What the journal records: Pittsburgh to Marietta

Meriwether Lewis pushed off from Pittsburgh at ten in the morning on August 31, 1803, in a 55-foot keelboat built too late in a dry summer, with his Newfoundland dog Seaman aboard. His so-called Eastern Journal — first published in Milo Quaife’s 1916 edition, and transcribed among this site’s journal entries from August 30, 1803 onward — records the miserable first weeks: dragging the boat over riffle after riffle, hiring horses and oxen from riverbank farmers to haul it through, and losing his first experiments to leaky canoes. In the first week of September the party worked past Georgetown and Steubenville, and spent September 7–9 at Wheeling taking on a pirogue and supplies.

Steubenville, Ohio, today
Terrain360's Steubenville riverfront capture – 244 panoramas of the reach Lewis worked down in early September 1803.
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The silent stretch: September 19 – November 10

Lewis’s journal breaks off after September 18, 1803, and no daily record by any hand survives for the next seven and a half weeks. The party’s movements are known instead from letters and later documents. They certainly passed the mouth of the Big Sandy — today’s Ashland, Kentucky — and the mouth of the Scioto at Portsmouth, Ohio in the last week of September, because the river was the only road; Lewis was in Cincinnati by September 28, where his October 3 letter to President Jefferson survives, full of the fossil bones he had just examined at Big Bone Lick.

Ashland, Kentucky, today
The Ashland landing on the Ohio, captured by Terrain360 – the Big Sandy confluence the party passed in late September 1803.
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The Ohio at Portsmouth, today
Terrain360's 1,586-panorama capture of the Ohio past the Scioto mouth at Portsmouth and New Boston.
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The Falls of the Ohio: the Corps is born

Lewis reached the Falls of the Ohio on October 14, 1803, and there the expedition became a partnership: William Clark came aboard at Clarksville with York, the man he enslaved, and the recruits history remembers as the Nine Young Men from Kentucky — among them Charles Floyd and Nathaniel Pryor. On October 26 the enlarged party pushed off from the Falls into a stretch of river where, once again, no journal survives.

The first camp below the Falls: West Point, Kentucky

Where did the Corps of Discovery spend its first night together on the river? No journal records it. Local and trail-community tradition — consistent with a day’s travel from Clarksville — places that first camp of October 26, 1803 at the mouth of the Salt River, where the town of West Point, Kentucky stands today beneath the bluff later crowned by Civil War–era Fort Duffield. We present it as exactly that: a well-rooted tradition on an undocumented stretch, not a journal fact.

West Point, Kentucky, today
The Salt River confluence at West Point – the traditional first camp below the Falls, captured by Terrain360.
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Fort Duffield, above the Salt River
The bluff over the confluence, today preserved as Fort Duffield park.
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The record resumes: Fort Massac to the Mississippi

Lewis’s journal picks up again on November 11, 1803 at Fort Massac, where the party engaged George Drouillard — the hunter and sign-language interpreter who would become one of its most valuable members. From November 14 the captains spent days at the Ohio–Mississippi confluence taking celestial observations before turning upstream for Camp Dubois. From here forward, the record on this site runs nearly unbroken to St. Louis in 1806.

Sources and method

Documented statements above rest on Lewis’s Eastern Journal (published in Quaife, 1916; public domain), the surviving 1803 journal entries transcribed on this site, and Lewis’s correspondence of the descent. The Salt River first-camp attribution is identified in the text as tradition. Undated passages within September 19 – November 10 are inferred from the geography of the river and the documented endpoints, and are worded accordingly. The 360° imagery is Terrain360’s capture of the Ohio today — explore the full river on the Trail Explorer.

The post Down the Ohio: The Expedition’s Forgotten First Leg 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.

Read alongside four related 1803 letters (including the “Portable Soup” letter to General William Irvine), it reconstructs Lewis’s spring-to-summer travels and introduces the cadre of quartermasters, purveyors, and armory officers — Israel Whelan, Thomas Cushing, Joseph Perkins, George Ingels, and Irvine — who outfitted the expedition. The find reveals Lewis at his logistical best: not only an explorer, but a meticulous quartermaster and project manager.

First published in the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation’s journal, We Proceeded On (August 2009). This summary is provided for reference on the Lewis and Clark Research archive; the full article is available at the source link.

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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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The paper reconstructs the return party (Sheheke, or Big White, and his family; the Pierre Chouteau–led Osage delegation; Clark’s man York; privates Labiche and Frazier; and sergeants Gass and Ordway), the post roads they followed, and the long history of the Gap from Walker’s 1750 sighting through Daniel Boone’s Wilderness Road. It is a window onto Lewis the trained surveyor still at work, weeks after the journey west was over.

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

The post Meriwether Lewis’s Survey at Cumberland Gap appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

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.

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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 Database.

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.

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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.

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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.

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