and

two cranes

on the move — and notably has the party traveling roughly twenty miles down the creek, not halting in camp. This is the day’s sharpest disagreement: Gass describes movement while Lewis, Clark, Ordway, and Whitehouse all describe a stationary camp. Either Gass has conflated this entry with an adjacent day, or his sense of the halt was looser than the captains’.

Ordway and Whitehouse, who frequently track one another closely, agree on

4 Deer a faun and Several ducks and geese

, a tally that diverges from Clark’s beaver-and-grouse count. Whitehouse adds botanical detail neither captain bothers with:

considerable of cotton timber on this creek the choke cherries abound on its bottoms. the natives has lately gethered an amence quantities of them here for food

. He alone registers the recent Indigenous presence on the ground itself — evidence of seasonal harvest the captains pass over.

Colter’s encounter, told five ways

The arrival of the three Flathead riders is the day’s narrative center, and the variation across accounts is instructive. Ordway and Whitehouse give nearly identical sequences — the hunter laying down his gun, the Indians approaching

in a friendly manner

, the ride

verry fast

back to camp — confirming again the Ordway-Whitehouse textual relationship, with Whitehouse expanding rather than rewriting.

Clark alone names the hunter:

one of the hunters Colter, met with 3 Tushapaw Indians

. He also alone records the diplomatic exchange of goods —

we gave them a ring fish hook & tied a pece of ribin in the hare of each

and Lewis’s gift of

a Steel & a little Powder to make fire

. Lewis, who one might expect to record his own gift, omits it and instead supplies ethnographic generalization: the Flatheads

have a great abundance

of horses,

each man in the nation possesses from 20 to a hundred head

, and are

a very light coloured people of large stature and comely form

.

The number of stolen horses migrates across the entries: Ordway says 2, Whitehouse 22, Lewis 23, Clark 21. The Ordway figure is almost certainly a transcription slip; the captains’ numbers bracket a real but uncertain count. Small evidence of how oral information, conveyed by signs, hardened differently in each notebook.

Geography by hearsay

Lewis uses the day to speculate at length about western hydrography, naming the eastern fork the

Valley plain river

and theorizing it joins the

Tacootchetessee

— the Fraser, in Mackenzie’s nomenclature. Whitehouse independently records the guide’s claim that

these waters runs in to Mackinzees River as near as they can give an account

, a striking convergence suggesting this geographical theory circulated in camp, not just in Lewis’s head.

Lewis alone preserves the new guide’s tantalizing report: that some of his relations

were at the sea last fall and saw an old whiteman who resided there by himself

and gave them handkerchiefs. Five sleeps, six days’ travel, to reach the relations on the Columbia. The figure would prove optimistic — the Bitterroot crossing lay ahead — but on the evening of September 10, the Pacific had, for the first time, a concrete human informant attached to it.

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Framing the sketches is a concise narrative of the war’s origins — from the embargo years through the treaties of 1815 — along with an appendix on the presidents involved. It is a useful group portrait of where the expedition’s people landed in the decade after the journey home.

This summary is provided for reference on the Lewis and Clark Research archive; the full compilation by Lorna Hainesworth is available at the source link.

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John Colter first appears in the official record on May 26, 1804, when Meriwether Lewis issued detachment orders organizing the Corps into messes at the outset of the Missouri ascent. Colter was assigned to Sergeant John Ordway’s squad, listed fifth among the privates:

9 Sergt. John Ordway. Privates. 10 William Bratton 11 John Colter 12 Moses B. Reed 13 Alexander Willard 14 William Warner 15 Silas Goodrich 16 John Potts & 17 Hugh Hall

From this organizational moment forward, Colter’s name recurs more frequently than almost any other private soldier — most often in connection with hunting, scouting, and small-party detachments.

The Hunter on the Lower Missouri

Within weeks of departure, Colter had distinguished himself as a hunter. On June 18, 1804, William Clark recorded that six hunters had crossed the river:

they Killed 5 Deer & Colter a Bear verry fat

Clark added in his second entry that the bear was “verry large & fat.”

On August 2, 1804, near the Council Bluff, Clark noted that Colter and George Drouillard returned from a long hunt:

The Two men Drewyer & Colter returned with the horses loaded with Elk, those horses they found about 12 miles in a Southerly Derection from Camp.

Later that month, on August 25, 1804, Clark included Colter in the small party that climbed the so-called Spirit Mound on the White Stone Creek — a sign of his standing among the men selected for special excursions.

The Lost Horse and the Teton Confrontation

Colter figures prominently in two episodes of late summer 1804. On September 3, Clark wrote tersely:

Colter has not over taken Shannon

— Colter had been sent ahead to overtake the lost George Shannon, an errand that fell short. Then on September 24, 1804, Colter was at the center of the first tense encounter with the Teton Sioux:

Soon after we passed the Island Colter ran up the bank & reported that the Sioux had taken his horse, we Soon after Saw five indians on the bank

The theft of Colter’s horse became the diplomatic flashpoint that opened the council. Clark recorded that the captains “Should not Speak to them any more untill the horse was returned to us.”

Through the Plains and Across the Rockies

On September 17, 1804, Clark credited Colter with killing a pronghorn (“a Goat”) and a mule deer — the latter described in detail as a curious species new to the explorers. Colter was also among the men dispatched on August 29 with Sergeant Pryor to escort the Yankton Sioux delegation across the river.

Through the winter at Fort Mandan and the long ascent of 1805, Colter’s name surfaces less frequently in the surviving entries provided here, but he reappears at critical junctures. On September 10, 1805, at Travelers’ Rest, Clark noted:

one of the hunters Colter, met with 3 Tushapaw Indians who were in pursuit of 2 Snake Indians that bade taken from ther Camps on the head of Kooskooske River 21 horses, Those Indians came with Colter to our Camp

This chance meeting — facilitated by Colter — produced the Nez Perce contact that helped guide the Corps over the Bitterroots. On September 24, 1805, Clark dispatched Colter back into the mountains:

despatched J. Colter back to hunt the horses lost in the mountains & bring up Some Shot left behind

Three days later, on September 27, Colter returned having recovered one horse and the lost canister of shot, and killed a deer along the way — sharing half with the Nez Perce.

To the Pacific and Back

Colter was among the small parties sent ahead during the difficult lower Columbia descent. On November 14, 1805, Clark recorded a scouting mission that ended in confrontation with Indians who took Colter’s gig and knife:

Soon after those people Came Colter one of the 3 men returned and informed us that he had proceeded with his Canoe as far as they Could, for the waves and Could find no white people, or Bay, he Saw a good Canoe barber & 2 Camps of Indians at no great distance below and that those with us had taken his gig & knife &c. which he forcably took from them

On November 29, 1805, Lewis selected Colter as one of five men to accompany him in a small canoe searching for winter quarters:

accompanyed by 5 men. drewyer R. Fields, Shannon, Colter & labiesh.

At Fort Clatsop, Colter shared the miseries of December 15–16, 1805, when he and four others were caught out overnight without fire in driving rain. Clark named them:

Ordway Colter Collens, Jo Whitehouse J McNeal

Through the winter Colter hunted regularly, was assigned to the salt camp on February 11, 1806, and was the last hunter still out when the Corps prepared to depart on March 22, 1806 — Lewis writing simply,

the hunters all returned except Colter, unsuccessfull.

The Recovered Tomahawk

On April 9, 1806, ascending the Columbia, Colter recognized stolen property in a Wahclellah lodge. Clark wrote:

one the men Colter observed the Tomahawk which was Stolen from on the 4th of Novr. last as we decended the Columbia, he took the tomahawk the natives attempted to wrest it from him, he held fast the Tomahawk.

Lewis confirmed the same incident, noting that Colter “retained it” despite the natives’ protests. The recovery — five months after the theft — speaks to Colter’s keen observation.

Camp Chopunnish and the Long Wait

During the protracted stay among the Nez Perce in May and June 1806, Colter appears repeatedly as a hunter ranging the high country toward Collins’s Creek. He hunted with Shannon (May 20, May 22, May 26), trekked to Quamash Flats with Collins and Shannon and returned with eight deer (May 28), traded at the Indian villages with Bratton (June 5), and on June 3 was credited by both captains with bringing in five deer and a brown bear:

Colter, Jos. Fields and Willard returned this evening with five deer and one bear of the brown Species

Earlier Brushes with Discipline

While the entries provided here do not detail Colter’s earlier court-martial of 1804 (he was tried alongside Collins for going AWOL near the Kansas River, an event referenced obliquely in the June 29, 1804 court-martial order), his consistent reappearance in trusted assignments throughout the journey indicates that whatever earlier infractions occurred were quickly forgiven. By the second year of the expedition Colter was clearly among the captains’ most trusted men, regularly chosen for advance reconnaissance and for the small canoe parties that scouted ahead.

A Note on the Record

The journals provided do not include the famous moment of Colter’s August 1806 discharge at the Mandan villages, when he requested permission to return upriver with the trappers Hancock and Dickson. The entries above end at June 5, 1806. What this sample of the record does establish is the foundation of Colter’s later reputation: a man whose hunting prowess, willingness to travel alone, and physical endurance kept him in the hunting parties from St. Charles to the Pacific and back.

Summary

Across the entries excerpted here, John Colter emerges as the archetypal expedition hunter — repeatedly named alongside Drouillard, Shannon, the Field brothers, and Collins as one of the small circle entrusted with detached duty. He killed bears, elk, deer, and pronghorn; recovered lost horses and stolen tomahawks; scouted ahead on the Pacific coast; manned the salt camp; and weathered the Columbia rains, the Bitterroot snows, and the Nez Perce spring. The journals never give us his voice directly, but his actions are recorded in nearly every phase of the journey.

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