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 Database.

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.

The post A Day’s Rest at Travelers’ Rest, and Three Riders from the West appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

Source: Patrick Gass, A Journal of the Voyages and Travels of a Corps of Discovery (Pittsburgh, 1807; 1811 reprint). Public domain. McKeehan’s published prose, not Gass’s lost original notebook.

The post Patrick Gass: May 20, 1804 appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

Source: Patrick Gass, A Journal of the Voyages and Travels of a Corps of Discovery (Pittsburgh, 1807; 1811 reprint). Public domain. McKeehan’s published prose, not Gass’s lost original notebook.

The post Patrick Gass: May 21, 1804 appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

Source: Patrick Gass, A Journal of the Voyages and Travels of a Corps of Discovery (Pittsburgh, 1807; 1811 reprint). Public domain. McKeehan’s published prose, not Gass’s lost original notebook.

The post Patrick Gass: May 16, 1804 appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

Source: Patrick Gass, A Journal of the Voyages and Travels of a Corps of Discovery (Pittsburgh, 1807; 1811 reprint). Public domain. McKeehan’s published prose, not Gass’s lost original notebook.

The post Patrick Gass: May 17, 1804 appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

Source: Patrick Gass, A Journal of the Voyages and Travels of a Corps of Discovery (Pittsburgh, 1807; 1811 reprint). Public domain. McKeehan’s published prose, not Gass’s lost original notebook.

The post Patrick Gass: May 18, 1804 appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

Source: Patrick Gass, A Journal of the Voyages and Travels of a Corps of Discovery (Pittsburgh, 1807; 1811 reprint). Public domain. McKeehan’s published prose, not Gass’s lost original notebook.

The post Patrick Gass: May 19, 1804 appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

Source: Patrick Gass, A Journal of the Voyages and Travels of a Corps of Discovery (Pittsburgh, 1807; 1811 reprint). Public domain. McKeehan’s published prose, not Gass’s lost original notebook.

The post Patrick Gass: May 14, 1804 appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

Source: Patrick Gass, A Journal of the Voyages and Travels of a Corps of Discovery (Pittsburgh, 1807; 1811 reprint). Public domain. McKeehan’s published prose, not Gass’s lost original notebook.

The post Patrick Gass: May 15, 1804 appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.