The Captains in Near-Perfect Parallel

Lewis and Clark’s entries for January 12 are textbook examples of the cross-copying that characterizes much of the Fort Clatsop journals. Both open with the dispatch of Drouillard and a single companion to hunt, and both close with the same administrative decision about meat distribution. Clark writes:

Drewyer haveing killed 7 Elk; I scercely know how we Should Subsist, I beleive but badly if it was not for the exertions of this excellent hunter

Lewis renders the same sentiment with only minor orthographic variation:

Drewyer having killed seven Elk; I scarcely know how we should subsist were it not for the exertions of this excellet hunter.

The phrasing is so close that one entry was almost certainly drafted from the other, or both from a shared field note. What differs is what each captain adds at the margins. Lewis opens with information Clark omits entirely — that the men sent to recover a missing canoe had returned empty-handed: “we therefore give her over as lost.” Clark, by contrast, develops the praise of Drouillard at greater length, contrasting him with the other hunters who “not being accquainted with the best method of finding and killing the elk” return unsuccessful. Lewis compresses this; Clark editorializes.

A New Rationing Policy

Both captains record, in nearly identical language, the policy shift that the seven-elk windfall prompted. Lewis explains:

We have heretofore usually divided the meat when first killed among the four messes into which we have divided our party leaving to each the care of preserving and the discretion of using it, but we find that they make such prodigal use of it when they hapen to have a tolerable stock on hand that we have determined to adapt a different system

Clark’s version substitutes “distribution of useing it” for Lewis’s “discretion of using it” — a small but telling drift, since Lewis’s word more precisely captures the disciplinary concern. The new system, both agree, was “to jerk it and issue it to them in Small quantities.” This is one of the relatively rare moments in the winter journals where the captains explicitly document a shift in camp administration, and the doubled record underscores its perceived importance.

What Ordway and Gass Preserve

Ordway, writing in his characteristically clipped register, confirms the bare facts: “3 men went again to look for the canoe but did not find it… the 2 hunters who went out this morning came in had killed 7 Elk within about 2 miles of the f[ort].” The detail of distance — “within about 2 miles” — appears nowhere in the captains’ accounts and is the kind of practical, spatial information Ordway often supplies that the officers omit.

Gass’s entry illustrates a different problem: his published narrative compresses several days into one paragraph. His text for this period describes men “sent to the salt works,” others “drying and taking care of the meat; and in dressing elk skins for mockasins, which is a laborious business.” The complaint about moccasin-making — “we have no alternative in this part of the country” — is pure Gass, and it captures the texture of enlisted labor that Lewis and Clark, focused on hunting yields and rationing policy, do not record. Gass also folds in events of January 14, 16, and 17, including a visit by “8 of the natives of the Clatsop nation,” suggesting his manuscript or its later editor consolidated entries.

Patterns of the Day

Three patterns emerge. First, Lewis and Clark function as a single editorial voice on matters of policy and praise, with Lewis tending toward precision and Clark toward emphasis. Second, Ordway supplies quantitative detail — distances, counts, locations — that the captains routinely omit. Third, Gass alone registers the unglamorous skin-dressing and salt-making that filled the days between Drouillard’s hunts. Together, the four entries document not just what happened on January 12, but how rank and role shaped what each man thought worth writing down.

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Joseph Whitehouse wrote the expedition the way a private soldier keeps a fatigue book — terse, dutiful, and pegged to the day’s mileage. His sentences open with weather and close with a campsite: “a clear pleasant morning. we Set off eairly and proceeded on… Came 19 miles this day and Camped on the South Side” (1805-05-08). That formula, repeated hundreds of times, is the spine of his journal. He was an enlisted man with limited schooling — his orthography (“eairly,” “proc’d,” “verry,” “perogue,” “Lar’d,” “Star’d”) is consistent enough to feel like a personal dialect rather than carelessness — and the prose register stays low and operational throughout.

And yet Whitehouse is not without curiosity. When something genuinely strikes him, the ledger cracks open. Near the Gasconade on 1804-05-28 he wandered off and found a cavern, and he allowed himself a rare superlative:

“I went a 100 yards under ground. had no light in my hand if I had, I should have gone further their was a Small Spring in it. it is the most remarkable cave I ever Saw, in my travels.”

The phrase “in my travels” — from a man who had scarcely traveled — is one of the small, touching tells of his voice. Similarly, when the party killed a grizzly on 1805-05-05, Whitehouse switched suddenly into the precise idiom of a tradesman taking measurements: “round the head is three-feet 5 Inches, d° the neck 3 feet 11 Inches, d° the breast 5 feet 10½ Inches.” The ditto-marks (“d°”) are the giveaway: this is a man comfortable with inventories, bills of lading, and quartermaster’s lists, applying that same tabular eye to a bear.

Omissions

What Whitehouse does not write is as telling as what he does. He almost never describes his own feelings. Sergeant Floyd’s death is given in a single line on 1804-08-19 — “Serg! Floyd Taken verry ill this morning with a coUick” — with no follow-up grief. Reed’s desertion and punishment (1804-09-18) is reported without comment beyond the chiefs’ reaction. The near-firefight with the Tetons on 1804-09-28, one of the most dangerous moments of the expedition, gets a vivid blow-by-blow but no introspection: he writes that Lewis was “near cutting the cable with his Sword and giving orders for the party to fire on them,” and then simply moves on to the next day’s wind.

He rarely names his fellow privates as companions or friends — they appear chiefly as “the hunters,” “one of the party,” or by surname when they kill game. He almost never editorializes about the captains; Lewis and Clark are simply “our officers” or “the Commanding Officer,” rendered with neutral deference. He omits, too, the ethnographic ambition that animates Lewis’s prose: where Lewis would dilate on Indian custom or botany, Whitehouse gives the bare fact and stops. On 1805-01-22 he notes red cloth left at an Indian camp and offers one of his rare interpretations — “we expect they left last winter for a Sacrifice to their maker as that is their form of worship, as they have Some knowledge of the Supreme being, and anything above their comprihention they call big medicine” — but even this comparatively expansive remark is folded back into the day’s mileage.

Conspicuously absent, too, is any sense of literary ambition. There are no set-piece descriptions of the Great Falls, no rhapsodies on the Missouri Breaks, no echoes of the sublime. Where Lewis writes a paragraph on a sunset, Whitehouse writes “clouday.”

Patterns

Several recurring tics structure the journal. First, the daily inventory of game killed: Whitehouse is the expedition’s unofficial butcher’s-book. “the hunters killed 1 Buffalow one Elk 3 Deer one woolf 1 Deer & four Turkies” (1804-09-06). “34 deers, 10 Elks and 5 Buffelows… Upwards of 20 hundred Wt” (1804-11-01). The arithmetic of survival matters to him in a way that scenery does not.

Second, river measurement and latitude: he reports widths in yards (“the Grandosage River… 397 yards wide the Missourie is at this place 875 yards wide,” 1804-06-02) and copies down the captains’ latitude observations almost reverently. Third, weather and wind as the opening clause of nearly every entry. Fourth, a steady accounting of discipline and morale: the swivel fired on departure (1804-05-14), the gill of whiskey issued (1805-05-05), the New Year’s celebration with “a Glass of old ardent Spirits” and dancing (1805-01-01), the night of 1805-06-25 when “the party all of us amused ourselves with dancing untill 10 oC. all in cheerfulness and good humor.”

Fifth, an interest — perhaps the most personal in his journal — in encounters with Native women and dancing. The St. Charles entries are unusually warm: “passed the evening verry agreeable dancing with the french ladies, &c.” (1804-05-18). At the Mandan villages he repeatedly notes going “up to the village to dance” (1805-01-01, 1805-01-07).

Sixth, his journal is famously not entirely his own. The editorial note at 1804-06-08 records that two other hands wrote portions of the manuscript — handwriting “No. 2” carrying the entries from June 8 to July 20, 1804, and another hand for November 1 to December 2. This is itself characteristic of Whitehouse: the journal is a collective artifact of the enlisted mess, passed around when he was indisposed (he reports frozen feet on 1805-01-14, illness on 1805-06-13, a sore shoulder on 1805-08-02), rather than the jealously guarded literary project of an officer.

Comparisons and Change Across the Arc

Whitehouse’s prose evolves audibly. The earliest entries (May 1804) are crisp, short, and almost telegraphic: “Some rainy. we took on board Some more provision bread &c.” (1804-05-21). The middle Missouri entries written by his substitute hand are choppier still and full of mileage figures (“Roe’ 16 mile,” “Roe’ 12 Miles”). When Whitehouse resumes his own pen at Fort Mandan (the editor’s note at 1804-12-22 marks the handover), the entries lengthen and gain a slightly more confident syntax. By the spring of 1805, ascending the Missouri, he is capable of sustained narrative paragraphs — the grizzly measurements of 1805-05-05, the bear chase of 1805-05-14 in which the wounded animal “chased one man down a Steep bank in to the River and was near gitting hold of him,” and the buffalo herd that swam through camp on 1805-05-29 and “broke a blunderbuss, & bent a rifle & came up the bank through the Camp & like to have tramped on Several of the men as they were a Sleep.”

The Great Falls portage entries (mid-June 1805) show him at his most engaged: he tracks the truck-wagons, the prickly pear, Sergeant Pryor’s illness, the mending of moccasins, and the men dancing in the evening despite exhaustion. By the time the party reaches the Three Forks on 1805-07-27, Whitehouse has begun to incorporate small narrative details he would have skipped a year earlier — Sacagawea’s capture site, for instance, mentioned twice (1805-07-27 and 1805-07-30) with a quiet specificity: “they took hir as She was attempting to make hir ascape by crossing a Shole place on the River, but was taken in the middle of it.”

Compared with the other journalists, Whitehouse sits between Ordway’s clerkly steadiness and Gass’s blunter soldier-prose, but lacks the literary reach of either captain. He is closest in spirit to Ordway, but where Ordway’s daily entries are a clean roll-call, Whitehouse’s are more uneven — sometimes terse to the point of opacity (“a fair morning”; 1804-05-18 is barely a paragraph), sometimes unexpectedly detailed when game is large or the danger acute. His grizzly is bigger than Ordway’s grizzly because he weighed it.

Above all, Whitehouse offers historians the expedition seen from the rope and the towline. When he writes on 1804-06-30 that “the day mighty hot when we went to toe the Sand [s]calded Our [feet] Some fled from the rope had to put on Our Mockisons,” or on 1805-07-14 that “all hands had to Get in the Watter to keep up the boat,” we are reading the labor of the expedition rather than its philosophy. He is the soldier in the river, counting miles, naming the deer, and writing it down at night by firelight in spelling all his own.

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François Labiche — variously spelled Labieche, Labiech, Labeech, and Labice in the journals — was an enlisted private of the permanent party of the Corps of Discovery. Of mixed French and Omaha heritage by some accounts (though the journals themselves do not detail his ancestry), he served the expedition as hunter, waterman, and occasional interpreter. The 27 entries in which he is named span from August 1804, near the Otoe country, to late August 1806, on the return journey down the Missouri. Across this record he emerges as one of the steady, useful members of the party — repeatedly entrusted with difficult tasks but rarely the subject of extended commentary.

Pursuit of the Deserters (August 1804)

Labiche first appears prominently in William Clark’s entry of August 7, 1804, when he was sent with a small detachment after Moses Reed, who had deserted, and to seek out the missing La Liberté:

at 1 oClock dispatched George Drewyer, R. Fields, Wm. Bratten & Wm. Labieche back after the Deserter reid with order if he did not give up Peaceibly to put him to Death &c. to go to the Ottoes Village & enquire for La Liberty and bring him to the Mahars Village

(Note that Clark here calls him “Wm.” Labieche; elsewhere the journals consistently treat him as François.) The detachment succeeded in apprehending Reed, though La Liberté escaped them. Clark recorded the partial success on August 17, 1804: “they cought both Deserters, one of them La liberty, got away from them.” Two days later, on August 19, 1804, the party was reunited during the council with the Otoes at which presents were distributed and chiefs named. This early mission established Labiche as a man trusted with consequential, semi-independent assignments.

Hunter on the Columbia (Autumn 1805)

By the time the expedition descended the Columbia, Labiche had become one of the corps’ more productive hunters of waterfowl. Clark’s entry for November 2, 1805, below the Cascades, records a striking single day of fowling:

We Labiech killed 14 Geese & a Brant, Collins one Jos. Fields & R 3 those gees are much Smaller than Common, and have white under their rumps & around the tale

The next day, November 3, 1805, Clark again noted: “This morning Labich killed 3 Geese flying Collins killed a Duck.” His knack for shooting birds on the wing made him valuable on a river where the party’s diet often depended on whatever fowl could be brought down quickly. On November 20, 1805, when Clark returned from his trip to view the ocean, Labiche was again employed in this specialty:

dispatched Labiech to kill Some fowl for our brackfast he returned in about 2 hours with 8 large Ducks

Winter Hunter at Fort Clatsop (January–February 1806)

During the dreary winter at Fort Clatsop, Labiche was repeatedly paired with George Shannon and Reuben Field on extended elk-hunting forays into the Coast Range — the most demanding and important hunting work of the season, since elk meat was the garrison’s staple. Clark’s entry of January 21, 1806 records: “Two of the hunters Shannon & Labieche returned haveing killed three Elk.” The next day, January 22, 1806, “Rieuben Field Shannon and Labiech remained in the woods to hunt.” On January 27, 1806, Shannon reported that he and his companions had killed ten elk, leaving “Labiech & R Field with the Elk.”

The hunting party returned with skins on February 19, 1806, when Sergeant Gass came back “with the flesh of Eight Elk, and Seven Skins haveing left one Skin with Shannon and Labiche who remained over the Netul to Continue the chase.” By February 24, 1806, however, success had run out: “Shannon and Labiche returned in the forenoon, they had killed no Elk, and reported that they believe the Elk have returned from their former haunts and gorn further back in the mountains.” Clark called this “very unwelcom information,” since elk flesh was “our principal dependance for Subsistance.” Labiche’s name in these entries is shorthand for the corps’ food security itself.

The River That Bore His Name

On the return up the Columbia, on April 14, 1806, Clark recorded a small but telling honor — a tributary named for the hunter:

the bead is rock except at the enterence of Labiech’s river which heads in Mt. Hood and like the quick Sand River brings down from thence Vast bodies of Sand

The naming of “Labiech’s river” (later identified by historians with the Hood River drainage) places him among the enlisted men granted such recognition by the captains.

Portage and Horse Duty (April 1806)

At the Long Narrows portage of the Columbia, Labiche was again chosen for special duty. On April 19, 1806, Clark wrote: “I then took Sgt. Pryor, G. Shannon & Crusat & Labiech and went up to the falls.” A few days later, on April 23, 1806, when Toussaint Charbonneau’s horses strayed, Labiche was sent to recover them:

we imedeately dispatch him, R. Fields & Labiech in Serch of the horses… at 10 Shabono and Labiech returned also unsucksessfull they had went on the back trail nearly to the last Village and took a circle around on the hills.

Hunting on the Clearwater (May–June 1806)

While the expedition was detained at Camp Chopunnish waiting for the Bitterroot snows to melt, Labiche was constantly in the field. On May 1, 1806, the captains sent four hunters ahead with orders “to kill every Species of game which they might meet with.” On May 20, 1806, he came in from Collins’s Creek with a mule deer:

at 2 P.M. Labiech Came in with a large Buck of the Mule Deer Speces which he had killed on Collins’s Creek yesterday.

On May 23, 1806, Clark noted the return of “Shannon, Colter, Labiech, Crusatt Lapage and Collins” from the hunt. On May 25, 1806, “Drewyer Labiech and Peter crusatt Set out hunting towards the quarmash grounds.” On May 27, 1806, “Drewyer, Labiech & Crusat return at 4 P.M. with 5 Deer.” And on June 5, 1806, “Reuben Fields, G. Shannon, Labiech, & Collins returned from the chaise and brought with them five deer and a brown Bear.” In every instance Labiche is paired with the corps’ most accomplished hunters — Drouillard, Shannon, Fields, Collins, Cruzatte — confirming his standing among them.

The Return Journey (July–August 1806)

When the expedition divided at Travelers’ Rest, Labiche was assigned to Clark’s detachment. Clark’s roster entry of July 13, 1806, at the Three Forks, names him explicitly:

my party now Consists of the following persons Viz: Serjeant N. Pryor, Jo. Shields, G. Shannon William Bratton, Labiech, Windsor, H. Hall, Gibson, Interpreter Shabono his wife & Child and my man york

On August 12, 1806, after the reunion with Lewis on the Missouri, Clark sent Labiche and Shields to hunt deer in a bottom while waiting for Shannon and Gibson to come up with a missing tomahawk. On August 29, 1806, near the White River in present-day South Dakota, Labiche was again teamed with Shannon and Willard, and waded the White with Willard, reporting it “2 feet water and 200 yards wide” and “nearly as white as milk.” This is the last journal mention of him in the entries provided.

Character in the Record

Labiche appears entirely in William Clark’s hand within these entries — no other narrator is quoted. He is never the subject of disciplinary remark, never sick, never complained of. He is summoned by name when the captains need a man who can shoot accurately, paddle reliably, retrieve stray horses, ford a swollen river, or pursue a deserter. The journals as preserved here say nothing of his speech, his temperament, his French or Omaha relations, or his life before or after the expedition. What they do show, repeatedly, is a man whom Lewis and Clark called upon when something needed doing — and a tributary of the Columbia they thought worthy of his name.

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Pierre Cruzatte (variously spelled Crusat, Crusatte, Cruzat in the journals) entered the expedition’s record on May 26, 1804, when Lewis issued his Detatchment Orders organizing the messes of the keelboat. Cruzatte appears under Sergeant Pryor’s squad, marked with an “F” — a designation Lewis used for the French watermen — alongside his frequent partner Francois Labiche:

F 25 Peter Crusat &
F 26 Francis Labuche

Half-French and half-Omaha, fluent in the trade-French of the Missouri and reportedly conversant in Omaha and sign, Cruzatte was hired specifically for his river skills. Lewis acknowledged this on June 9, 1805, when the captains decided to cache the red pirogue and supplies at the mouth of the Marias:

on enquiry I found that Cruzatte was well acquainted this business and therefore left the management of it intirely to him.

That deference is striking. Throughout the journals, Cruzatte is one of the very few enlisted men whose specialized expertise the captains repeatedly defer to.

Boatman on the Missouri

Cruzatte’s value as a waterman shows up most dramatically in Clark’s entry of May 14, 1805, when a sudden squall on the Missouri capsized the white pirogue carrying the expedition’s papers, instruments, and medicines. Although the celebrated rescue is usually credited to Sacagawea (who saved articles floating astern), Cruzatte was at the helm, and it was he who, with Lewis’s pistol pointed at him, brought the boat under control. Clark’s account describes how the loss of “our papers, Instruments, books, medicine, a great proportion of our merchandize” was narrowly averted on a craft that “nearly filed with water.”

Cruzatte’s bowman skills were equally trusted in the rapids of the Columbia. On October 24, 1805, descending the Short Narrows of The Dalles, Clark recorded passing through water “agitated in a most Shocking manner boils Swell & whorl pools.” A week later, on October 31, 1805, Clark scouting the Great Falls of the Columbia took Cruzatte with him: “I took Jos. Fields & Peter Crusat and proceeded on down, Send Crusat back at 2 ms. to examine the rapid near the shore.” When portage routes had to be chosen, it was Cruzatte’s eye on the water that the captains wanted.

Hunter and Frontiersman

Cruzatte hunted regularly, though the journals record his encounters more often when they went badly. On October 20, 1804, Lewis recounted with some amusement:

Peter Crusat this day shot at a white bear he wounded him, but being alarmed at the formidable appearance of the bear he left his tomahalk and gun; but shortly after returned and found that the bear had taken the oposite rout. soon after he shot a buffaloe cow broke her thy, the cow pursued him he concealed himself in a small raviene.

His hunting partner was almost always Drouillard, Labiche, or Collins. On May 8, 1806, at Camp Chopunnish, “Drewyer and Cruzatte brought each a deer.” Throughout May and June 1806 — May 15, May 20, May 25, May 27, June 13, June 20 — Cruzatte appears repeatedly in the rotation of hunters working the Clearwater country, supplying the camp during the long wait for the snows to clear from the Bitterroots.

The Fiddler

Cruzatte’s violin became one of the social anchors of the expedition. Clark’s October 19, 1805 entry, written among the Walla Walla under Chief Yelleppit, captures the instrument’s diplomatic value:

P. Crusat played on the Violin which pleasd and astonished those reches who are badly Clad, 3/4 with robes not half large enough to cover them.

The fiddle was deployed at councils on the Missouri, in winter quarters at Fort Mandan and Fort Clatsop, and at innumerable evening dances among the men. Though many of these performances are noted by other narrators on dates not in the present sample, the October 19 entry stands as the clearest single record of the instrument’s effect on Native audiences.

Illness, Setbacks, and Small Losses

Cruzatte’s name surfaces in lesser incidents, too. On December 29, 1805, at Fort Clatsop, Clark wrote: “Pete Crusat Sick with a violent Cold.” On February 28, 1806, both captains noted a small humiliation: a Clatsop man named Kuskelar arrived at the fort bringing “a dog which Peter Crusat had purchased with his Capo which this fellow had on” — Cruzatte had traded away his coat for a dog, and the buyer turned around and resold the dog back to the fort. On June 21, 1806, recrossing toward Quawmash Flats, Lewis lamented: “an excellent horse of Cruzatte’s snagged himself so badly in the groin in jumping over a parsel of fallen timber that he will evidently be of no further service to us.”

The Shooting of Meriwether Lewis, August 11, 1806

The most consequential moment of Cruzatte’s expedition came on August 11, 1806, on the lower Missouri. Lewis and Cruzatte had gone ashore to hunt elk in thick willow brush. Cruzatte — blind in one eye and severely nearsighted in the other — fired at what he took for an elk and put a ball through the fleshy part of Lewis’s left buttock and thigh. Lewis, 11 August 1806:

I instantly supposed that Cruzatte had shot me in mistake for an Elk as I was dressed in brown leather.

Lewis at first feared a Blackfeet ambush. Cruzatte, when located, denied having fired the shot, but Lewis found a ball in his leggings consistent with Cruzatte’s short rifle. The wound forced Lewis to lie face-down in a pirogue for weeks and effectively ended his journal-keeping for the expedition. No record in the present sample shows Lewis pressing punishment; the journals indicate the matter was treated as the accident it almost certainly was, the inevitable consequence of putting a half-blind man behind a rifle in dense brush.

Character in the Journals

Across thirty entries Cruzatte emerges as one of the expedition’s most useful and most individuated enlisted men: trusted enough to manage the cache at the Marias, steady enough at the helm to be entrusted with the white pirogue, skilled enough to hunt and pilot rapids, social enough to soften councils with his fiddle, and human enough to lose his coat in a bad trade and to wound his commanding officer in a hunting accident. The journals never offer a portrait of his appearance beyond what tradition supplies (the missing eye is not described in the sample provided here), and his pre-expedition life on the Missouri trade is referenced only obliquely through Lewis’s confidence in his cache-digging and river knowledge. After the expedition the record falls silent in these pages.

A Note on Sources

The provided entries are drawn almost entirely from Lewis and Clark themselves; Cruzatte does not appear in the sample through Gass, Ordway, Whitehouse, or Floyd, although he certainly figures in those journals as well. The sample here is therefore a captains’-eye view of a man whose social and musical life among the enlisted men is necessarily underrepresented.

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Silas Goodrich first appears in the expedition record on May 26, 1804, when Captain Meriwether Lewis issued his Detachment Orders organizing the permanent party into messes. Goodrich was assigned to the squad commanded by Sergeant John Ordway, listed alongside William Bratton, John Colter, Moses Reed, Alexander Willard, William Warner, John Potts, and Hugh Hall. He would remain a private for the duration of the journey, but his particular skill — fishing — would earn him repeated mention in the captains’ journals.

The Fisherman of the Corps

Goodrich’s reputation as the expedition’s most reliable angler is established at the Great Falls of the Missouri in June 1805. On June 15, 1805, while recuperating along the river, Lewis recorded among the affectionate descriptions of Goodrich at his craft:

I amused myself in fishing, and sleeping away the fortiegues of yesterday. I caught a number of very fine trout which I made Goodrich dry; goodrich also caught about two douzen and several small cat of a yellow colour which would weigh about 4 lbs.

Throughout the expedition, when fish needed catching, Goodrich was the man assigned to the line. His name became so associated with the activity that an island encountered by Lewis on the descent of the Yellowstone-Missouri in 1806 was called “Goodriches Island” — Lewis noted on July 30, 1806, that the party “arrived this evening at an island about 2 ms. above Goodriches Island and encamped on it’s N. E. side.”

Service on the Outbound Journey

Goodrich’s name surfaces only intermittently in 1804 — chiefly in roster entries such as Clark’s October 13, 1804 record of the court-martial of John Newman, where the mess assignments are reiterated. During the difficult passages of 1805, Goodrich appears as part of the working detachments. On June 10, 11, and 12, 1805, he was among the small parties Lewis led ahead during the explorations near Maria’s River and the Great Falls, present when Lewis fell violently ill and was forced to brew his choke-cherry decoction. On August 20, 1805, near the Shoshone camps on the Lemhi, Lewis set three men — likely including Goodrich among the working details of those days — to constructing a cache for baggage that the party intended to leave behind before crossing the Continental Divide. Goodrich was also among those caching baggage and outfitting horses on August 24, 1805.

Illness at Fort Clatsop

Goodrich’s most personal appearance in the journals concerns his health. At Fort Clatsop he contracted syphilis from a Chinookan woman, an episode Lewis recorded with clinical frankness on January 27, 1806:

Goodrich has recovered from the Louis veneri which he contracted from an amorous contact with a Chinnook damsel. I cured him as I did Gibson last winter by the uce of murcury.

Lewis’s optimism proved premature. On February 27, 1806, Clark noted that “Goodrich & McNeal who have the Pox are recovering fast, the former nearly well.” By March 8, 1806, both captains independently recorded that Goodrich and McNeal had recovered sufficiently for Lewis to direct them “to desist from the uce of mercury.” Yet the disease’s persistence is suggested by Lewis’s later note on July 2, 1806, as the party prepared to split at Travelers’ Rest: “Goodrich and McNeal are both very unwell with the pox which they contracted last winter” — implying a relapse or chronic condition that mercury treatment had not fully cured.

The Return Journey: Trade and Errands

On the return up the Columbia, Goodrich was repeatedly entrusted with diplomatic and trading errands among the Plateau peoples. On April 16, 1806, Clark sent him with Drewyer to the Skilloot village to invite Indians to trade horses. In May 1806, while the expedition waited at Camp Chopunnish for the snows of the Bitterroots to melt, Goodrich made several trips to nearby Nez Perce villages. On May 21, 1806, Clark recorded that “Serjt. Ordway, Goodrich, & Willard” went to the Nez Perce villages, and on May 22 Lewis noted their return “with a good store of roots and bread.” On May 25, 1806, Goodrich went “to the 2d village to purchase roots a fiew of which he precured,” reporting that most of the men were away hunting or fishing on the Snake River.

On May 28, 1806, Lewis sent Goodrich to the village of the Broken Arm:

We sent Goodrich to the village of the broken arm this morning he returned in the evening with some roots bread and a parsel of goats-hair for making our saddle pads.

The mountain-goat hair Goodrich procured would be used to stuff the pack saddles for the impending Bitterroot crossing. On May 31, 1806, Clark recorded that “Goodrich and Willard visited the indian Village this morning,” with Willard returning carrying a bear skin Clark had purchased — leading to a remarkable conversation with the Nez Perce about the species and color phases of bears in the region. On June 7, 1806, Goodrich was again among those crossing the river to trade with the Nez Perce, this time accompanying two young chiefs, Sergeant Gass, McNeal, Whitehouse, and Charbonneau. He and Whitehouse stayed overnight in the village while the others returned at 2 p.m.

The Great Falls Detachment

When the captains divided the party at Travelers’ Rest on July 1, 1806, Goodrich was assigned to Lewis’s contingent. Clark’s journal lists the men accompanying Lewis: “G. Drewyer, Sergt. Gass, Jo. & R. Fields, Frazier & Werner, and Thompson Goodrich & McNear as far as the Falls of Missouri.” Lewis explained the plan in his own entry that day:

I determined to go with a small party by the most direct rout to the falls of the Missouri, there to leave Thompson McNeal and goodrich to prepare carriages and geer for the purpose of transporting the canoes and baggage over the portage.

While Lewis took six volunteers up the Marias to test its northern reach, Goodrich, Hugh McNeal, and John Thompson remained at the Great Falls portage, preparing the gear that would carry the canoes and baggage around the cataracts when Sergeant Ordway’s detachment arrived from the Jefferson River. Goodrich rejoined the larger party at the mouth of the Yellowstone, and on August 12, 1806, Clark recorded the long-awaited reunion of the three detachments.

A Quiet Record

Silas Goodrich’s name appears in roughly thirty journal entries, but his voice is never heard. The captains record him almost exclusively in the third person, doing the work assigned: catching trout, drying meat, trading at villages, taking mercury, building portage carriages. The journal record offers no information about his life before or after the expedition. What it does preserve is a portrait of a steady, reliable private — the man Lewis turned to when the party needed fish, when goat hair had to be procured for saddle pads, or when a small detachment had to be left at a critical portage to await the rest of the Corps.

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Patrick Gass writes like a man balancing a ledger at the end of a long day. His entries are short, declarative, and structured around a small set of recurring categories: distance traveled, side of the river encamped on, weather, game procured, and notable terrain. The opening of nearly every voyage entry follows a near-identical formula — proceeded on, passed a creek, killed a deer, encamped on the south side. On 1804-07-10 the entire entry reads:

“fair day and fair wind. There is a handsome prairie on the south side opposite an island. We encamped on the north side.”

This is the Gass register at its purest: the prose of a non-commissioned officer trained to render the day legible at a glance.

Yet Gass is not without literary touches. He occasionally reaches for the picturesque (“a beautiful country and the land excellent,” 1804-06-09) and is willing to risk a wry editorial flourish. Describing Chinookan women’s bark fringe skirts on 1805-11-17, he writes:

“These tassels or fringe are of some use as a covering, while the ladies are standing erect and the weather calm; but in any other position, or when the wind blows, their charms have but a precarious defence.”

This is one of the few moments when Gass the man steps out from behind Gass the recorder — and it is characteristic that the joke is dry, observational, and structural rather than sentimental.

Omissions

What Gass leaves out is as telling as what he includes. He rarely names individual men. Captain Lewis and Captain Clarke appear constantly; “one of the hunters,” “one of the men,” “three of the party” do almost all the rest of the work. Sacagawea is referenced obliquely (“our interpreter’s child has been very sick,” 1806-05-25); York is essentially invisible; Charbonneau scarcely registers as an individual.

Emotional life is also largely absent. Gass mentions fear or hardship only when they affect the work: men “poor and uncomfortable enough” with nothing to eat in the Bitterroots (1805-09-02), the boat “in great danger” on 1804-06-09, the Experiment boat being finished and christened (1805-07-08). Where Lewis would philosophize and Clark would plot, Gass simply notes outcomes. The Shoshone reunion of Sacagawea and Cameahwait — high drama in other journals — passes through the Gass record (1805-08-24) almost entirely as a logistical problem about whether the river is passable.

Theological and patriotic reflection is nearly nonexistent. There are no apostrophes to Providence, no meditations on empire. The continent in Gass’s pages is a series of bottoms, bluffs, and creeks to be measured, not a destiny to be claimed.

Patterns

Several recurring preoccupations distinguish Gass from his fellow journalists.

Construction and craft. Gass was the expedition’s chief carpenter, and his journal lights up whenever building is involved. His description of the Arikara earth lodges on 1804-10-10 is essentially a builder’s specification, written with a tradesman’s eye for sequence:

“In a circle of a size suited to the dimensions of the intended lodge, they set up 16 forked posts five or six feet high, and lay poles from one fork to another. Against these poles they lean other poles, slanting from the ground…”

The same eye appears at Fort Clatsop on 1805-12-14, where he notes the discovery of split-cedar puncheons “10 feet long and 2 broad, not more than an inch and an half thick” with the satisfaction of a man who has just found good lumber.

Measurement. Gass is obsessed with dimensions. The brown bear killed on 1805-05-05 is rendered almost entirely as a tape-measure exercise:

“three feet five inches round the head; three feet eleven inches round the neck; round the breast five feet 10 1-2 inches; the length eight feet 7 1-2 inches; round the middle of the fore leg 23 inches; and his talons four inches and three eights of an inch.”

The Celilo falls (1805-12-23) get the same treatment: “The whole height of the falls is 37 feet 8 inches, in a distance of 1200 yards.” Gass quantifies the world.

Game accounting. Almost every entry tallies what was killed. The journal functions as a continuous quartermaster’s report on calories. When game is scarce, he says so flatly (“a small quantity of dried salmon… is almost our whole stock of provisions,” 1805-09-02); when it is abundant, he counts (“in a short time killed five buffaloe,” 1806-07-11; “killed fifteen of them,” 1806-07-31).

Side of the river. No journalist is more faithful to the cardinal-direction encampment note. “Encamped on the north side,” “encamped on the south side” close hundreds of his entries. For Gass, the day is not over until the camp’s bank is recorded.

Comparisons and Change Across the Journey

Gass’s prose evolves subtly. The early Missouri entries (1803-10-31 through summer 1804) are the most formulaic — a metronome of creeks, prairies, and deer. Once the expedition reaches the Mandan winter of 1804–05, his entries lengthen as he is given a stationary subject: hunting parties, building Fort Mandan, the theft of horses (1805-02-20), the construction of the canoes (1805-03-01). Stationary work suits the carpenter.

Crossing the Bitterroots in September 1805 produces some of his most vivid writing — vivid by Gass standards, which is to say, the formula bends under stress. On 1805-09-02 he abandons his usual brevity:

“the worst road (if road it can be called) that was ever travelled… in some places we were obliged to go up the sides of the hills, which are very steep, and then down again in order to get along at all. In going up these ascents the horses would sometimes fall backwards, which injured them very much.”

The parenthetical (“if road it can be called”) is the closest Gass comes to a cry of complaint.

At Fort Clatsop, the journal contracts again. Rain dominates: “There is more wet weather on this coast, than I ever knew in any other place; during a month we have had but 3 fair days” (1805-12-05). Winter at Clatsop is a litany of skin-dressing, salt-making, and elk-hunting parties — the carpenter without timber to work, falling back on inventory.

On the return journey, Gass loosens slightly. He records ethnographic details with more confidence (the Walla Walla returning a steel trap, 1806-05-02, prompts him to call it “perhaps one of the greatest instances of honesty ever known among Indians” — a rare evaluative judgment). He notices birds and squirrels with something like curiosity (1806-06-12), describing a new woodpecker by feather-tip color. The traveler has begun, however cautiously, to look up from the ledger.

Compared to Lewis’s literary aspirations, Clark’s commanding navigational prose, Ordway’s steady middle register, and Whitehouse’s awkward earnestness, Gass occupies a distinctive place: he is the working sergeant whose journal could double as a daybook for a construction crew. His was the first of the expedition journals to be published (1807, in a heavily edited David McKeehan version), and one suspects part of its early appeal was precisely this clarity — a continent rendered in the plain syntax of mileage, weather, and game, by a man who measured a bear’s talon to the eighth of an inch and noted, every night, which bank he slept on.

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Hugh McNeal first appears in the expedition record on May 26, 1804, when Captain Lewis issued detachment orders organizing the permanent party into messes. McNeal was assigned to Sergeant Charles Floyd’s squad, listed as the second private after Floyd himself:

1 Sergt. Charles Floyd. (1)
Privates:
2 Hugh McNeal
3 Patric Gass
4 Reubin Fields…

From this organizational moment forward, McNeal served as a private throughout the journey, never promoted but repeatedly entrusted with specific assignments by both captains.

At the Great Falls and the Search for the Shoshone

McNeal had not seen the Great Falls of the Missouri during the initial reconnaissance, so on July 4, 1805, Lewis recorded that he and Sergeant Gass and several others were permitted to view them:

Yesterday we permitted Sergt. Gass McNeal and several others who had not yet seen the falls to visit them.

A month later, McNeal accompanied Lewis on the small advance party seeking the Shoshone Indians. On August 9, 1805, Lewis set out with Drouillard, Shields, and McNeal to find the headwaters and contact the Shoshones. On August 11, Lewis recorded among the famous moments of the expedition, with McNeal at his side:

I kept McNeal with me; after having marched in this order for about five miles I discovered an Indian on horse back about two miles distant coming down the plain toward us.

That first contact was unsuccessful — the lone Shoshone fled — but the party persisted. On August 13, Clark named a stream for the private:

passed the mouth of a bold running Stream 7 yards wide on the Lard Side… Call this stream McNeal Creek.

Clark referenced McNeal’s Creek again on July 10, 1806, when describing the geography of the Beaverhead Valley.

On August 15, 1805, with Lewis’s small advance party nearly starving, McNeal was responsible for the diminishing flour supply:

I found on enquiry of McNeal that we had only about two pounds of flour remaining. this I directed him to divide into two equal parts and to cook the one half this morning in a kind of pudding with the hurries.

McNeal continued in the advance party as it crossed into Shoshone country and on August 16 helped maintain Lewis’s diplomatic posture before the meeting with Cameahwait’s band.

Down the Columbia and the Pacific Winter

By November 1805 the party had reached the Pacific tidewaters. On November 8, Clark recorded the misery of the swelling estuary:

The Swells were So high and the Canoes roled in Such a manner as to cause Several to be verry Sick. Reuben fields, Wiser McNeal & the Squar wer of the number.

At Fort Clatsop, McNeal was repeatedly part of work parties. On December 15, 1805, he was among five men — with Ordway, Colter, Collins, and Whitehouse — who became separated from the elk-packing detachment and “Staid out all night without fire and in the rain.” Clark recorded the next day’s misery (December 16, 1805) as the men finally rejoined:

the 5 men who Stayed out all night joined me this morning Cold & wet, Ordway Colter Collens, Jo Whitehouse J McNeal.

McNeal also accompanied Clark on the January 1806 trip to view the beached whale at the Tillamook coast, with Clark noting on January 8 and 9 the difficult coastal travel and Indian villages encountered.

Illness at Fort Clatsop

The journals record McNeal’s contraction of venereal disease, almost certainly during contact with the Chinook and Clatsop bands. On January 31, 1806, both captains noted:

discovered that McNeal had the pox, gave him medicine.

The condition persisted. On February 20, Lewis wrote that

McNeal from his inattention to his disorder has become worse,

and on February 22 Clark listed him among the sick:

our sick consisting of Gibson, Bratten, Willard McNeal and Baptiest LaPage is Something better.

By February 27, the captains reported that

Goodrich and McNeal who have the pox are recovering fast,

and on March 8, 1806, Lewis directed both men

to desist from the uce of mercury,

the standard (and toxic) treatment of the era. Captain Clark’s parallel entry phrased it that he “detected them to desist from takeing the murcury.” The recovery, as later events show, was incomplete: on July 2, 1806, Lewis noted that

Goodrich and McNeal are both very unwell with the pox which they contracted last winter.

The Return Journey: Trader and Errand-Runner

On the return up the Columbia, McNeal performed routine duties. On April 24, 1806, his horse was the only one missing at morning roll:

they were all found in a little time except McNeal’s. we hired an indian to surch for this horse.

Clark added that he gave the Indian “a Tomahawk” for the search.

While camped among the Nez Perce awaiting the snowmelt, McNeal was given liberty on May 22, 1806, to visit the nearby villages with Windsor. His most notable assignment came on June 2, 1806, when Lewis sent him with York on a trading expedition. With the expedition’s merchandise nearly exhausted, the captains improvised:

Our traders McNeal and york are furnished with the buttons which Capt. C. and myself cut off our coats, some eye water and Basilicon which we made for that purpose and some Phials and small tin boxes which I had brought out with Phosphorus. in the evening they returned with about 3 bushels of roots and some bread having made a successful voyage, not much less pleasing to us than the return of a good cargo to an East India Merchant.

On June 7, 1806, McNeal again crossed the river with Sergeant Gass, Charbonneau, Whitehouse, and Goodrich to barter for cordage and bags from the Nez Perce, returning that afternoon having “precured a String each only.”

The Great Falls Detachment

When the captains divided the party at Travelers’ Rest in July 1806, McNeal was assigned to one of the more responsible details. On July 1, 1806, Lewis recorded:

from this place I determined to go with a small party by the most direct rout to the falls of the Missouri, there to leave Thompson McNeal and goodrich to prepare carriages and geer for the purpose of transporting the canoes and baggage over the portage.

On July 15, 1806, Lewis dispatched him on a critical reconnaissance:

Sent McNeal down this morning to the lower part of the portage to see whether the large perogue and cash were safe.

McNeal was among the men reunited with Clark’s party on August 12, 1806, near the mouth of the Yellowstone, completing the long circuit.

Note on the Record

Hugh McNeal’s name appears in roughly three dozen entries, but almost always as a participant in events rather than as a subject in his own right. He has no journal of his own; he is glimpsed only through Lewis and Clark. The captains record his presence at the first Shoshone encounter, his honorific creek, his bouts of illness, and his trading errands, but they tell us nothing of his background, family, or character beyond the journal record. His life outside the expedition is not addressed in these sources.

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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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In August 1803, while waiting for the keelboat to be completed at Pittsburgh, Meriwether Lewis acquired a large Newfoundland dog for twenty dollars—a substantial sum reflecting both the breed’s reputation and Lewis’s deliberate choice. The dog, named Seaman (long misread in transcriptions as “Scannon”), would become the only animal to travel the full route of the expedition from the Ohio River to the Pacific Ocean and back to St. Louis. Newfoundlands were prized as working dogs: webbed feet, water-resistant double coats, immense strength, and a docile temperament. All of these qualities would be tested over the next three years.

Hunter and Retriever on the Ohio

Within weeks of Seaman’s purchase, Lewis was already recording the dog’s working capabilities. During the descent of the Ohio in September 1803, the party encountered the seasonal mass migration of gray squirrels swimming the river. Lewis described how Seaman seized the opportunity:

My dog was of the newfoundland breed very active strong and docile, he would take the squirels in the water kill them and swimming bring them in the boat.

Lewis noted that the squirrel meat, fried, made “a pleasant food.” From the outset, then, Seaman functioned not as a pet but as a contributing member of the party.

Across the Plains: A Working Dog

References to Seaman accumulate as the expedition pushed up the Missouri. On 25 August 1804, Clark’s overland march to the Spirit Mound included the dog, but the August heat proved too much: “at 7 ms. the dog gave out & we Sent him back to the Creek.” The episode is a small but humanizing detail—even a Newfoundland had limits on the open prairie.

Above Fort Mandan in spring 1805, Seaman wandered off overnight, and Lewis’s journal records genuine alarm followed by relief. On 25 April 1805 Clark wrote that “the Dog which was lost yesterday, joined us this morning,” while Lewis confessed:

my dog had been absent during the last night, and I was fearfull we had lost him altogether, however, much to my satisfaction he joined us at 8 Oclock this morning.

By 5 May 1805 Seaman was again working actively in the food economy of the expedition; throughout the upper Missouri Lewis repeatedly notes him catching geese that, mid-molt, could not fly. On 21 July 1805, ascending toward the Three Forks, Lewis wrote: “my dog caught several today, as he frequently dose.”

The Beaver Bite

Among the dangerous moments of Seaman’s career occurred in May 1805 along the Missouri in present-day Montana, when the dog was bitten by a beaver. The bite severed an artery in his hind leg. Lewis stopped the bleeding with difficulty and wrote, “I fear it will yet prove fatal to him.” Seaman recovered, and the concern in Lewis’s entry reveals the depth of his attachment.

Sentinel at Camp: The Buffalo Stampede

Seaman’s most consequential service may have come on the night of 29 May 1805, when a buffalo bull charged through the sleeping camp, narrowly missing the men’s heads and crashing over the pirogue. Lewis wrote that “my dog saved us by causing him to change his course a second time.” Clark says a man sitting up alarmed the animal. The journals do not say the dog barked the camp awake, or then drove the bull off.

Suffering on the Portage

The summer of 1805 brought torments shared equally by men and dog. During the eighteen-mile portage around the Great Falls, prickly pear thorns drove deep into Seaman’s paws as they did into the men’s moccasins. Then came the mosquitoes. On 15 July 1806 Lewis recorded one of his most poignant lines about the animal:

My dog even howls with the torture he experiences from them.

The remark, set against Lewis’s usual restraint, registers the cumulative misery of the upper Missouri summer.

Pacific Winter and the Whale Blubber Comparison

At Fort Clatsop, Seaman appears less directly in the journals, but the dog—singular, beloved—coexisted there with another reality of the winter: the Corps had become almost wholly dependent on dog flesh purchased from Columbia River nations. Lewis admitted on 3 January 1806:

our party from necessaty having been obliged to subsist some lenth of time on dogs have now become extreemly fond of their flesh … for my own part I have become so perfectly reconciled to the dog that I think it an agreeable food.

Two days later, tasting whale blubber for the first time, he compared it to “the beaver or the dog in flavour.” The juxtaposition is striking: Seaman, the cherished individual, traveled within a culture in which dogs as a class were food. The journals never bridge this contradiction.

The Theft on the Columbia

On the return up the Columbia in April 1806, a group of Native men took Seaman from camp. Lewis’s reaction—recorded by Ordway and reflected in the supplementary expedition tradition—was uncharacteristically violent: he dispatched three armed men with orders to recover the dog or destroy the village. Seaman was returned without bloodshed. Throughout the expedition, several nations had offered horses to purchase him, and Lewis had always refused. The theft incident clarified the limit of his patience.

Hunting Companion to the End

Seaman continued working into the homeward summer. On 8 May 1806 along the Clearwater, Lewis recorded that Collins “wounded another [deer] which my dog caught at a little distance from the camp.” On 23 May 1806 Sergeant Pryor wounded a deer near a lick: “my dog pursud it into the river,” Lewis wrote, and the deer was driven back to shore where Pryor killed it. Crossing the Bitterroots in mid-June, Lewis noted on 7 July 1806—amid the harsh marches and beaver-dam meadows—simply that “my dog much worried.” It is the last clear, intimate glimpse of Seaman in the journals as preserved in this set.

Diplomatic Curiosity

Throughout the journey Seaman drew the attention of Native peoples, many of whom had never seen a dog of his size. The synthesizing entries (18 April 1805) note that Shoshone, Nez Perce, and Plains nations expressed astonishment, and that some offered three horses for him—offers Lewis consistently refused. His presence alongside Sacagawea and her infant also signaled, however unintentionally, that the party was not a war expedition.

The Limits of the Record

The journal record of Seaman is uneven. Lewis is by far the most attentive narrator; Clark mentions the dog only in passing (notably the lost-and-found episode of 25 April 1805 and the deer chase of 23 May 1806). After mid-July 1806 Seaman effectively disappears from the surviving entries in this corpus—his ultimate fate is not documented in the journals included here. What the record does preserve is unmistakable: a working animal who hunted, guarded, suffered, and accompanied Meriwether Lewis from the Ohio to the Pacific and most of the way home, mentioned with an affection Lewis rarely extended in writing to anything else.

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William Bratton enters the expedition record on May 26, 1804, when Meriwether Lewis issued his Detachment Orders organizing the messes at the start of the voyage up the Missouri. Bratton was assigned to the squad commanded by Sergeant John Ordway:

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 opening roster forward, Bratton appears intermittently throughout the journals as a hunter, blacksmith’s helper, saltmaker, and — for a long stretch in 1806 — as one of the expedition’s most worrisome invalids.

Early Service on the Missouri

Bratton’s first individualized appearance comes on July 20, 1804, when Clark records a small misadventure:

Bratten Swam the river to get his gun & Clothes left last night

A short time later, on August 7, 1804, Clark dispatched Bratton with a hard-edged assignment:

at 1 oClock dispatched George Drewyer, R. Fields, Wm. Bratten & Wm. Labieche back after the Deserter reid with order if he did not give up Peaceibly to put him to Death &c.

The party was also tasked with diplomatic errands among the Otoes and Missouris — a sign of the trust placed in Bratton even early in the journey.

On August 22, 1804, following the death of Sergeant Floyd, the captains held a vote of the men to fill the vacant sergeantcy. Clark notes the three highest names:

ordered a Vote of the men for a Sergeant of the three highest numbers a choice to be made Gass Bratton & Gibs[on]

Although Patrick Gass ultimately won the post, Bratton’s inclusion among the top three indicates the regard in which his fellow soldiers held him. Three days later, on August 25, Bratton was among the small party that accompanied Lewis and Clark to the "mountain of evel Spirits" (Spirit Mound).

Hunter on the Upper Missouri

Through the spring of 1805 Bratton’s name surfaces in connection with hunting feats. On May 25, 1805, near the country of the bighorn sheep, both Clark and Lewis recorded his success:

I walked on Shore and killed a female Ibex or big horn animal in my absence Drewyer & Bratten killed two others

Lewis adds:

Capt. Clark and Bratton who were on shore each killed one of these anamals this evening.

The Iron Boat and the Portage

At the Great Falls of the Missouri in July 1805, Bratton was given a key role in fitting out Lewis’s experimental iron-frame boat. On July 1, 1805, Lewis assigned tasks:

Shields and J. Fields to collect and split light wood and prepare a pit to make tar.

The next day, July 2, the work expanded:

Shields and Bratton seting their tarkiln, Sergts. Pryor and Gass at work on the waystrips and myself and all other hands engaged in puting the boat together

By July 11, Bratton was carrying messages between Clark’s canoe-building camp and Lewis’s encampment, despite a finger injury — Clark notes that he sent

W Bratten (who cannot work he haveing a turner rising on his finger) to meat the Canoes & bring from them two axes

The next day, July 12, Lewis confirmed the errand:

Bratton came down today for a cople of axes which I sent by him; he returned immediately.

Saltmaker on the Pacific

The winter at Fort Clatsop placed Bratton at the heart of one of the expedition’s most essential subsidiary operations — the boiling of seawater for salt. On December 27, 1805, Clark wrote:

Jo Fields, Bratten, & Gibson to make Salt at Point Addams

Lewis confirmed the assignment the next day. By January 5, 1806, Lewis reported that Willard and Wiser had returned with news that

J. Fields, Bratton and Gibson (the Salt makers) had with their assistance erected a comfortable camp killed an Elk and several deer and secured a good stock of meat; they commenced the making of salt

The Long Illness

By February 1806 Bratton had fallen seriously ill. On February 10, Willard returned to Fort Clatsop with worrying news:

Bratten was very unwell, and that Gibson was So Sick that he could not Set up or walk alone

The next day, on February 11, Lewis directed that

as Bratton had been sick we desired him to return to the Fort also if he thought proper

Bratton arrived at the fort on February 15, and Clark observed:

Wm. Bratton appears much reduced, and is yet verry unwell.

The captains tried a battery of remedies — Peruvian bark, Scott’s pills, niter — over the following weeks. On February 19, Clark noted:

I gave Bratten 6 of Scotts pills which did not work him. he is very weak and Complains of his back.

By February 20:

Bratton has an obstinate Cough and pain in his back and Still appears to be getting weaker.

The pain became chronic and stubborn. On March 6 Clark wrote:

Bratten is now weaker than any of the convalessants, and complains verry much of his back, all of them recovering Slowly in consequence of the want of proper diet

On March 7, Clark applied a homemade liniment:

I applied a bandage of flanel to the part and rubed it well with Some volatile linniment which was prepared with Sperits of wine, camphire, Sastile Soap, and a little laudinum.

Lewis added that he believed the affliction was rheumatism. The improvement was slight and short-lived. Throughout March the entries return again and again to Bratton’s lingering disability. On March 21, Lewis wrote:

Bratton is now so much reduced that I am somewhat uneasy with rispect to his recovery; the pain of which he complains most seems to be seated in the small of his back and remains obstinate.

When the Corps left Fort Clatsop on March 24, the captains purchased a dog at the Cathlamah village specifically

for our Sick men Willard and Bratten who are yet in a weak State.

The Sweat-Lodge Cure

Bratton’s recovery, when it came, was dramatic and unconventional. On May 24, 1806, in the Nez Perce country, Clark recorded the suggestion of John Shields:

W. Brattin is yet very low he eats hartily but he is So weak in the Small of his back that he Can’t walk. we have made use of every remidy to restore him without it’s haveing the desired effect. one of our party, John Shields observed that he had Seen men in Similar Situations restored by Violent Swets.

Shields then constructed a sweat hole — Lewis describes it as

a circular hole of 3 feet diamiter and four feet deep in the earth

— heated it with fire, and seated Bratton inside, water at hand to create steam. The treatment, an adaptation of Native American sweating, restored Bratton where European medicine had failed. The journals from this point begin treating his case as on the mend.

Character and Significance

The journal record presents Bratton as a steady and capable enlisted man — sufficiently respected to be considered for sergeant, sufficiently dependable to be sent on diplomatic errands and arduous craft tasks, and sufficiently skilled to spend the Pacific winter as one of the three saltmakers. His prolonged illness through the winter and spring of 1806 also makes him among the medically documented members of the Corps; the captains’ attempts to treat his obstinate back pain — and the eventual success of an Indigenous-derived sweat cure — supply some of the most detailed health entries in the journals.

The journals say nothing of Bratton’s life before or after the expedition; this synthesis is therefore confined to what the daily entries record. Within those entries, Bratton emerges as a quiet but persistently present figure — one of the soldiers whose individual labor, suffering, and recovery the captains thought worth tracking by name from St. Louis to the Pacific and back.

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