Joseph Field
Joseph Field served alongside his brother Reubin as a private in the Corps of Discovery. A skilled woodsman and hunter from Kentucky, Joseph was part of Lewis's small party during the tense encounter with Blackfeet warriors on the Marias River in July 1806. He was frequently chosen for scouting missions and hunting parties, reflecting Lewis and Clark's trust in his frontier abilities. Joseph died just a year after the expedition's return, in 1807.
Related Locations
Note: the longest gap between tagged appearances is about 15 months (Aug 17, 1804 → Nov 19, 1805). Joseph Field may have been present in the corps during that span but is not named in the journals.
Journal Entries (27)
Wildlife (2)
Cross-Narrator Analyses
Analyses that cite or discuss Joseph Field — showing 24 of the most recent matches.
A Canoe Lost, a Chief Recovering: Four Voices from Camp Chopunnish
The journal entries for May 30, 1806, written from Camp Chopunnish on the Clearwater River, offer an unusually clean opportunity to compare…
Bidding Adieu to the Snow: Four Voices at Lolo Hot Springs
The descent from the Lolo Trail on June 29, 1806 marked the end of one of the expedition's most feared passages. All…
Cold Rain on the Divided Plains: Two Camps, One Expedition
By July 9, 1806, the Corps of Discovery had divided into multiple parties to explore the country between the Continental Divide and…
Cows Roots, Sweat Lodges, and a Squawling Bird: Four Voices at Camp Chopunnish
The entries of May 28, 1806, offer a striking case study in how four members of the Corps of Discovery could share…
Empty Stores and the Mystery of the Sewelel
A Garrison on Short RationsThe entries from Fort Clatsop on this Wednesday converge on a single anxiety: food. Clark and Lewis open…
Fleas, Wet Powder, and a Smoky Christmas Aftermath at Fort Clatsop
The day after Christmas at the newly occupied Fort Clatsop produced three strikingly different journal entries. Patrick Gass treats the date as…
Four Pens at Fort Clatsop: A Sturgeon Sale, Five Elk, and a White-Tailed Hare
The journal entries for February 28, 1806 offer an unusually clean specimen for cross-narrator comparison. All four diarists — Lewis, Clark, Gass,…
Four Pens at Fort Clatsop: Departure Lists, Stolen Canoes, and a Sick Hunter
The journals for March 18, 1806 (mistakenly headed March 17 by Clark) capture Fort Clatsop in the final, fretful days before the…
Four Pens at Long Camp: Snowmelt, Salmon, and a Strategic Departure
The journals of June 3, 1806, offer an unusually clear demonstration of how the four working diarists at Camp Chopunnish—Meriwether Lewis, William…
Four Pens at the Long Narrows: A Day of Failed Bargains and Quiet Observation
The journal entries of April 17, 1806, capture the Lewis and Clark expedition at a moment of strategic difficulty along the Columbia…
Hunters on the Netul, Canoes on the Page: Parallel Labors at Fort Clatsop
The first day of February 1806 at Fort Clatsop produced one of the clearest examples in the expedition record of how dramatically…
Ice on the River, a Bird in the Hand: Four Voices at Fort Clatsop
The entries for January 31, 1806, offer an unusually clean experiment in cross-narrator comparison. All four diarists — Patrick Gass, John Ordway,…
Moccasins, Salmon, and a Lost Pirogue: Four Voices at Fort Clatsop
The journal entries for March 13, 1806 offer an unusually clear window into how the Corps of Discovery distributed its observational labor…
Return to Pleasant Camp: Specimen Hunting and the Bounty of Plums
The expedition's return down the Missouri brought the Corps of Discovery, on August 28, 1806, to a familiar bend of the river…
Salt, Elk, and the Measure of a Condor: Four Pens at Fort Clatsop
February 17, 1806 produced four overlapping accounts of activity at Fort Clatsop, and the convergences and divergences among them illuminate the working…
Spoiled Elk, Sweet Roots, and a December Mosquito at Fort Clatsop
The 27th of December 1805 found the Corps of Discovery hunkered down at the partially completed Fort Clatsop, with rain falling much…
Stranded Among Drift Logs: Two Voices on a Storm-Bound Camp
By 11 November 1805 the Corps of Discovery had spent four days battered against a narrow shelf on the north bank of…
The Bear’s Den and the Hidden River: Four Voices at Quicksand River
The entries for April 4, 1806, written while the Corps of Discovery was encamped near the mouth of the Quicksand (Sandy) River…
The First Elk West of the Rockies: Three Versions of a Welcome Kill
The journal entries from December 2, 1805, capture a single event — Joseph Fields walking into camp with elk marrow bones —…
Three Camps, One Day: Divergent Trails on the Marias and Yellowstone
By late July 1806 the Corps of Discovery was scattered across hundreds of miles of plains and mountain country. The journal entries…
Two Camps, Two Registers: Skins, Goose Berries, and a Missing Pair
The August 9, 1806 entries capture the Corps of Discovery still bisected, with Captain Lewis encamped upriver mending clothes and waiting, and…
Two Rivers, Two Crises: The Split Expedition on July 12, 1806
By July 12, 1806, the Corps of Discovery had split into detachments executing Captain Lewis's ambitious plan to explore multiple river systems…
Two Scales of Witness on the Columbia Shore
The journals of November 19, 1805 capture the Corps of Discovery split between two distinct fields of observation along the south shore…
Charles Floyd: The Sergeant’s Plain Ledger
VoiceCharles Floyd writes like a man keeping a ship's log who has been told, almost as an afterthought, that he is also…
From the Heacock Memorial Archive
3 lewis-clark.org articles that mention Joseph Field, preserved here for Robert Heacock’s photography. The articles were written by that site’s contributing authors.
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