Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809)
William Clark (1770-1838)
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark portraits by Charles Willson Peale Independence National Historical Park
Stephen Ambrose made the case for Meriwether Lewis having committed suicide in Undaunted Courage, his biography of Lewis published in 1996. Because his popular book was the cornerstone of the 2004-2006 Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commemoration, it is now a widely held belief that the famed explorer committed suicide. But through the years many historians have questioned this.
In 1988, Ambrose himself appears to have endorsed the murder theory. He wrote a foreword for a new edition of Richard Dillon’s 1965 biography, Meriwether Lewis, in which Dillon stated about Lewis’s death, “Yes it was murder.” Ambrose wrote in his foreword:
“The only reason I have not written his biography [Lewis’s] is that Richard Dillon did it first, and his is such a model biography there is no need for another one.”
Why did Ambrose use the words “Undaunted Courage” in his title and why did President Jefferson describe his friend as being “of courage undaunted … which nothing but impossibilities could divert from its direction” if indeed they thought Meriwether Lewis had committed suicide? It is a contradiction—a person commiting suicide is not “undaunted.”
The answer may be they believed that Lewis had “undaunted courage,” and that they wished to honor the memory of Meriwether Lewis as a true hero, and leave it to future historians to unravel the cause of his death. It is a mystery, and the only real answer may lie in the exhumation of the famed explorer’s remains.
THE CASE FOR THE MURDER OF MERIWETHER LEWIS is made in this last section. It incorporates the new evidence discovered in preparing this book for publication—the identification of General James Wilkinson as being associated with the forgery of the November 26, 1811 document, which is often cited as proof of Meriwether Lewis’s suicidal intentions. In the preceeding sections you have read the testimony of expert crime scene investigators and historians and examined the documetary evidence. But, if it was a case of murder—whether or not an exhumation takes place, or the evidence is conclusive—the question remains, for what reason?
The story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition will always endure as a great, exciting adventure story, but it took place against a backdrop ofpower politics that has yet to be explored. In this account of the last three years of Meriwether Lewis’s life, the world in which he lived is revealed, and a case is made for Wilkinson and others as conspirators in Lewis’s assassination.
RETURNING HOME IN THE SUMMER OF 1806, Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and the other members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition were bringing great news—they had explored the vast continent; held councils with over a dozen Indian tribes; and, most importantly, they had reached the mouth of the Columbia River on the Pacific Ocean coast. The official name of the Lewis and Clark Expedition was the “Corps of Volunteers for Northwestern Discovery.”
They were an elite, hand-picked, army unit of 27 soldiers and two commanding officers whose mission was to reinforce the American claim to Oregon Country. In 1792, the American ship captain Robert Gray had discovered the mouth of the Columbia on the Pacific Coast. He had sailed up it and named it for his ship The Columbia. In 1805-06, expedition members were reinforcing America’s claim by keeping travel journals, branding trees, carving their names in rocks, and building Fort Clatsop—all signs of occupying the land, which was the second step in establishing a legal claim to ownership according to international law.
The “Doctrine of Discovery” meant land could be claimed in a “new country” by discovering the mouth of a river, which then entitled the discovering nation to all the land drained by that river. The “Graveyard of the Pacific,” the treacherous area at the mouth of the Columbia, had prevented its discovery by British and Russian sailing ships. The Columbia, the largest river in the Pacific Northwest, was the gateway to the lucrative Chinese overseas market for furs and a global trading network for the United States.
Four nations all had vested interests in the Pacific Northwest. The Spanish colonial empire stretched southward from the San Francisco Bay area to the tip of South America. The Russians, who were making enormous profits in the seal and otter skin trade, established a colony in the San Francisco Bay area in 1812. Great Britain, of course, had a colonial empire in Canada, and was challenging the United States for control of the border area from the Great Lakes to Oregon Country. The 49th parallel boundary line, which was settled by a treaty in 1846, finally ended their dispute over the Pacific Northwest.
JEFFERSON’S GOAL OF AN AMERICAN TRANS CONTINENTAL EMPIRE depended upon two things—re-inforcing America’s legal claim to the Pacific Northwest, and gaining control of the fur trade of the Northern Great Plains. The British had a strong presence in the region. British traders were active in the Pacific Northwest, and they controlled the fur trade through their allies the Blackfeet Indians. If America was going to stretch from “sea to shining sea,” the U. States had take control from Britain for the land and commerce on both sides of the Rocky Mountains.
It was up to Meriwether Lewis to inform the Black-feet that their days of unquestioned dominance over the buffalo plains and beaver streams east of the Rockies were over. Americans were going to supply their enemies with guns and ammunition, and Americans were going to trade for furs with any and all Indian tribes. Most decisively, the Americans planned to build a trading post in the heart of Blackfeet territory at the junction of the Marias and Missouri Rivers.
After crossing the Rocky Mountains, Lewis and Clark had split up to explore the tributaries of the Missouri River. It was the single most dangerous move of the entire expedition. Clark took one group to explore the Yellowstone River, which was the second largest tributary of the Missouri, and Lewis and three companions headed north to explore the Marias River. Lewis wanted to see if he could push the boundary line claim of the United States further north by following the river to its headwaters. At “Camp Disappointment” near Browning, Montana he realized that the headwaters of the Marias lay south of the 49th parallel.
The Marias was in the heart of Blackfeet Indian territory. British Canadian traders on the Saskatchewan River in Canada had been supplying the three Blackfeet tribes with arms and ammunition since the 1750’s. The other tribes of the region—the Shoshone, Flathead and Nez Perce—had only a handful of guns. When they hunted buffalo on the plains of Montana east of the Rocky Mountains, they traveled in groups for protection against the Blackfeet.
For thousands of years the Blackfeet had controlled the Northern Great Plains; the Shoshone and Flatheads had lived in the mountain valleys of western Montana; and the Nez Perce had lived west of the mountains in Idaho. The plains were filled with tens of millions of buffalo during their annual migration, covering the landscape as far as the eye could see. When Lewis and Clark met with these rival tribal leaders they promised the American government would supply them with arms and ammunition so that they could safely hunt for food and defend themselves against the Blackfeet.
CAPTAIN LEWIS MET THE BLACKFEET near the Two Medicine River, a tributary of the Marias on July 26th. A party of eight young Piegan, or Blackfeet, Indians had been out on a horse stealing raid. Over the evening campfire he informed them that an American trading post would be established at the junction of the Marias and Missouri Rivers. He wrote that he told them:
“I had been to the great waters where the sun sets and had seen a great many nations all of whom I had invited to come and trade with me on this side of the mountains.”
[also] “… that I had come in surch of them in order to prevail upon them to be at peace with their neighbors particularly those on the West side of the mountains and to engage them to come and trade with me when the establishment is made at the entrance of this river.”
The next morning, when the young men attempted to steal the Americans’ guns and horses, two of them were killed. Lewis, who had given a peace medal to one of them the night before, wrote that he:
“left the medal about the neck of the dead man that they might be informed who we were.”
To escape pursuit by the Blackfeet, the four men rode as fast as they could for the Missouri River. They rode through immense herds of buffalo for hours, continuing on into the night under stormy moonlit skies. Lewis praised the quality of his Indian horse and estimated they covered 100 miles before they ended their ride at 2 A. M. They awoke at daybreak, and Lewis and the others were so sore they could scarcely stand. But he warned them that:
“our own lives as well as those of our friends and fellow travelers depended upon our exertions of this moment.”
They thought they heard gunfire when they arrived at the Missouri, and after traveling along the river’s edge for some miles, they had “the unspeakable satisfaction” to find other members of the expedition bringing down the white pirogue and five smaller canoes. Reunited, they proceeded on to their rendezvous site with Clark and the others at the junction of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers.
THE SHOTS THAT Meriwether Lewis and Reuben Fields fired, killing the two Blackfeet, were the beginning of more than a quarter of a century of warfare between the Black-feet and American fur trappers. At least two members of the Lewis and Clark expedition, who returned to trap beaver in Montana, lost their lives to the Blackfeet: John Potts in 1808 and George Drouillard in 1810. John Colter, Potts companion, only escaped death by making his famous run for his life.
Over twenty American trappers were killed by the Black-feet in 1808 alone. The Blackfeet not only wanted to kill them, they were after their beaver pelts, which often represented sizable fortunes, and were traded for ammunition and alcohol with the British traders on the Saskatchewan. The artist Alfred Jacob Miller who traveled in the Far West in 1837 said that the Blackfeet still attacked 40-50 trappers per season.
“They are the sworn enemies of all—Indians and white men alike…Undoubtedly the Blackfeet have the worst reputation for war and aggression of all the Indians of the North-West. Their very name is a terror to most of the Indian tribes.”
When Meriwether Lewis ventured into Blackfeet territory he was directly challenging British control of the Northern Plains through their Blackfeet proxies—just as establishing Fort Clatsop on the Pacific Coast challenged the British claim to the Oregon Country. Within a few years, the United States and Great Britain would be at war with each other. The arming of Indians by the British and the encouraging of attacks on Americans was a direct cause of the War of 1812.
MERIWETHER LEWIS WAS SHOT himself while out elk hunting with Pierre Cruzatte on August 11th, 1806. He wrote in his journal:
“I instantly supposed that Cruzatte had shot me in mistake for an Elk as I was dressed in brown leather and he cannot see very well; under this impression I called out to him, damn you you have shot me”
Lewis spent an uncomfortable month recovering from his wounds, as the rifle ball had passed through both his left thigh and right posterior. He was lucky in that it didn’t penetrate the sciatic nerve of his left leg, which would have crippled him for life. The next day Lewis wrote:
“my wounds felt very stiff and soar this morning but gave me no considerable pain. there was much less inflammation that I had reason to apprehend there would be. I had last evening applied a poltice of peruvian barks.”
Two hunters from Illinois were encountered the next day on August 12th; they were the first white men they had seen since leaving the Mandan-Hidatsa Villages in the spring of 1805. Joseph Dixon and Forest Hancock, who had left the Illinois Country in the summer of 1804, were on their way to Montana to trap beaver. Lewis gave them advice as to the best beaver stream locations, and a “file and a couple of pounds of powder with some lead” before hurrying on to meet up with Clark at the the junction of the Yellowstone and Missouri, their designated rendezvous.
Lewis then wrote his last words on the journey:
“at 1 P. M. I overtook Catp. Clark and party and had the pleasure of finding them all well. as wrighting in my present situation is extremely painfull to me I shall desist until I recover and leave to my Capt. C. the continuation of our journal.”
Clark’s journal notes reveal that Dixon and Hancock turned around and returned to the Mandan Villages for a longer visit with them. Private John Colter, an expert hunter, received special permission to leave the expedition and went back west with the two hunters.
The seven Mandan-Hidatsa Villages on the Knife River in today’s North Dakota were a prosperous center of trade, with several British traders living there, and a population of about 3,000. It was the home of Sacagawea and her husband Toussaint Charbonneau. After leaving the villages, William Clark realized that he missed their little son, Pompey, tremendously, and he wrote a letter a few days later asking the Charbonneaus to allow him to raise and educate him. He called Pompey “my little danceing boy” and asked them to bring their son, who was then 18 months old, to St. Louis, and requested they stay with him there until he was old enough to leave his mother.
THE MANDAN CHIEF SHEHEKE accompanied the expedition for the rest of their journey. His entourage consisted of his wife and son; and a French-Canadian interpreter, Rene Jessaume, with his Mandan wife and two children. The Mandan Chief had been invited to visit President Jefferson in Washington. The families traveled in two dugout canoes, lashed together with poles, for speed and stability. The Captains called Sheheke, “Big White Chief.” He was six feet, ten inches tall and fair skinned. Sheheke means “White Coyote” in the Mandan language. (His portrait appears on page 272.)
The Mandan Indians were a subject of great curiosity around the world—they were thought to be “White Indians,” descended from the Welsh Prince Madoc and his followers who—according to legend—had come to Mobile Bay on the Gulf Coast in 1170 A. D. and gradually migrated north along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. In the time of Lewis and Clark this was a very popular subject.
Lewis and Clark carried a copy of a map made by John Evans, a Welshman who had traveled to the Mandan Villages in 1796 to see if the Mandans were, indeed, descended from the Welsh. Evans concluded they were not, but his objectivity was questionable because he received money from, and lived as a guest of, the Spanish governor in New Orleans after he returned from his travels. He had originally been sent to investigate the matter by a Welsh nationalist group in England.
“Welsh Indians” had been a hot topic since the time of Queen Elizabeth I. The Queen and her advisors promoted the idea of Welsh Indians in order to make a claim under the Doctrine of Discovery for legal possession of the New World by the English rather than the Spanish. Regardless of whether they were—or were not—of Welsh descent, President Jefferson would have been eager to meet the Mandans. Both he and Meriwether Lewis were of Welsh descent.
William Clark grew up in Louisville hearing about the Welsh Indians. It was a local tradition that the White Indians had lost a major battle with the Red Indians at the Falls of the Ohio, where thousands of human bones had been found on an old battlefield. His brother George Rogers Clark was the leading expert in the west on prehistoric Indians and other studies in the natural sciences. Today, the Falls of the Ohio Interpretive Center has an exhibit displaying ancient armor and coins found in the area of the Falls.
The artist George Catlin visited the Mandan Villages in 1832. In North American Indians Letter # 13 he wrote extensively about them and stated:
“Governor Clarke told me before I started for this place that I would find the Mandans a strange people and half white.”
The French explorer Verendrye and others also commented on their white appearance. Perhaps DNA testing will reveal some answers. It is interesting that Lewis and Clark kept their opinions to themselves about White Indians—other than referring to Sheheke as “Big White Chief.”
THEY FINALLY HEARD NEWS FROM HOME on September 2nd, when they encountered the trader James Aird coming up river. He told them of the “maney Changes & misfortunes” that had occurred since they left the Illinois Country in the spring of 1804. Their friend Pierre Chouteau had lost his house in a fire, and there were a couple of international incidents involving American ships and sailors, but the news that would have the most impact on their lives was this:
“General Wilkinson was the governor of the Louisiana and at St. Louis 300 of the american Troops had been Contuned on the Missouri a few miles above its mouth. Some disturbance with the Spaniards in the Nackatosh Country is the Cause of Their being Called down to that Country… and that Mr. Burr and Genl. Hambleton fought a Duel, the latter was killed &c. &c.”
The news must have been too much to be absorbed. What Meriwether Lewis didn’t realize was that for the rest of his all too short life—for the next three years—he would be dealing with these matters. He was 32 years old, and within a few months President Jefferson would appoint him to the post of Governor of Louisiana Territory, replacing General Wilkinson who still remained in command of the United States Army.
It seemed from the news they received that war with Spain might have started on the borderland area of the Sabine River between New Spain (Texas) and the Arroyo Hondo near Natchitiches, Louisiana. (“Nack-a-tosh” is how locals still prounce the name.) But the news wasn’t all bad—James Aird generously gave every man on the expeditionn who smoked enough tobacco to last until they reached St. Louis. He also gave them a barrel of flour which they hadn’t tasted in many months, and they gave him six barrels of corn to take up river.
They were near the Big Sioux River and the gravesite of Sergeant Charles Floyd, the only man to die on the expedition. They paid a visit to his grave on the top of the high hill where they had buried him, and found that his grave had been opened. They refilled the grave, and continued on.
THEY WERE ALMOST CAPTURED BY THE SPANISH as they neared the mouth of the Platte River. The Spanish government in New Spain had sent out three previous expeditions to capture “Captain Merry Weather,” as they called him—all ending in failure. But their last attempt almost succeeded, as Spanish troops were only 4-5 days march away when the Lewis and Expedition passed the Platte on September 10th.
General Wilkinson had written to the Spanish in March, 1804 proposing that they arrest Lewis and Clark. It was shortly after he presided over official ceremonies taking possession of the Louisiana Purchase for the United States at New Orleans on December 20, 1803. The General—who had been in the pay of Spain since 1787—received $12,000 for a secret report entitled “Reflections on Louisiana’” informing them of the expedition’s goal to reach the Pacific Ocean.
The Pawnee Indians stopped the fourth and last attempt by the Spanish to capture “Captain Merry” in late August or early September. When a Spanish military force of about 360 men, headed by Lieutenant Facundo Melgares, arrived at their village on the Republican River near today’s Kansas-Nebraska border, they refused to allow him and his troops to continue on with their march to the Missouri River. Yet a few weeks later, when Zebulon Pike arrived with an expedition of about 25 men, they allowed them to continue on their journey west towards Sante Fe. Pike and his men spent almost two weeks at the village, from September 25-October 7th, and learned from French traders who arrived there on October 4th that the Lewis and Clark Expedition was on its way home.
LEWIS AND CLARK WERE MAKING FAST TIME, traveling 78 miles in one day, as they reached the mouth of the Platte River. Clark wrote that everyone was “extremely anxious” to get home to their friends and Country. And he was pleased to report that his “worthy friend can walk and even run nearly as well as ever he Could.” The next day, September 10th, they met another trader on the river, who gave them a bottle of whiskey, and told them the news that General Wilkinson and his troops had descended the Mississippi; and that an expedition had set out for the southwest on the Arkansas River under the leadership of Captain Zebulon Pike and Wilkinson’s son, Lieutenant James B. Wilkinson.
Now they were meeting trading parties going up river almost every day and continuing to receive gifts of whiskey. Near Leavenworth, Kansas, Clark wrote “Sung Songs until 11 oClock at night in the greatest harmoney.” Though they were finding it hard going on the Missouri—between the humidity and warm weather they were no longer accustomed to, the mosquitoes, and the sandbars and snags—they were very excited and happy to be arriving home.
CAPTAIN JOHN McCLELLAN was encountered near the Grand River on September 17th. (A few days earlier Lewis and Clark had met an old friend from army days, the trader Robert McClellan.) They stayed up talking “until near mid night.” McClellan said they had long ago been given up for dead and were almost forgotten; but that the President had not yet given up hope for their safe return.
He told them that he had recently resigned from the army and was on a “speculative venture” to New Spain. McClellan was, in fact, a business partner of General Wilkinson, and they were going into trade together. He described his intentions as—first, the building of a trading post at the mouth of the Platte; then, the making of friends with the Pawnee and Otoe Indians; and finally using their influence to set up a successful trade with Sante Fe to obtain the “Silver & gold of which those people abound.”
For reasons unknown, none of this happened. His real destination may always have been the fur country of the Northwest. Historians believe that McClellan’s party went on to become the mysterious group of Americans known to history as the “James Roseman, Zachary Perch/Jeremy Pinch” party who were present in Montana in 1807-1810. It is probably no coincidence that “Zachary Perch” appears to be a word play on the name “Zebulon Pike.” None of these names are found in military records, so the signature of Zachary Perch could also have been misread as Jeremy Pinch.
In any event, these names were the aliases of Americans who sent letters to the British trader David Thompson warning him that the region was under American control. Thompson was establishing a trading house for the Northwest Company near Banff, Canada in 1807, when he received two threatening letters, delivered by Indian messengers, dated “Fort Lewis, Yellow River, Columbia, July 10, 1807” and “Poltitopalton Lake, September 29, 1807.” The men were apparently somewhere in the vicinity of Missoula, Montana in the Bitterroot Mountain Valley. The letters charged Thompson with not acknowledging “the authority of Congress over these Countries.” The first letter contained regulations governing commerce with the Indians under American rules, written in language very similiar to the language in documents Zebulon Pike was carrying on his expedition to the Southwest. Thompson responded to the second letter saying he had no authority to discuss these matters.
Copies of the letters were found by Hudson Bay Company historians in 1938. It is thought that all the men associated with the mystery group—42 men or more—were killed by Blackfeet Indians in the next few years. Dr. Gary Moulton, the editor of the Lewis and Clark Journals, says that three members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition who returned to Montana, are believed to have joined the McClellan party and were later killed. They are Pierre Cruzatte, Joseph Field(s) and John B. Thompson.
THEY WERE CONTENT TO EAT PAWPAWS, a native tree fruit, tasting somewhat like bananas, as the sped home. They still had a few biscuits, and didn’t want to waste any time hunting. Clark wrote that when they saw some cows on the bank everyone cheered. That night, on September 20th, they reached the little French village of La Charette, and fired off their guns in a salute—a salute which was returned by the five trading boats docked at the village. The next day they arrived in St. Charles, where they enjoyed a day of feasting and hospitality. On September 22, they visited Fort Belle Fontaine for the first time; the military cantonment on the banks of the Missouri had been established the previous year during their absence. The next morning they took the Chief to the commissary store at the fort and outfitted him with some new clothes.
THEY RECEIVED A “HARTY WELCOM” and were met by “all the village” of St Louis when they arrived at noon on September 23rd. A letter to a newspaper described them as looking like “Robinson Crusoes.” Lewis and Clark were hosted by Pierre Chouteau and his family, and after a short round of visits, they sat down to write letters to be sent off with the waiting post rider. Lewis wrote to the President, and Clark wrote to his brother Jonathan in Louisville, announcing their safe arrival back in St. Louis.
They had survived the perils of the wilderness—would they be able to survive the political perils of the new republic?
CONSPIRACIES ARE NOT EASILY UNDERSTOOD, and—by their very nature—they are not meant to be. The last three years of Meriwether Lewis’s life were often involved with the conspiracies of Aaron Burr and James Wilkinson, and so in this chapter, they will be discussed. Lewis must have known the two conspirators rather well. When Burr was the Vice President of the United States, Lewis was President Jefferson’s private secretary; and Lewis served as a career army officer on the frontier under General James Wilkinson.
Burr and Wilkinson were always interested in the Spanish territories bordering the United States as a source of riches and power. Their conspiracies may have played a role in two of the great dramas of the early republic—the closely contested presidential election of 1800, and Burr’s duel with Hamilton in 1804. It seems likely they were planning to invade Mexico in 1801 if Burr had won the presidency. In 1804, Burr may have killed Hamilton to prevent his rival from competing with him to lead a new invasion scheme with General Wilkinson—the one that became known as the “Burr Conspiracy” or the “Burr-Wilkinson Conspiracy.”
THE BURR-WILKINSON CONSPIRACY dominated the news in 1807—far eclipsing news of the return of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The conspiracy was reaching its final stages as Lewis and Clark were returning home in September of 1806. Burr and Wilkinson were planning to invade Spanish territories in the event of war with Spain and to take possession of the Spanish lands of West and East Florida, Texas, and Mexico. A new, independent empired would be formed with Burr as its ruler.
Several versions of the invasion plot were in circulation. It was said that the western states would break away and join the new empire—or that Burr’s purpose was to establish a new agricultural community on lands near Monroe, Louisiana—or that the British and American navies would lend their support—or that the city of New Orleans would be seized and money plundered from its banks to finance an invasion of Vera Cruz—or that the United States Army would be participating. The country was in a state of high alarm, and many people were anticipating a war with Spain and an invasion of Spanish territories.
GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON hosted a public dinner for Aaron Burr on September 26, 1806 in Nashville. Burr told the guests that Spanish soldiers had invaded American soil east of the Sabine River, and that a war with Spain was imminent. Jackson issued a proclamation for the Tennessee Militia to be ready for duty, and wrote to President Jefferson that Tennessee would be supplying three regiments.
Meanwhile, Burr’s fellow conspirator, General Wilkinson was in the process of stopping the impending war with Spain over the Sabine River boundary issues. On September 27th, Spanish commander Lieutenant Colonel Simon de Herrara evacuated his troops from east of the Sabine River, and retreated to the west bank, effectively removing all cause for war. Shortly after this, a messenger arrived from Aaron Burr, bringing a letter in cipher code for Wilkinson detailing plans for the invasion. The General took no action until October 20th when he wrote to President Jefferson disclosing a plot to invade Vera Cruz by a powerful group of unnamed individuals, who would reach New Orleans in December. The General had decided to betray Aaron Burr, and that his own future was better served as an informer. On November 7th, he signed a “Neutral Ground Agreement” with Herrara establishing a neutral border zone area.
HUNDREDS OF VOLUNTEERS were traveling in small groups to join the expedition. They were to rendezvous at the Red River south of Natchez, Mississippi. Boats were being built up and down the Ohio River. Altogether, there were probably 1,500-2,000 men on the move, planning to join the expedition. Many believed the expedition was secretly supported by the administration. They were being told their final destination was Mexico, but that they would first rendezvous at the Bastrop lands between the Red and Oauchita Rivers.
The Neutral Ground Agreement was signed between General James Wilkinson and Lieutenant Colonel Simon de Herrara on November 5, 1806. It established the “Sabine Free State” or a “Neutral Strip”—an area that was off limits to the soldiers of both countries, and was not open to settlement. The agreement was not ratified by either government, but endured until the Adams-Onis Treaty established the Sabine River as the boundary line between the two countries in 1821.
The western boundary was the Sabine River and the eastern boundary was the Arroyo Hondo (“Deep River”)—today’s Calcasieu River. The southern boundary was the Gulf of Mexico. The area was about 55 miles at its widest and about 110 miles in length. It was an area of wetlands and bayous in the south and pine forests in the north.
The Neutral Strip became a haven for outlaws, fugitive slaves, mixed race people, and filibuster expeditions. The local inhabitants were the few remaining Attakapas Indians. The Lafitte Brothers kept African slave camps for the slave trade here. Their pirate headquarters were on nearby Galveston Island.
In early December of 1806, a group of men were assembling on Blennerhassett Island, the home of a wealthy Irish aristocrat, in the middle of the Ohio River near Parkersburg, West Virginia. Fifteen gun boats for the expedition, “ample enough for 500 men,” were being built at nearby Marietta, Ohio. However, a messenger from Jefferson informed the Ohio governor of Burr’s plans, and on December 9th, local militia seized the boats and a keelboat for provisions. Harmon Blennerhassett and the other conspirators hurriedly left the island the next day.
The events on the island would later form the basis of the federal case against Aaron Burr and his trial for treason in Richmond, Virginia. Burr was not present on the island because he had been undergoing two grand jury investigations in Kentucky. The grand juries were attempting to investigate charges that Burr was planning an invasion of Mexico, but due to lack of witnesses who were willing to testify, he was not indicted.
JEFFERSON ISSUED A PROCLAMATION on November 27th, finally responding to the crisis and warning the country that:
“sundry persons—are conspiring and confederating together to begin—a military expedition or enterprise against the dominions of Spain.”
The President instructed all participants in the expedition to withdraw from the enterprise without delay. Jefferson had been waiting for as long as possible to respond to the conspiracy—he wanted Burr to commit an overt act, so that a charge of treason could be proved against him. The October 20th message from General Wilkinson warning him of the conspiracy forced his hand. So he ended up charging an unnamed group of individuals with preparing a filibustering expedition—a lesser offense, but still unlawful. (A filibuster is a unauthorized military expedition into a foreign country to support or start a revolution.)
Blennerhassett and about 30 companions were joined by recruits from the Louisville area as they traveled down river to meet Burr and his Tennessee recruits at the mouth of the Cumberland River. The flotilla consisted often boats with a total crew of about 60 men. They were carrying agricultural implements and concealed weapons. Three boats with ammunition had been stopped at Louisville by the authorities.
When the boats reached Fort Massac on the Ohio River, Burr told the fort commander, Daniel Bissell, that he now knew that General Wilkinson had made an agreement with the Spanish commander establishing the “Neutral Ground” area. He had just come from his second visit to Nashville, where his reception from Andrew Jackson had been much cooler.
BURR STILL THOUGH THE CONSPIRACY to seize New Orleans was in place. The plot was that the Mexican Association of New Orleans would turn over the city to Burr in a coup d’etat. Burr’s stepson, John B. Prevost, was Judge of the Superior Court of New Orleans Territory. Prevost, and other wealthy and influential men were leaders of a 300 member association whose purpose was to foster a war for Mexican independence. Many American residents in New Orleans were eager to see a revolution begin. On September 23, 1806, the New Orleans Gazette, the only English language newspaper, urged:
“Gallant Louisianians! Now is the time to distinguish yourselves… Should the generous efforts of our Government to establish a free, independent republican empire in Mexico be successful, how fortunate, how enviable would be the situation in New Orleans! The deposit at at once of the countless treasures of the South, and the inexhaustible fertility of the Western States, we would soon rival and outshine the most opulent cities of the world.”
Historian Thomas Abernethy, author of The Burr Conspiracy, says that Burr believed that Wilkinson had arranged for a truce on the Sabine because of orders from the President; but that Burr still expected Wilkinson to arrange for the city’s secession.
Burr stopped at Fort Pickering on the Chickasaw Bluffs (now Memphis, Tennessee), where three years later Meriwether Lewis would spend some of the last days of his life. Burr spent a day persuading the only officer at the fort, Lieutenant Jacob Jackson, to resign his commission and return home to Virginia to raise a company to join his expedition. Burr was trying to fill the manpower loss caused by the evacuation of Blennerhassett Island before all the recruits arrived.
On January 10th, Burr in an advance boat with 12 men, arrived at Bayou Pierre north of Natchez (near Port Gibson, Mississippi). His friend showed him a newspaper featuring the cipher code letter to Wilkinson. He learned that Wilkinson had betrayed him; of the President’s proclamation, and an order for his arrest issued by the Governor of Mississippi Territory. The next day he surrendered.
NEW ORLEANS WAS IN A PANIC. General Wilkinson had arrived in the city on November 27th, announcing that Burr was on his way to attack the city with 2,000 men. By the time of Burr’s arrest, the General had spent six weeks reinforcing New Orleans’ two forts and demanding that Governor William Claiborne and the Orleans Territorial Legislature give him special powers. Denied his request for martial law, he proceeded to do what he wanted to do anyway—he rounded up five fellow conspirators who had arrived in New Orleans, imprisoned them, and shipped them out of the area to Richmond, Virginia—where they were released due to lack of evidence. The General was in an awkward position. He was trying to prevent what he knew was a real possibility—that Burr’s volunteers would be arriving to seize New Orleans—although members of the Mexican Association were denying the existence of any such plan. If Burr had seized control of New Orleans, it was anticipated that an armyt of 7-10,000 men would assemble there to invade Mexico in the spring.
WHAT WERE THE MOTIVES of Burr, Wilkinson and Jefferson in the conspiracy? Why did the President place General Wilkinson and Burr’s family members in positions of power in the new territories? Why did Wilkinson betray Burr? Why didn’t the war with Spain happen?
Thomas Jefferson must have been anticipating a war with Spain in March, 1805 when he appointed Wilkinson the first Governor of Louisiana Territory; Burr’s brother-in-law, Joseph Browne, the first Territorial Secretary of Louisiana; and Burr’s stepson, John B. Prevost, the highest ranking Judge in Orleans Territory. Before his appointment Wilkinson had delivered a set of maps of Texas and Mexico to the War Department. Wilkinson continued as Commanding General of the U. S. Army while serving as Governor of Louisiana, reflecting Jefferson’s concern for the security of the borderlands area.
During 1804-06, after leaving the Vice-Presidency, Burr had been deep in negotiations with British agents, French exiles, and the Spanish minister, plotting the invasion of Mexico. The British negotiations had come to nothing due to the fall from power of Lord Melville and the death of Sir William Pitt in January, 1806.
In the summer of 1806, Burr was meeting with General Jean Victor Moreau, one of Napoleon’s top generals living in American exile; and the Spanish minister to America, the Marquis de Casa Yrujo. Burr’s chief of staff for his invasion plans was a French refugee, Colonel Julien De Pestre, who had served in both the French and British armies. De Pestre accompanied Burr on his travels, and stayed loyal to him through his trial for treason, refusing to testify against him.
James Madison, who was serving as Jefferson’s Secretary of State, suggested that Yrujo was allied with the French party of Spain, and that this was behind Burr’s conspiracy. This is the most likely story—that the final conspiracy plan involved working with French agents to liberate Mexico from Spanish rule. Did Jefferson know that Burr was conspiring with foreign governments? Senator William Plummer (Federalist-New Hampshire) wrote in his journal on January 17, 1807 that he had dined with Jefferson and the President had told him:
“… he did not believe either France, Great Britain, or Spain was connected with Burr in this project, but he tho’t the marquiss de Yrujo was—that he had advanced large sums of money to Mr. Burr—and his associates. But he believed Yrujo was duped by Burr. That last winter [1805-06] there was scarse a single night, but that at a very late hour, those two men met & held private conversations. I have since ascertained the fact.”
WILKINSON WAS THE PIVOT POINT, and a war with Spain over the Sabine River boundary issue would be the decisive moment. Spanish troops crossed the river in March of 1806. They crossed the river to provoke a war with the United States. Who wanted the war?—Mexican revolutionaries, including army officers, working with French agents, who were relying on the promise of support from the filibustering expedition led by Aaron Burr. What did they hope to achieve? A new country, led by Aaron Burr, which would benefit the commercial interests of New Orleans and others.
General Wilkinson had taken his time responding to the border invasion. On May 16th, orders had been issued for him to proceed to the Sabine “with as little delay as possible,” but he didn’t head south with his troops until August. He reached Natchez, Mississippi, 25 miles east of the Sabine River, on September 7th.
Wilkinson spent the summer months organizing two expeditions—the mysterious one with his business partner John McClellan that wound up in the northwest; and the famous Zebulon Pike Expedition to the Southwest. His own son, James B. Wilkinson accompanied the Pike Expedition part of the way—leaving before Pike and his companions were captured by the Spanish. Before Wilkinson left St. Louis he wrote a friend that he did not anticipate a war with Spain over the Sabine River.
When the General finally arrived at the Sabine on October 22nd, he was not entirely certain, whether it would be war or peace. The day before he had sent Thomas A. Smith (the older brother of John Smith T.) off to Jefferson with a message hidden in his boot, which the General hoped would provide cover for himself. Historian Thomas Abernethy remarked about this message:
“… he said he was enclosing a paper which had fallen into his hands. The louder the Brigadier talked of his honor, the faster President Jefferson should have counted his spoons, for the document enclosed was obviously written by Wilkinson himself.”
In any event, General Wilkinson and Lieutenant Colonel Herrara—on their own authority—signed the “Neutral Ground Agreement” on November 5, 1806, thus avoiding war. Herrara was disobeying orders, but Wilkinson was anticipating the orders of Jefferson to avoid war.
Abernethy stated that Herrara had the courage to defy orders from his superiors, who would have been ruined if he had disclosed their complicity in the plot to revolutionize Mexico with French support. Herrara, who had an English wife, had visited the United States and met George Washington, whom he admired greatly. Abernethy also noted that William Simmons, the War Department accountant, reported that Wilkinson received $16,883.12 in October-November, 1806 and January, 1807 in unaccounted for funds.
LIEUTENTANT ZEBULON PIKE and his men were captured by Mexican troops that winter. After Pike’s capture, he became a guest under house arrest in Herrara’s home in San Antonio. Pike’s diary entry for June 13, 1807 noted a conversation between Herrara, who was also Governor of Nuevo Leon Province; Colonel Manuel Cordero, Governor of the Province of Texas, and himself. Herrara told them that after he made his report about the Neutral Ground Agreement that—
“Until an answer was received … I experienced the most unhappy period of my life, conscious that I had served my country faithfully, at the same time that I had violated every principle of military duty. At length the answer arrived, and what was it, but the thanks of the viceroy and the commandant-general for having pointedly disobeyed their orders, with assurances that they would represent his services in exalted terms to the king [of Spain].”
Pike and his men returned to the United States under military escort two weeks later, on July 1st.
TWO OTHER POSSIBLE CONSPIRACIES preceded the famous filbuster expedition of 1806, and both involve other famous episodes in American history—the Burr-Hamilton duel of 1804, and the famous close election in 1801 between Burr and Jefferson for the presidency of the United States.
In 1801, the election of the third president of the United States hung in balance that winter. Due to a tie vote in the electoral college between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, the House of Representatives became responsibile for choosing who would become president. The second highest vote getter would become the Vice-President under laws existing at that time. It took a week of balloting, and finally on the 36th ballot, Jefferson was declared the winner on February 17, 1801.
IF BURR HAD WON THE ELECTION OF 1800 would an invasion of Spanish territories taken place? It is quite possible, and would have involved the troops stationed at Cantonment Wilkinsonville near Cairo, Illinois and the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. On January 5, 1801 about 700 soldiers arrived at Wilkinsonville. Approximately 1,000-1,500 men were stationed there during its peak occupancy between March and August, 1801.
Six or seven of these soldiers later joined the Lewis and Clark Expedition: Sergeant Patrick Gass; Privates Thomas Proctor Howard, Hugh McNeal, John B. Thompson, Joseph Whitehouse, Richard Windsor, and perhaps Silas Goodrich. A cantonment is a military camp without fortifed walls. In recent years the site has been the subject of archeological digs and research conducted by Southern Illinois University.
The contractor at the cantonment, John R. Williams—who later became the first Mayor of Detroit—wrote about the possibility of the cantonment being used as a staging ground for an invasion of Spanish territory in an 1845 letter:
“Mr. Jefferson having been elected President of the U. S. The policy of the Government changed instead wresting the posts on the west bank of the Mississippi by force of Arms as was previously contemplated—They were eventually obtained by peaceable & Successful negociation.”
In March, 1802 the U. S. Army numbered about 3,500 soldiers, so the troops stationed at Cantonment Wilkinsonville represented between 28-42% of the total strength of the army. The troops served a definite military purpose during a very unstable time in the Mississippi Valley, regardless of any plans to invade Texas. Napoleon was intending to take back the Mississippi Valley and Louisiana in 1801-02, but over 50,000 French soldiers died of yellow fever while they were fighting the slave rebellion in San Domingo. It was their deaths which persuaded Napoleon to sell Louisiana to the United States in 1803; in 1804 San Domingo gained its independence and became known as Haiti.
THE PHILIP NOLAN EXPEDITION TO TEXAS was most likely a filibuster unit tied to invasion plans from Cantonment Wilkinsonville. Nolan was a young Irishman who had lived in Wilkinson’s household as a teenager. He made several long trips into Texas, to catch wild horses, and was famous for his strength and daring. He also made maps during these trips—and it was his maps that Wilkinson delivered to the War Department in the winter of 1804-05.
In December, 1801, Nolan led a filibuster of 25 men into Texas where they built a stronghold of small forts and mustang corrals in the Hill Country of Texas (near Blum, Texas south of Dallas). On March 21st, 1801 Nolan was killed by Spanish soldiers. It was two weeks after the inauguration of President Jefferson. Nolan was the only man killed, though others were jailed and some escaped. One of the men who escaped, Robert Ashley, later helped Aaron Burr’s in his attempt to escape capture by Wilkinson’s men in 1807.
ONE MORE INDICATION of an early Burr-Wilkinson Conspiracy is a statement by J. H. Daviess, the District Attorney in Kentucky who instigated the grand jury investigations of Aaron Burr in 1806. He was a staunch Federalist, who attempted several times to warn President Jefferson of the Burr-Wilkinson Conspiracy. In gathering evidence to confirm his suspicions he met with General Wilkinson. Daviess wrote in his book, A View of the President’s Conduct Concerning the Conspiracy of 1806, published in 1807, that the General was showing him some maps of New Mexico when—
“… after some conversation about it, tapping it with his finger, told me in a very low and very significant tone and manner, that ‘had Burr been president, we would have had all this country before now.’”
THE BURR-HAMILTON DUEL may have been connected to the same type of conspiracy plans. Historian Thomas Fleming in his book, Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and the Future of America, provided some convincing evidence that General Wilkinson was considering both Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr as potential partners for him in a new invasion plan for Mexico. The two men were bitter enemies, and Fleming speculates that Burr killed Hamilton to prevent his taking his place with Wilkinson in the scheme which became known as the Burr-Wilkinson Conspiracy of 1806.
The duel occurred on July 11, 1804 while Burr was still serving as the Vice President of the United States. Hamilton had been Secretary of the Treasury under George Washington, and had served as de facto commander of the army under Washington in 1798-01 during the Quasi-War with France. Hamilton and Wilkinson had made the plans for Cantonment Wilkinsonville together.
Less than two months before the Burr-Hamilton duel on May 23, 1804 General Wilkinson had sent Aaron Burr a very confidential note:
“To save time of which I need much and have little, I propose to take a bed with you this night, if it may be done without observation or attention—Answer me and if in the affirmative I will be with [you] at 30 after the 8th hour.”
The subject of their meeting may have been the same as that which Wilkinson had written about in a letter to Alexander Hamilton on March 26th. Wilkinson invited Hamilton to come to New Orleans, adding that:
“I would give a Spanish Province for an Interview with you. My topographical of the S. West is now compleat. The infernal designs of France are obvious to me, & the destinies of Spain are in the Hands of the U. S.”
During the Quasi War with France, which was an undeclared war fought entirely at sea in 1798-01, Hamilton had been eager to make a pre-emptive strike against the Spanish territories of the two Floridas and Texas, in the event of an expanded war with France. When John Adams negotiated a peace truce with France in September, 1800, it ended their plans.
THERE WERE MANY SUCH PLANS during these years of the early republic. The first presidents skillfully negotiated the survival of the American Republic in a time of the Napoleonic world wars between the European powers. France and Great Britain wanted to regain their former control of the Missisippi Valley, and Spain wanted to hold onto its power as long as possible.
There were many attempts to fragment the United States, and establish separate governments. But of all the early plotters, Aaron Burr and James Wilkinson posed the greatest threats. Aaron Burr—because he was connected on a high level with leaders around the world and was capable of starting a new government—was probably the greater threat.
The Spanish Empire was in the process of breaking up, and its colonies in the New World were seen as prizes to be taken. Great Britain and France were both interested in fostering revolutions in the colonies. If Jefferson didn’t keep Burr and Wilkinson busy, others might. And, as always, changing politics and fortunes of war shifted everyone’s plans.
Neither Burr nor Wilkinson was ever viewed as “trustworthy” by government leaders. But they both had an uncanny ability to land on their feet despite whatever threatened their survival. Jefferson had decided to remove Wilkinson from his command of the U. S. Army, and had already removed him from his post as Governor of Louisiana Territory in the last months of 1806, when the Lewis and Clark Expedition was returning home. The General had been alerted by a Senator friend that he would lose his military appointment in the next session of Congress. It was undoubtedly a deciding factor in his decision to betray Aaron Burr.
Jefferson believed that the Spanish territories would fall into the hands of the United States without war. He was determined to stop Burr’s plans to establish a rival empire in the southwest. He believed that the two Floridas and Texas could be acquired by negotiation and purchase rather than war.
WHEN BURR SURRENDERED at Bayou Pierre on January 11, 1807 he chose to surrender in Mississippi Territory rather than Orleans Territory where Wilkinson held power. Wilkinson wanted to try Burr in a military court. Instead, Burr’s trial was conducted in a civil court at the small territorial capitol of Washington, Mississippi a few miles north of Natchez. He and his men were entertained at dinners and balls by the local residents, and many of his followers settled in the area.
On February 4th, a grand jury packed with Federalists absolved him of all charges. Local residents were satisfied that Burr’s only aim was to invade Spanish territories, not to cause a break up of the western states. But after the trial was over, Burr was still held on bond, despite the fact he wasn’t indicted.
Wilkinson sent six men armed with pistols and dirks to seize him. They had no warrants or criminal charges in their orders. Burr, fearing for his life, forfeited his $5,000 bond and disappeared into hiding the day after his hearing. A $2,000 reward was offered for his capture. The Governor of Mississippi Territory announced he was a fugitive from justice, and the former Vice President of the United States was now on the run.
Burr was captured on February 18th in the company of Robert Ashley, near Mobile, Alabama. They were on their way to Pensacola, Florida. Spanish officials from Pensacola had visited Burr while he was in jail in Washington, Mississippi. Burr was put under arrest at Fort Stoddert (30 miles north of Mobile) and Major Ashley once again escaped from capture. An attack on Mobile and Pensacola, supported by local revolutionaries was undoubtedly being planned, until the commander of the fort decided to send his famous prisoner on his way.
On March 5, 1807, Aaron Burr was taken from Fort Stoddert under military escort to Richmond, Virginia where he would stand trial for treason.
UPON THEIR RETURN TO ST LOUIS Lewis’s role as the true commander of the expedition now became apparent—he was responsible for the financial reports; discharging and paying the expedition members; delivering the artifacts they had collected to the President; bringing the Mandan Chief and his entourage to Washington; and publishing the account of their journey. William Clark, on the other hand, was anticipating spending time with his family in Louisville, and going to Fincastle, Virginia to woo his young sweetheart Julia Hancock.
Immediately after reaching St. Louis, on September 23, 1806, Lewis sent off a lengthy and detailed report to Jefferson describing the geography and fur trade potential of the country they had explored. He provided a copy of the report for Clark to send to his brother Jonathan in Louisville. It was expected the report would be published in the newspapers, and that Clark’s letter would become the first notice of the safe return of the expedition and what they had found.
For the next month they stayed in St. Louis awaiting the arrival of Pierre Chouteau and a delegation of Osage Chiefs who were going to travel east with them; attending to paperwork; and enjoying the hospitality of their friends. They also heard a lot of disturbing news about government affairs in St. Louis.
The wealthy French residents of St. Louis had petitioned President Jefferson to appoint Aaron Burr’s brother-in-law, Joseph Browne, the new Governor of Louisiana Territory. Browne, the Territorial Secretary, became the Acting Governor after Wilkinson left on his long-delayed departure for the Sabine River on August 16th. The petition, submitted by Auguste Chouteau on July 15th, praised General Wilkinson in the most extravagant language, the petitioners stating that:
“their warm approbation, their unshaken confidence, and their firm attachment have been often expressed [regarding Wilkinson]… the virtues of his heart, equalled only by the excellence of his Judgement, his unvarying and steady defense of the cause of Justice and truth, his unwearied assiduity in public service, and the crowd of envious and busy detractors, who have only served to illustrate the purity of his character… his purposed departure from this Territory throws a gloom over their prospects, and causes the same emotions as when a child is about to be deprived of the presence of a beloved father…”
More than likely the General wrote it himself for the petitioners’ signatures, as it has that “Wilkinsonian” style of expression. If Wilkinson wasn’t going to return to St. Louis, then the petitioners wanted Joseph Browne to be named the new Governor—whose “integrity of principles” eminently qualified him for the office.
However, Judge John B. C. Lucas, one of three members of the board of land commissioners, Will Carr, the federal land agent, and Silas Bent, the newly arrived federal land surveyor, were all writing very different letters to Washington—and, based on their reports, it was determined that a new administration was needed in Louisiana Territory.
Judge Lucas complained that his two fellow land commissioners were meeting at irregular times and places without him and were not keeping proper records. Both men, James Donaldson and Clement Biddle Penrose, were loyal supporters of Wilkinson; in addition, Penrose was Wilkinson’s nephew. Lucas was refusing to confirm large land claims which greatly exceeded the legal limit of the 800 arpents granted to settlers under Spanish law.
Under Spanish rule, very few completed land titles had been established, as the process was long and difficult. Then there was the two year period from 1801-1803 when France had secretly owned Louisiana. In the old days, local residents hadn’t much cared about legal niceties. Most French villagers had three kinds of land: residential lots in town, grazing land for their animals, and agricultural lots in the common fields. They simply agreed among themselves about working claims in the lead mine district. With the advent of American land speculators, settlers, and the land claims commission, there was a great rush to acquire titles. The process was exceedingly slow and aggravating for both large and small land claimants.
Judge Lucas, a friend of Albert Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury, doggedly insisted on following the letter of the law. Will Carr, the federal agent for the lead mine district—who was a friend of Meriwether Lewis’s—supported Judge Lucas in his opposition to the large land claimants. The new land surveyor, Silas Bent (father of the famous Bent Brothers in the southwestern fur trade), reported missing and altered land records to his superiors in Washington.
By January, 1807—after Lewis had reached Washington—President Jefferson had had enough. He wrote to Albert Gallatin that he “had never seen such a perversion of duty as by Donaldson & Penrose” and fired Donaldson, who was also the Registrar of Land Titles. Before they had left St. Louis, Judge Rufus Easton had asked Lewis and Clark to inspect the land records and inform the administration about the “innumerable alterations and forgeries!” Since territories were administered by the federal government, both land titles and the soon to enacted mineral leasing rights for the lead mine district were subject to congressional politics and approval.
LEWIS AND CLARK LEFT FOR WASHINGTON in late October. The group traveling together was a large one, consisting of Lewis and his dog Seaman; Clark and his slave York; Chief Big White and his wife and son; the Chief’s interpreter Rene Jessaume and his wife and two children; two members of the expedition, Sgt. John Ordway and Private Francis Labiche, who came along to help out; and Indian Agent Pierre Chouteau escorting a delegation of six chiefs from the Arkansas band of the Osage. Peter Provenchere was also most likely in the group.
The group would split up in Kentucky. Chouteau took the Osage Chiefs to Washington via the Ohio River, heading north. Big White and his group, accompanied by Ordway and Labiche, remained with Meriwether Lewis.
Lewis and Clark enjoyed the hospitality of the extended Clark family in Louisville. On November 8th, a dinner party was held at Locust Grove, the home of Clark’s sister Lucy and her husband William Croghan. Now a National Historic Landmark, Locust Grove became the home of their brother General George Roger Clark during the last years of his life. William Clark remained in Louisville until December 15th, but Lewis and his group traveled south on the Wilderness Road through Kentucky to the Cumberland Gap, the historic gateway of the Alleghany Mountains.
AFTER PASSING THROUGH THE GAP, Lewis, at the request of local citizens, made a survey of the latitude of the boundary line between the states of Virginia and North Carolina. The line, known as the Walker Line, lay a couple of miles east of the Gap. He reported on November 23rd that the boundary was “nine miles and 1,077 yards North of its proper position,” giving the state of Virginia those extra miles—a nice present to his home state.
Upon arriving at his mother’s house in Charlottesville, Lewis found a letter waiting for him from the President urging him to pay a visit to nearby Monticello with Big White and the others even though Jefferson was in Washington. Jefferson was preparing a “kind of an Indian Hall” at Monticello, displaying artifacts from the Mandans and other Indian tribes and he wanted Lewis and Big White to see it. By December 28th, Lewis and his party had reached Washington.
Clark would arrive in Washington about two weeks later, missing a party held in their honor on January 14th. Clark spent the holidays at Fincastle, where another party had been held on January 8th. He was courting Julia Hancock and obtained her family’s consent that they would be married one year later, in January, 1808. Julia, who was born November 21, 1791, had just celebrated her 15th birthday; Clark was 36 years old—a not uncommon arrangement in those days.
BACK IN ST. LOUIS, JOHN SMITH T. was preparing to go down river with 12,000 pounds of lead to join the Aaron Burr conspiracy. Lead was used to make bullets, a vital necessity for any invasion of Mexico. Colonel De Pestre, Burr’s chief of staff, had come to St. Louis in October, offering commissions in the new army. A disgusted Auguste Chouteau threw the commission in the fire when it was offered to him.
John Smith T. (the “T” stood for Tennessee); Joseph Browne’s son in law, Robert Westcott; Dr. Andrew Steele, and the Sheriff of Ste. Genevieve, Henry Dodge, set out to join Burr with their cargo of lead, but upon reaching New Madrid, they learned about the President’s proclamation of November 27th declaring Burr’s expedition illegal, and they abandoned their plans. When they got back to Ste. Genevieve, Judge Otho Shrader—a friend of Meriwether Lewis’s—had Smith T. and Dodge arrested on charges of treason. After Dodge was arrested, he beat up nine of the grand jury members, and Smith T. threatened to kill Shrader if he tried to arrest him—ending the matter of arrest for both men.
Smith T. was a relative of General Wilkinson. His mother’s name was Lucy Wilkinson Smith; the family came from Essex County, Virginia near Wilkinson’s birthplace in Calvert County, Maryland. Smith T. was infamous as a killer; he was reputed to have killed 15-20 men in duels. He was a small man, who usually dressed in heavily fringed and decorated buckskin shirts and doeskin pants. He always carried four pistols, one dirk (a dagger), and a rifle called “Hark from the Tombs.” Wilkinson appointed Smith T. a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Ste. Genevieve, where he heard his cases fully armed.
John F. Darby, the Mayor of St. Louis in 1835, said of John Smith T. that he was:
“as polished and courteous a gentleman as ever lived in the state of Missouri, and as mild mannered a man as ever put a bullet in a human body.”
Smith T. was a major land speculator in the southeastern United States. He had participated in the Yazoo land frauds, owning the northern half of the state of Alabama among other large land holdings. He moved to Missouri to speculate in the lead mine district, purchasing a wild card “floating claim” to 10,000 arpents, giving him the right to claim about 13 square miles of land wherever he wanted. He would send in armed men to illegally seize working claims, and employ lawyers to contest these claims in court.
He was up against Moses Austin (the father of Stephen Austin, the founder of Texas). Austin was a lead mine operator from Virginia, who introduced a new smelting technique, a reverberatory furnace, to the lead mine district south of St. Louis. Austin proposed paying taxes on minerals dug from the land, and to provide smelting services to the government. Captain Amos Stoddard had estimated the value of the lead mine district as being able to pay off the fifteen million debt for the purchase of Louisiana within a few years. It was the richest known deposit of lead ore in the world, and was reserved as public land under the new American government.
John Smith T., however, wanted to use the lead for bullets for an invasion of Mexico. If the invasion had proceeded as planned, many volunteers would have come from the St. Louis area. Both Moses Austin and John Smith T. employed private armies and lawyers to defend their land claims in the lead district’s “Mineral Wars.”
MERIWETHER LEWIS WAS APPOINTED the new Governor of Louisiana Territory on March 3, 1807. William Clark received appointments as Agent of Indian Affairs for Louisiana and Brigadier General of the Territorial Militia. On the same day, Congress passed the Lead and Salt Leasing Act of 1807, placing both the lead and salt petre mines under 3 year leasing provisions.
Lewis had to remain on the east coast, finishing up government paperwork and making arrangements for the publication of the expedition journals. He wrote to William Clark on March 13th, sending Clark’s commission as Brigadier General to him at Fincastle in care of Robert Frazer, a member of the expedition. Frederick Bates, who had been appointed the new Territorial Secretary, would serve as Acting Governor until Lewis arrived in St. Louis. Both Clark and Bates arrived in St. Louis in late April. Lewis wrote that Clark and Bates should:
“… take such measures in relation to the territory as will be best calculated to destroy the influence and wily machinations of the adherents of Col. Burr. It is my wish that every person who holds an appointment of profit or honor in that territory and against whom sufficient proof of the infection of Burrism can be adduced, should be immediately dismissed from office, without partiality favor or affection, as I can never make any terms with traitors. Mr. Robert Waistcoat, son in law to Secretary Brown, Col. John T. Smith and Mr. Dodge sherif of the district St Genvieve are high implicated and there is good reason for believing that Mr. Brown himself might be sensured without injustice.”
LEWIS WAS IN PHILADELPHIA from April to July, visiting with old friends, meeting girls, and reporting about their travels and discoveries to the mentors who four years earlier had helped prepare him for the expedition. He engaged a publisher, and issued an advertising prospectus for the journals. He attended the monthly meetings of the American Philosophical Society; arranged for the plant specimens to be described and sketched; and gave bird specimens to his friend Alexander Wilson to paint.
Lewis probably came to Philadelphia accompanied by Pierre Chouteau and the Osage Indians, and Ordway, Labiche, Provenchere, and Big White’s party, because the French artist Charles St. Memin sketched profiles of Lewis, Big White and his wife, Yellow Corn, and an Osage warrior with the aid of his physiognotrace. (Two of the portraits are seen on pp. 265–66.) The Indians were on their way back home, stopping at several cities en route.
Lewis sat for his famous portrait by Charles Willson Peale—the one that matches the portrait of William Clark, whose portrait was painted by Peale in 1810 (p. 284). Peale had a museum on the second floor of Independence Hall, where he displayed the artifacts collected by Lewis and Clark, and where the little prairie dog and magpie bird captured by Lewis and Clark were living. Jefferson had sent them to Peale, writing that the burrowing squirrel was a “most harmless and tame creature.”
While Lewis was in Philadelphia, Peale was busy mounting and sketching the animal specimens they had collected. Later that year he created a life size wax figure of Captain Lewis to display in his museum; it was dressed in a fringed buckskin outfit, and wearing the tippet or shoulder cape decorated with 140 ermine skins given to Lewis by Sacagawea’s brother, Cameahwait, the Chief of the Shoshone. Lewis called it the most elegant Indian clothing he had ever seen. (See portrait, p. 268.) Springtime in Philadelphia must have been delightful, offering a few months of pleasure and intellectual companionship before Lewis returned to Washington in July.
MEANWHILE, BURRITES IN ST. LOUIS were not happy with the change of government. Robert Frazer, a member of the expedition, who had been supplying information about the Burrites in St. Louis, wrote to President Jefferson from Henderson County, Kentucky on April 16, 1807:
“At Breckenridge court house I was informed of a number of inquiries that some of the party (dispatched to overtake & wrest from me my papers) had been making relative to my business at Washington… I also learned from a gentleman of high respectability, directly from St. Louis that Colo. John Smith (T) will not suffer himself to be taken by the civil authority; but has threatened and reviled me with the harshest and most bitter epithets.
From this man’s character as a desperado & from the servility of a vile and desperate junto of which he is the head, I really think I am in no small danger of assassination, or some other means of taking me off.
I delivered the commission with which I was charged to Genl. Clark at Fincastle. He could not travel as fast as I did and therefore advised me to proceed as quick as possible. Whatever may be the fate I shall meet with, I have the […] consolation to that I have been […] true to my country. And whatever may be the temptation I trust I shall perish sooner than prove otherwise.”
Frazer went on to write that his friends told him to ride for his “personal safety” by way of Vincennes.
Frederick Bates, the Acting Governor, wrote to Jefferson on May 6th that Colonel John Smith T. “had been removed from all his offices civil and military” and other known Burrites had also left office. However, he believed Ste. Genevieve Sheriff Henry Dodge to be “young and innocent.” Dodge went on to be come the first Territorial Governor of Wisconsin in 1836, justifying Bates’s faith in him.
RETURNING THE MANDAN DELEGATION to their homes in North Dakota was Clark’s first priority. Originally it was intended that Ensign Nathaniel Pryor and 14 soldiers would escort the Mandan group, together with a group of 32 traders led by Auguste Pierre Chouteau, Pierre’s son, back to the Knife River Villages. Then 15 Sioux warriors turned up in St. Louis with trader Pierre Dorion; and it was decided to add the Sioux and Dorion’s trading group, and an additional military escort, to the return expedition. Big White thought it would be helpful to travel together. Altogether there were between 102 or 108 people, including 32 Indians—18 men, 8 women, and 6 children. Three former members of the Corps of Discovery were part of the expedition: Ensign Nathaniel Pryor, George Shannon and, most likely, Joseph Field.
On September 9th, they met with unexpected trouble when they arrived at the picketed Arikara earth lodge villages, guarding both sides of the Missouri River in South Dakota. They learned the Arikara were at war with the Mandans, and were still upset their chief had died while visiting Washington the year before. They were traditional middle men on the Upper Missouri, trading their crops with Indians who hunted.
Manuel Lisa and his trading group, including other former members of the Corps of Discovery, had passed the Arikara Villages a few weeks earlier. The Arikara and their Sioux allies had looted them of half their trade goods, and determined to kill them on their return. Lisa told them that Pryor’s trading party would be along to supply them with more goods.
The Arikara were going to allow Pryor’s boat carrying the Indians and soldiers to continue on, but they wanted the boat with trade goods to stay. 21 year old Auguste Chouteau was not willing to part with his goods on unfavorable terms—he offered to trade only half of them, and refused to give any presents. A council was attempted and the two interpreters were on shore, when a battle began.
There were 650 Arikara and Sioux warriors—all armed with guns—when shots were fired. The battle continued for about an hour, with fighting on both sides of the river. Chouteau lost 4 men—one was still alive, but mortally wounded. He had six more wounded. Pryor had three wounded, including George Shannon, who eventually lost his leg due to this encounter, and would wear a wooden peg leg for the rest of his life. The expedition retreated to St. Louis, and it would be two years before they tried again to return the Mandan delegation to their villages. Nathaniel Pryor ended his report to Clark with the observation that:
“A force of less than 400 men ought not to attempt such an enterprize. And surely it is possible that even one thousand men might fail in the attempt.”
Two years later Meriwether Lewis as Governor would be judged harshly by the bureaucrats in Washington, because they didn’t understand, or care about, the difficulties in returning the Chief to his home.
AARON BURR’S TRIAL FOR TREASON was held in the Virginia State House in Richmond, Virginia—in the same Hall of Delegates where Meriwether Lewis’s bust would be placed in 2008. The trial began on May 22, 1807, presided over by the Chief Justice of the United States John Marshall.
General Wilkinson finally arrived after a long delay; and on June 15th, behind closed doors, a grand jury began questioning him and 47 other witnesses regarding the General’s relationship with Aaron Burr. The General talked for four days himself. No record was kept of their testimonies. But by a vote of 9 to 7, Wilkinson escaped indictment for not reporting knowledge of a treasonous plot (“misprision of treason”).
The jury based its decision on the fact that the overt act of treason was supposed to have been committed on Blennerhassett’s Island, and that General Wilkinson had not been not present. The foreman of the grand jury, Congressman John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia, who detested Wilkinson, wrote to a friend:
“The mammoth of iniquity has escaped…
Wilkinson is the only man I ever saw who is from the bark to the very core a villain. The proof is unquestionable; but, my good friend, I cannot enter upon it here. Suffice it to say that I have seen it, and that it is not susceptible of misconstruction.”
The problem was that if Wilkinson was indicted, he would be viewed as bearing the greatest responsibility for the plot because of the widespread suspicion that he was a pensioner of Spain. Wilkinson’s indictment not only would discredit Jefferson’s administration, it would also shift the blame from Burr. Above all else, Jefferson wanted to permanently destroy Burr’s dreams of establishing a new empire.
Major James Bruff had come from St. Louis in March to warn the Secretary of War General Henry Dearborn about Wilkinson being a pensioner of Spain and an accomplice of Burr. The Secretary told the Major that although the General had recently lost favor with the administration, his energetic actions in New Orleans had restored him to favor. He added:
“that after the actual bustle was over there might perhaps be an inquiry, but meanwhile, Wilkinson must and would be supported.”
This, in fact, did happen. Wilkinson underwent a military court of inquiry in 1808, two congressional hearings in 1810, and two military courts martial in 1811 and 1815. However, he was cleared in all of these investigations.
The grand jury did present bills of treason and high misdemeanor against Aaron Burr, Harmon Blennerhassett, and four others. The trial would begin on August 3rd. Meriwether Lewis arrived back in Washington on July 15th, and attended the trial as an observer for President Jefferson, though neither he nor the President left any paper trail. The jury was seated on August 17th.
The Constitution of the United States states that:
“no person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.”
The Chief Justice ruled on the last day of August that no testimony regarding Burr’s conduct elsewhere, or afterwards, could be admitted as evidence. The case was dependent upon two witnesses testifying they had witnessed an overt act by Burr within the jurisdiction of the court hearing the case, that is, in the state of Virginia. (At this time, Blennerhassett Island in West Virginia was still a part of Virginia.) The jury delivered a verdict of “not guilty” on September 1st.
President Jefferson demanded that the testimony of the trial, which had not been recorded, be put in writing in order to submit it to Congress; and that no witness would be paid or allowed to leave until their testimony was taken. So the Burr trial now switched to the charge of high misdemeanor and continued until October 19th with testimonies being recorded. If Aaron Burr couldn’t be convicted of treason, then Jefferson wanted to impeach John Marshall. However, once it became apparent that Wilkinson’s involvement would ruin any chance of impeachment, the matter was dropped and all further charges were not pursued.
Burr’s reputation was solidly ruined—at least in terms of running for public office. He left the country, and for four years tried unsuccessfully to persuade the British government and then the French government to back his plans for an invasion of Mexico. He returned to New York, and continued his practice of law until his death in 1836. Other plans for an invasion and the revolutionizing of Mexico went on without him.
Meriwether Lewis most likely spent his spare time during the three month trial writing a very long report entitled:
“Observations and reflections on the present and future state of Upper Louisiana, in relation to the government of the Indian nations inhabiting that country, and the trade and intercourse with the same.”
It was a detailed and thoughtful analysis of the relationships of the Indians tribes with Spanish and British traders; and what Lewis would recommend as the new Governor of Louisiana Territory and Superintendent of Indian Affairs.
PERSONAL MATTERS OCCUPIED LEWIS over the next few months. He was at the family home in Albermarle County by November 3rd, where he wrote a letter to his friend Mahlon Dickerson in Philadelphia, asking him to loan some money for living expenses to Lewis’s young stepbrother, John H. Marks, who was going to Philadelphia to study medicine. Lewis was paying his tuition, and would repay the additional money needed. He gossiped about his “little affair” with an unidentified young woman which had not worked out, and said,
“What may be my next adventure god knows, but on this I am determined to get a wife.”
Soon he was off to St. Louis, accompanied by his younger brother, Reuben Lewis, his new valet, John Pernier, and Seaman the dog, his ever faithful companion. William Clark had alerted his friend to a potential matrimonial prospect, 16 year old Letitia Baldridge, who lived in Fincastle. The Lewis brothers both thought she was lovely, but Letitia fled to her beau in Richmond, whom she married six months later.
The Lewis brothers stopped over in eastern Kentucky to look after various land holdings owned by their family which took several weeks to investigate. Finally, they arrived in St. Louis in early March, 1808.
LEWIS FOUND A NEWSPAPER PUBLISHER named Joseph Charless in Louisville, Kentucky who was willing to relocate his printing business to St. Louis. An announcement was published in the Louisville newspaper—
“Those who wish to subscribe to the Missouri Gazette are respectively informed that a subscription book is open at this Office. A capable Editor is employed, and a number of Gentlemen have volunteered to devote their leasure hours in writing on such subjects as will enrich its columns. Essays on Indian antiquity, Mines, Minerals, and an acount of the Fur-Trade, with Topographical scetches will be diligently sought after.”
Grace Lewis Miller, who devoted much of her life to the study of Meriwether Lewis, argues persuasively that Lewis purchased the printing press and type with his own money before leaving the east coast, knowing there was a great need for a territorial newspaper and for printing the territorial laws. Lewis received double pay for his two and a half years on the expedition, and apparently became a silent partner in the printing business with Joseph Charless. The Ramage printing press from Philadelphia arrived in St. Louis in the same boat bringing newlyweds William and Julia Clark.
Charless and his assistant must have come with the press, because the first issue of the Missouri Gazette was printed on July 12, 1808. Lewis advanced Charless $225; loaning him $100, and giving him $125 in subscription fees he had collected from the Chouteau brothers and others. On July 22nd he advanced him another $500 to buy paper to print the territorial laws, and Charless returned to Louisville to obtain the paper and relocate his family.
WILLIAM CLARK had left the territory in August of 1807, and spent several weeks collecting over 300 mammoth and other fossil bones at Big Bone Lick in Kentucky for Jefferson. He was gone for almost a year before returning to St. Louis with his new bride on July 2, 1808.
They settled into one of the nicest homes in St. Louis, rented by Meriwether Lewis, who offered to share it with them. Located at Main and Spruce Streets, the four room house was too small; even if it did have wall paper and oil paint on the walls. Soon after they arrived, Lewis moved into bachelor quarters next door. The Clarks had brought William’s 18 year old niece Ann to keep Julia company, but Ann went back to Kentucky in the fall. 16 year old Julia was pregnant with their first child, a boy who would be named Meriwether Lewis Clark when he was born on January 10, 1809.
Clark’s slave York came to St. Louis against his will, leaving his wife and family behind in Louisville. The Clarks brought nine or more slaves west, including a brother, sister, and nephew of York’s. They were all unhappy about leaving Louisville, and Clark hired most of them out to work for others. He complained about their bad attitudes and wrote to his brother that he was whipping them. That fall, at Lewis’s urging, he agreed to hire York out in the Louisville area. Clark ultimately gave York his freedom and set him up in the hauling business. In 1832, Clark reported to the author Washington Irving that York had died of cholera in Tennessee.
THE TERRITORIAL CAPITAL’S population at that time was between 1200 and 1400 residents. In the next few years American style homes of brick, stone, and frame houses would began to replace the old Creole style homes, which had vertical log post construction and whitewashed interiors. The grounds of the St. Louis Gateway Arch along the Mississippi River waterfront encompass much of the area of the old French village of St. Louis. Town politics were dominated by the Chouteaus, whose family had founded St. Louis in 1763, and by the other French families in the fur trade.
THE ST. LOUIS MASONIC LODGE was established by Meriwether Lewis. He became its First Master in November, 1808. The members met in the town billiard parlor at Second and Walnut Streets. Lewis had joined the Masons as a young army officer in 1797. The book Territorial Masonry states that:
“St. Louis, in 1808, was not the most fertile field which might be have been found in which to locate a lodge of Freemasons, and, but for the influence of the Governor of the Territory, it might never have been organized. In Meriwether Lewis, fresh from his conquest of the West, Freemasonry found an active exemplar.”
… “The family at his home he stayed told that their guest committed suicide, which for a time was generally accepted. But developments of a later date lead us to believe that he was foully murdered in the expectancy of securing money.”
TERRITORIAL SECRETARY FREDERICK BATES was Meriwether Lewis’s enemy almost from the start of their relationship. Bates was a younger brother of Tarleton Bates, a friend of Lewis’s who had been killed in a duel in 1806. Lewis had suggested the 30 year old Bates for the job. Bates had been a merchant in the Detroit area before coming to St. Louis.
Frederick Bates—who had arrived in St. Louis in April, 1807—served as the Acting Governor and the Superintendent of Indian Affairs until Lewis’s arrival in March, 1808. He also assumed Clark’s responsibilities as Indian Agent when Clark left the territory in August, 1807. In addition, President Jefferson appointed Bates to fill the positions of the fired James Donaldson as Recorder of Land Deeds, and as one of the three members of the Land Claims Commission.
Bates had gotten used to wielding almost all the power in the territory during that first year, and he found it difficult to acknowledge Meriwether Lewis’s authority. Later—when Lewis accused him of wanting to take his job—Bates wrote to his brother Richard on July 14, 1809:
“Gov. Lewis leaves this in a few days for Phila. Washingn &c. He has fallen from the Public esteem & almost into the public contempt. He is well aware of my increasing popularity…. and has for some time feared that I was at the head of a Party whose object it would be to denounce him to the President and procure his dismission…
I made him sensible that it would be the extreme of folly for me to aspire above my present standing; that in point of Honor, my present offices were nearly equal to the government and greatly superior in emolument [salary]
…How unfortunate for this man that he has resigned his commission in the army: His habits are altogether military & he can never I think succeed in any other profession.
In a subsequent letter to his brother, on November 9th, Frederick described his relationship with the Governor:
“I bore in silence the supercilious air of the Governor for a long time; until last summer he took it in his head to disavow certain statements which I had made…
Sometime after this, there was a ball in St. Louis, I attended early, and was seated in conversation with some Gentlemen when the Governor entered. He drew his chair close to mine—There was a pause in the conversation—I availed myself of it—arose and walked to the opposite side of the room. The dances were now commencing.—He also rose—evidently in passion, retired in an adjacent room and sent a servant for General Clark, who refused to ask me out as he foresaw that a Battle must have been the consequence of our meeting. He complained to the General that I had treated him with contempt & insult in the Ball-Room and that he could not suffer it to pass. He knew my resolution not to speak to him except on business and he ought not to have thrust himself in my way.”
He ends his letter with the lament:
“Richard, this is a strange world, in which we live! I had thought that my habits were pacific; yet I have had acrimonious differences with almost every person with whom I have been associated in public business. I have called myself to a very rigid account on this head, and before God, I cannot acknowledge that I have been blamable in any one instance. My passions blind me I suppose.”
LEWIS WAS INVESTING IN LAND, like everyone else who came to Louisiana Territory. As Governor he was required by law to own at least 1,000 acres and to reside in the territory. Within five months of the date of his arrival on March 8, 1808, he had purchased 17 tracts of land. They were all choice properties, totalling about 5,700 acres and purchased for about $6,000.
He was expecting to bring his widowed mother Lucy Marks out to St. Louis to live; and perhaps his sister Jane and her family. His brother Reuben was already living there. He had selected a 1,000 acre site for their mother’s residence on the western edge of town.
Lewis bought a great Indian mound near the riverfront, approximately 12 feet high, and 120 x 130 feet wide on its flat top. It was one of the most important mounds in a group of thirty mounds, located north of today’s Martin Luther King Memorial bridge. St. Louis was once called the “Mound City” because of the dozens of mounds that dotted its landscape. Lewis may have bought the great mound in the hopes of preserving it; but eventually, like the others, it was levelled. Today, across the river in Illinois, the great Cahokia Mounds are a World Heritage Site.
THE MISSOURI GAZETTE occupied much of Lewis’s attention, as he served as its sole editor during the months that Charless was back in Louisville. The July 26th issue featured news of the war in Europe, and news received by the “last mail” of events in Paris, Boston, Baltimore, Norfolk, Philadelphia and Europe. News of local Indian and territorial matters were featured on the remaining two pages along with a few ads.
When Charless returned to St. Louis in late November, he published a notice warning people not to do business with his assistant—he had run off with unpaid debts of $600 and $200 in goods—stating he had swindled his customers out of money for newspaper subscriptions, horses and watches. He provided the following description of him:
“This hopeful Sprig is about 24 years old…he shuffles as he walks, has a shallow [sic] complexion … is cross eyed and very near sighted … plainly stamped The Villain…”
Newspapers and the free press were cornerstones of good government and the Enlightenment philosophy which advocated reason, knowledge and independent judgement. Lewis was determined to have a newspaper operating in the territory when he took on the job of Governor. At that time it was the common practice to publish articles using a psuedonym, rather than your own name. As President Jefferson’s private secretary, he had written articles for the National Intelligencer newspaper in Washington. There were about sixty issues of the weekly newspaper published during Lewis’s time in the territory. Though he never received any credit in print, he continued to serve as its editor and as a contributor.
For one week in September, 1808 there was no paper published due to the “sudden and severe illness of the editor.” Lewis was undoubtedly ill with malaria. Malaria causes fevers and severe flu-like symptoms. It will become a chronic disease if the person continues to live in an area where malaria is endemic, due to reinfection by moquito bites. Lewis was periodically incapcitated by malarial attacks.
THE LAWS OF THE TERRITORY OF LOUISIANA were printed in May, 1809 with the new press. In July, 1808, Lewis had advanced $500 to buy paper for printing 250 copies of the book in English, and 100 in French. For this and other expenses, Governor Lewis made six drafts on Secretary of State Robert Smith. Altogether, Lewis had advanced $1,517.95 of his own money for the books. But when he submitted the drafts for payment to Washington, they were refused and returned to him.
SECRETARY OF STATE ROBERT SMITH refused to pay for printing the Territorial Laws on the grounds that Lewis had not received prior approval for the expenditures. There was politics involved—and certainly a desire to force Lewis out of his Governorship. Smith’s brother, Maryland Senator Samuel Smith, was President pro Tem of the U. S. Senate during 1805-1809. The brothers were shipping merchants from Baltimore, and longtime friends of Aaron Burr’s.
They were leaders of a group of Washington insiders called the “Invisibles,” who intrigued and worked against President James Madison and his Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. The President had selected his cabinet members based on geography and party unity, rather than their affinity with him.
THE “INVISIBLES” undoubtedly included another cabinet member—the Secretary of War William Eustis from Massachusetts, who was a very close personal friend of Aaron Burr’s. Eustis also refused to honor a draft on the War Department from Lewis—a bill for $940 for the return of the Mandan Chief Big White in 1809. The refusal of payment for these bills is what sent Meriwether Lewis on his final journey to Washington in September and October, 1809.
WHERE WAS AARON BURR during this time? He was over in England trying to persuade His Majesty’s government that he was really a British citizen because he was born in New Jersey while it was still a British colony. He was also trying to persuade them to finance his plans for invading the two Floridas and Mexico. In November, 1808 the British government declared him to be “forever an alien.” He was expelled from Great Britain in April, 1809, and travelled to Sweden, Denmark and Germany.
By March of 1810, Burr was in Paris submitting plans to Napoleon’s government for invading the Bahamas, the two Floridas and New Mexico. If that didn’t suit them, he offered the alternatives of taking Canada and Nova Scotia. His base of operations for these projects was to be Pensacola, Florida.
Burr’s proposals were rejected by Napoleon—and then it was more than a year before he was finally able to obtain a passport to return to the United States. Traveling under an assumed name, Burr returned to New York City in June of 1812, where he resumed his old law practice.
PRESIDENT MADISON was faced with internal opposition from northeastern leaders, who resented both the Louisiana Purchase and the disproportionate representation of slave holding states in the House of Representatives—achieved by counting every slave as 3/5 of a person. They were considering breaking away from the union and establishing a Northern Confederacy based on shipping and mercantile interests. The “Invisibles” were members of his own Republican Party. Robert Smith was intending to run for the presidency in 1812, and was undercutting Madison and Gallatin in every way that he and his powerful brother could devise. His disloyality was well known. Robert Smith was dismissed as Secretary of State on April 1st. He was replaced by James Monroe.
THE RETURN OF THE MANDAN CHIEF was of primary importance in maintaining good relationships with the Mandan-Hidatsa Indians. Their villages were the largest trading center on the northern plains. Originally numbering about 20,000 - 25,000 persons in the 1700’s, their numbers had been reduced by small pox epidemics to about 3,000—still more than twice the size of the population of St. Louis.
Nathaniel Pryor, the leader of the unsuccessful expedition to return the chief in 1807, had warned that a much larger force was needed to deliver Chief Sheheke (Big White), his interpreter Rene Jessaume, and their wives and children back to their villages on the Knife River in North Dakota. Pryor’s expedition had numbered about 80 armed men; 4 men had been killed and 9 wounded in the fight at the Arikara Villages. Pryor recommended that a force of 400-1,000 men was needed to successfully pass the Arikara Villages on the Missouri River.
THE ST. LOUIS MISSOURI FUR COMPANY was organized in 1809. After Manuel Lisa had returned from his expedition to Montana with $7,000 worth of beaver skins, members of the St. Louis establishment invested and became partners with him. William Clark was the agent for the company in St. Louis, and Lewis’s brother Reuben was a partner. The Chouteaus and others were also partners.
The government paid the new company $7,000 to escort the Mandan party back to their home. The Missouri Fur Company sent 13 keelboats and barges carrying over 400 men up river. About 160 of them were militia under the direction of Pierre Chouteau. When they arrived at the Arikara Villages the militia escorted the boat flotilla, marching alongside the boats on both sides of the river. Chouteau was an old and respected Indian trader, and he knew what he was doing. After Chouteau and members of the militia had successfully managed the return of the delegation, they returned to St. Louis.
SACAGAWEA, four year old Pomp, and her husband Toussaint Charbonneau came back with them. As William Clark had promised them, he set them up on a small farm in the Florissant village next to St. Charles. Sacagawea and her husband returned to the Mandan-Hidatsa villages in 1811, leaving six year old Pompey behind in the care of William Clark.
Sacagawea had another child, a girl named Lisette, in 1812. Later, after Sacagawea’s death at Fort Manuel (near today’s Kenel, South Dakota) in December, 1812, Manuel Lisa and the men of the Missouri Fur Company brought the little baby down to St. Louis. She was most likely accompanied by Toussaint Charbonneau’s other Shoshone wife, Otter Woman, who also had a young baby girl. They were evacuating all Missouri Fur Company posts on the western frontier, due to the start of the War of 1812.
In August, 1812 guardianship papers were filed in the St. Louis courts, and William Clark arranged to adopt both Pompey and Lisette.
MERIWETHER LEWIS “ADOPTED” the Jessaumes’ thirteen year old son, Toussaint, who wanted to remain in St. Louis and attend school when his family went back home. On May 13, 1809 Lewis signed a five year indenture contract with his father, agreeing to pay for the education and care of his son and “to render him a useful member of society” at his own expense. He had known young Toussaint since his family joined the expedition at the Mandan villages. It must have been fun for Seaman, the Newfoundland dog, to have a boy to play with. What happened to Toussaint after Lewis’s death is not known.
AS COMMANDER OF THE MILITIA, it was Lewis’s responsibility to defend American residents of the territory against Indian attacks. The British were providing weapons to Indians, who were attacking settlers throughout the sparsely settled frontier. The 1810 census listed 20,845 residents in what would soon become known as Missouri Territory (today’s states of Missouri and Arkansas). During 1808, Lewis called out the militia and arranged for two forts to be built. The forts were also government trading houses—Fort Osage was located near present day Kansas City, Missouri, and Fort Madison, on the Des Moines River.
AS SUPERINTENDENT OF INDIAN AFFAIRS Lewis spent much of his time dealing with Indian matters. He and William Clark, who served as Indian Agent, shared the responsibility of dealing with the Indians and the federal government. The most significant accomplishment of Lewis’s administration was the Treaty with the Osage Indians, who dominated the area of present day Missouri, Kansas and Arkansas. They ceded over 80,000 square miles of land to the United States in 1808-09. William Clark was in charge of building Fort Osage and presiding over the first treaty making with the Osages at Fire Prairie. This treaty was rejected by the main body of the Osages, and Lewis negotiated a second treaty with the aid of Pierre Chouteau, their long time Indian Agent. This treaty was not satisfactory until the consent of the Arkansas band of the Osage was obtained. The last official act of Lewis before leaving the territory on September 4th, 1809 was to complete negotiations with the Arkansas band.
LEWIS WROTE A LETTER ON HIS 35TH BIRTHDAY, August 18th, to Secretary of War William Eustis in reply to a letter he had received from him that had refused to authorize the additional sum of $940 to return the Mandan Chief:
“Yours of the 15th July is now before me, the feelings it excites are truly painful… I have never received a penny of public Money, but have merely given the Draft to the person who has rendered the public service, or furnished articles for public use, which have been invariably applied to the purposes expressed in my Letters of advice.
…I shall leave the Territory in the most perfect state of Tranquility, which I believe, it has ever experienced…
I shall take with me my papers, which I trust when examined, will prove my firm and steady attachment to my Country, as well as the Exertions I have made to support and further its interests in this Quarter.
… Be assured Sir, that my Country can never make ‘A Burr’ of me—she may reduce me to poverty; but she can never sever my Attachment from her.
… Those protested Bills from the Departments of War and Treasury, have effectively sunk my Credit; brought in all my private debts, amounting to about $4,000, which has compelled me, in order to do justice to my Creditors, to deposit with them the landed property which I had purchased in this Country as Security.
… Some weeks after making the Contract with the Misoury-Fur-Company, for taking the Mandane Chief to his Village, I received information through the Sous and Mahas that the Chyenne had joined the Aricakras and were determined to arrest all Boats which might ascend the River. I conceived it necessary, in order to meet the additional Force, and to insure the success of the Expedition conveying the Mandane Chief, to make the further advance [$940 in goods] with a view, that should it become necessary to engage an auxiliary Force among the friendly Nations through which they would pass, that Mr. Chouteau, the Commanding Officer, might be enabled to acquire such aid by means of these supplies.”
… I have reason to believe that sundry of my letters have been lost, as there remain several important Subjects on which I have not yet received an Answer.”
Lewis was so sick with malaria at this time that the letter was written in the handwriting of his friend Will Carr, the federal land agent. It was signed and a postscript added by him. The postscript says that if Eustis went ahead with his plans to remove Chouteau as Indian Agent for the Osage there would be war with that nation.
Eustis had rejected his draft of $940 to cover the additional expenses of returning the Mandan Chief. Together with the rejection of the drafts to pay for printing the Territorial Laws—reimbursing Lewis for the $1,517.95 he had already spent—the total was $2,457.95. His annual salary as Governor was $2,000.
The next few days were spent in arranging for three friends, William Clark, Will Carr and Alexander Stewart, to have power of attorney to take care of his real estate property. He would lose some of his property at least, if he could not persuade the government to honor its obligations.
On the 27 th of August, Lewis wrote a very thoughtful and long letter to the President regarding the administration of law and the jurisdiction of the courts involving Indians. He included the various court opinions that troubled him. This letter was written in the handwriting of Frederick Bates.
On the 1st of September, Pierre Chouteau’s son wrote a long letter to Eustis, defending his father’s role as Agent to the Osages. Auguste Pierre was responding to the news that Eustis wanted to dismiss his father as Indian Agent.
On the 2nd of September, Lewis wrote to Auguste Pierre asking him to furnish trade goods by 2 o’clock that afternoon so that Lewis could deliver the goods to the “chiefs and warriors of the Great Ozages of the River Arkanses.” They had signed the land cession treaty on the 31st of August; the same treaty that had been signed by the Great and Little Osage bands the previous year. He had delayed his departure from St. Louis until the treaty was signed—ending his 18 months in the territory with a significant accomplishment.
WHEN LEWIS DEPARTED FROM ST. LOUIS with only his servant John Pernier and Seaman to accompany him on the 4th of September, he was leaving the territory in the “most perfect state of tranquility” it had ever been, but he had enemies both in St. Louis and Washington who wanted him out of office. He was also still suffering from malarial attacks.
He was expecting to be back in the territory by December where he had Toussaint Jessaume to look after; the prospect of relocating their mother to St. Louis in the Spring; and the journals to get ready for publication.
LEWIS MADE OUT HIS WILL IN NEW MADRID, Missouri, near the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. He was ill with malarial fevers, and was carried on shore in a litter to recuperate in the town. While he was there, he made out a will in a small minute book, a pocket size book in which he recorded all of his important financial transactions. The will left everything to his mother. It was signed, dated and witnessed on September 11th. By September 28th the Missouri Gazette wrote:
“A report prevailed here last week that his Excellency Governor Lewis was much indisposed at New Madrid. We were informed yesterday by a person direct from that place, that he seen him off in good health for New Orleans, on his way to the Federal City.
Lewis was again carried off the boat in a litter when they reached Fort Pickering at the Chickasaw Bluffs (today’s Memphis, Tennessee) on September 15th. There, the Commander of the Fort, Captain Gilbert Russell, nursed him back to “perfect health within about six days.” The Captain denied Lewis the use of liquor, only permitting him “claret and a little white wine” and said that Lewis told him he would “never drink any more spirits or use snuff again.” This drinking had to be quite an exceptional matter for him—his worst enemy, Frederick Bates, never once said that Lewis had any kind of drinking or drug problem, or suffered from depression, and he would have been the first to make an accusation if any of this were true.
Malaria causes chills and fevers; it has been among the leading causes of sickness and death throughout human history. It is caused by the bite of an infected mosquito. St. Louis, New Orleans and Washington, D. C. all had high incidences of malaria due to their climates.
Dr. David Peck, the author of Or Perish in the Attempt, says that all the members of the Lewis and Clark probably had malaria; and that they would have been protected in varying degrees by their immune systems. It was so prevalent it wasn’t discussed. In 1832 Dr. John Sappington of Arrow Rock, Missouri began making and advertising “Anti-Fever Pills” made out of pure quinine, which was the first truly effective remedy for malarial fevers.
Captain Russell wrote to President Jefferson about Lewis’s stay at the fort. He said that after Lewis recovered his health, Lewis waited around for another 6-8 days because he hoped that he and Russell could travel together to Washington. The Captain had requested permission from General Wilkinson to go to Washington and was waiting for an answer. He had the “same problem” with Eustis that Lewis had—that is, he was personally responsible for drafts he had made on the government that were refused payment. (See document # 9, pp. 243–45.)
William Clark had also encountered stiff resistance from Eustis for his estimated expenses as Indian Agent, and it appeared likely his budget would be severely cut. He was informed that decisions he had made to hire people were not authorized. He too was going to Washington to discuss matters with the Secretary of War. Clark, however, was traveling with Julia and their 6 month old son by way of Louisville and Fincastle in order to visit their families.
THE DAY AFTER ARRIVING AT THE FORT, Lewis wrote a letter to President Madison, saying he had changed his travel plans, due to “fear of the original papers of the voyage” falling into the hands of the British, and that he would be travelling overland through Tennessee and Virginia.
Lewis was certainly aware of the situation on the Gulf Coast—2,000 soldiers were stationed in New Orleans in 1809 under the command of General Wilkinson to protect against British incursions into Florida. A week later, in a letter to his friend Amos Stoddard (whom he mistakenly believed was at Fort Adams, south of Natchez Mississippi) Lewis said that “indisposition” prevented his travel down to New Orleans and he was going to travel by way of the Natchez Trace.
It was most likely that he wanted to avoid meeting General Wilkinson. He may have assumed that Wilkinson was moving up river with his troops in September to Fort Adams, but in fact he was still in New Orleans. The General was also indisposed and suffering from illness. Lewis could not have avoided seeing Wilkinson at Fort Adams; but in New Orleans, one of the largest cities in the U. S., he could have.
JAMES NEELY, Indian Agent to the Chickasaw Indians showed up at Fort Pickering on September 18th, three days after Lewis’s arrival. Neely was brand new to the job of Indian Agent, having received his appointment from Eustis on August 9th. The Chickasaw Nation Agency was located about 100 miles to the south, near today’s Tupelo, Mississippi.
General Wilkinson controlled the appointment of Indian Agents. He was the Commanding General of the United States Army; and Indian Affairs were under the jurisdiction of the military. The General had been associated with the Natchez Trace area for years. The Trace was a 500 mile old Indian trail running from Natchez to Nashville. In 1801-03 the General had used troops from Cantonment Wilkinsonville to make the Trace into a federal military road; and he had negotiated the treaties with the Chickasaw, Choctaw and Creek Nations, through whose lands it passed.
Agent Neely was behaving very strangely—unless it is assumed that he was acting under orders from Wilkinson. He stayed at the fort for ten days, until finally—when it was learned that General Wilkinson refused to give permission to Captain Russell to travel to Washington—Neely got the job of escorting Meriwether Lewis to Nashville. Captain Russell later wrote to President Jefferson, saying that if he had sent his own man with Lewis—rather than Neely escorting him—Lewis would still be alive. (See document # 11, pp. 246–47.)
Further evidence of Neely’s strange behavior is found in a newspaper announcement in the Nashville Democatic-Clarion on October 20th, 1809. The paid announcement, addressed to “Travellers and Others,” is signed by James Neely and dated “Chickasaw Agency, October 3d, 1809.” In other words, it was composed at the Agency during the time when Neely was en route to Nashville with Lewis. Neely and Lewis, who left the fort on September 29th, traveled 100 miles south to the Agency before heading north to Nashville on the Natchez Trace. (See map on p. 274.)
Neely needed to do some damage control, regarding the matter of a local thief who had stolen a pair of saddlebags in September from a traveler who stopped at an inn run by James Colbert. The Colberts were a wealthy, mixed-blood family, who were tribal leaders of the Chickasaw Nation for many years. Apparently the theft of the saddlebags had become a subject of speculation and gossip.
Neely paid to have an announcement placed in the Nashville, Natchez and New Orleans newspapers. The announcement was signed by Neely and eight others. It testified to the fact that James Colbert was an honest man, and that
“… no blame is, or ought to be attached to the character of Colbert or his family—let malicious characters report what they may.”
The announcement named the thief and said that he was now in confinement for the crime. Neely—instead of taking the thief to the Nashville jail—paid Jeremiah K. Love $90 to take him to Nashville. What was in the saddlebags is not known, nor anything else about the affair. Except that Neely cared enough about being at Fort Pickering from September 18th-29th to pay someone else to do his job.
On October 18th in Nashville, Neely wrote to Secretary Eustis asking to be reimbursed for the $90 he had paid to Jeremiah Love for transporting the prisoner. Eustis denied his request. It was the same day that Neely wrote to President Jefferson with the news of Lewis’s death.
Captain Russell charged in his letter to President Jefferson that Neely had Lewis’s pistols in his possession, and other items. (His horse and rifle were eventually recovered from Mrs. Neely by Lewis’s stepbrother, John Marks.) Neely also claimed to have lent the Governor money, which Russell says was not true—Neely had no money when he left the fort. Lewis before his death had more than a $100 in cash, and a check from Russell for $99.58. After his death, neither the money nor the check was found. Lewis’s gold watch and the pistols were never recovered from Neely. (See document #11 pp. 246–47).
BEFORE LEAVING THE FORT, on September 27th, Lewis had borrowed $379.58 from Captain Russell (equal to more than $2,000 in today’s money). He got a check for $99.58 from Russell which he could cash at a bank, and two horses, worth $280. He noted the transaction in his minute book.
The next day, Lewis took the precaution of making a signed agreement with Russell regarding the care and delivery of the two trunks of Captain House that he was transporting for him; and two trunks of his own, plus a case and a package. (See document # 10, p. 245).
Benjamin Wilkinson took Captain House’s trunks to New Orleans on September 29th. It turns out that the General’s nephew was at the fort, and that he left the fort on the same day that Lewis and Neely left for the Chickasaw Agency. Wilkinson is known to have died on board ship in February, 1810 en route to Baltimore. The cause of his death is unknown.
LEWIS’S TWO TRUNKS, the case, and package were to go back to Will Carr, his friend in St. Louis—
“unless otherwise instructed by M. L. by letter from Nashville.”
Lewis emphasized that only Jean-Pierre Cabanne, a wealthy St. Louis fur trader, should be entrusted with them:
“M. Lewis would thank Capt. R. to be particular to whom he confides these trunks &c, a Mr. Cabboni of St. Louis may be expected to pass this place in the course of the next month, to him they may be safely confided.”
At some unknown date, a messenger arrived at the fort, with a verbal message—supposedly from Lewis—asking Captain Russell to hold the trunks. It seems obvious that someone wanted to examine their contents. After Lewis’s death, Jefferson wrote to Madison that he had written to Captain Russell requesting Lewis’s private property at the fort be sent to him.
Lewis’s minute book notes:
“Also left with Capt. Russell two trunks one containing papers &c a case for liquor and a package of blankets sheets and coverlid to be sent to William C Carr of St. Louis for me—unless I shall otherwise direct.”
It appears that Lewis might have been following through on his pledge not to drink liquor.
AS THEY SET OFF ON THEIR JOURNEY, Lewis was accompanied by John Pernier, his personal servant, a free mulatto who had worked for President Jefferson in the White House, and by Seaman, his Newfoundland dog. According to Captain Russell, he heard reports that Lewis was drinking heavily as he traveled, with the liquor being supplied by James Neely. However, this may have been a story told to deceive Russell. It is interesting to note that Neely himself never made this charge in his letter to Jefferson, and it would have been an obvious supporting argument for suicide.
Lewis had a lot on his mind. He must have feared assassination. He was carrying important documents. He may have decided to leave the most incriminating evidence behind in the trunk with his other papers at Fort Pickering. The kind with information that would destroy the careers or plots of his enemies. The trunks of papers were to go back to Will Carr, the federal land agent in St. Louis, if Lewis didn’t send a letter from Nashville.
The implication seems to be that if Lewis arrived safely in Nashville, and sent a letter to Captain Russell, then the trunks with the papers could be sent to Nashville. Otherwise Russell should be particularly careful to send them only in the care of Jean-Pierre Cabanne to Will Carr.
After his death, the papers and possessions that Lewis was carrying with him were neatly categorized and sorted out in Nashville. They were entrusted to the care of Thomas Freeman to take to Isaac Cole, who had served as private secretary to both Presidents Jefferson and Madison. Thomas Freeman was a long time associate and employee of General Wilkinson. When the papers reached Isaac Cole they were so “badly assorted” that Cole could not make any sense of their organization. (See documents #s 4 & 5, pp. 233–36.)
THE NATCHEZ TRACE was notorious for robbers and crooks in these early days. It was a well-traveled path, where people banded together in groups for protection against thieves and murderers. The temptation for criminals was that many travelers were carrying large sums of money. They had floated down the Mississippi on flatboats, sold their goods, or earned their pay as boatmen, and were traveling back north on foot and by horseback. The average day’s travel was 25 miles. There were “stands” or traveler’s inns every 15-20 miles or so. It took three weeks to travel from Natchez to Nashville.
Slaves were being taken down the Trace in chains to be sold at auction in Natchez to work in the cotton fields. It was also Indian Country, where the tribes controlled who operated the stands. George Colbert, James’s brother, ran a ferry across the Tennessee River and became a very wealthy man. It was a very rough place, and travelers went heavily armed. It was not an empty road. Many people would have seen Governor Lewis on the Trace. In fact one gentleman even got an advertising prospectus for Lewis’s journal from him.
ON THE LAST DAY OF LEWIS’S LIFE, October 10th, Neely claimed that two horses had run away the night before, and he had gone off in search of them. He said that he advised Lewis, Pernier, and a servant of Neely’s to go on ahead to Grinder’s Stand, a traveler’s inn and tavern on the edge of the Chickasaw Nation land. This may come close to the truth—that the horses were missing and that Lewis, the two servants, and the dog went on ahead without him to Grinder’s Stand.
THE REST IS A MYSTERY. We know that Mrs. Grinder had a infant, a 9 year old daughter, and two or three young hired help with her. We know it was claimed that her husband, Robert Grinder, and their sons were away that night. What happened at Grinder’s Stand—according to the three versions told by Mrs. Grinder—may be read in the documents section of this book. (See document #s 3, 13, & 17.)
John Guice, the editor of a recent book, By His Own Hand? The Mysterious Death of Meriwether Lewis, has established that the night of October 10-11, 1809 was the night after a new moon. Therefore, the accounts of seeing anything during that night are not believable. We know Lewis most likely died of a bullet wound during the night. That is all that can be said with certainty about the manner of his death.
James Neely arrived during the day of October 11th. It is reported that Lewis’s body was found on the Natchez Trace at sunrise by the local mail carrier, Robert M. Smith. He contacted his friend, Robert M. Cooper.
Cooper, a blacksmith, built a special coffin for Lewis because Lewis was a tall man, six feet or more. The log coffin was made from splitting a large chestnut oak tree, and Cooper forged large, long square nails for it. The iron nails were used to identify Lewis’s gravesite when the gravesite monument was erected in 1848. When the grave was opened and the nails identified, it is reported that Robert M. Smith’s son—
“on seeing the skull with the hole in it reminded those present of his father’s story of the great hole in Lewis’s head.”
A coroner’s inquest was held at this time, according to local tradition; but coroner’s inquests for this time period in Maury County went unrecorded. It is said that Robert Grinder was accused of Lewis’s murder—and though all six jury members believed he was guilty, they were afraid to convict him.
And it was reported that Seaman—Lewis’s Newfoundland dog that had traveled from Pittsburgh to the Pacific Ocean and back with him—died of grief on his master’s grave. (See document # 16, pp. 256–57.)
John Pernier carried the news of Lewis’s death to Lewis’s mother, and to Presidents Jefferson and Madison. It was reported that Pernier committed suicide in May of 1810 while trying to collect his back pay of $240 from the Lewis estate. (See document # 12, pp. 247–48.)
James Neely disappeared for a while, turning up in Nashville on October 18th. It was a two day trip from Grinder’s Stand to Nashville, and it could be made in one day. But Neely took seven days to report the news of Lewis’s death.
WHO COMMITTED THE MURDER? It may have been Robert Grinder. In 1814 he bought a 100 acre farm for $250 on the Duck River near Centerville, Tennessee. (“Grinder’s Switch,” a railroad switching track just outside of Centerville, was named for the Grinder family. It later became famous for being the fictional home town of Grand Ole Oprey star, Cousin Minnie Pearl. )
The local tradition in the Hohenwald area is that Grinder committed the murder. Whether or not it was Grinder, or whether or not he had accomplices—the questions really are—who paid for the killing, and what were their motives? Throughout this account, I have attempted to present the case for murder. The documents section also contains materials that have shaped the suicide story for many years, and they are available for you to form your own opinion.
If an exhumation of the remains of Meriwether Lewis takes place, then there may be conclusive evidence found that he was murdered. And there may not. In any event, in the last chapter, possible motives for his assassination are presented.
Who benefits? is always the question when trying to solve an assassination murder mystery. Another question is, what is the evidence? In this case, we have evidence that there was an orchestrated plot to plant false evidence concerning Meriwether Lewis’s mental state and the circumstances of his death at Grinder’s Stand on the Natchez Trace. The false evidence reveals the existence of a much larger conspiracy.
JAMES WILKINSON AND JOHN SMITH T.—in this author’s opinion—benefitted and were the masterminds behind the conspiracy to assassinate Lewis. In this final chapter, I will provide the evidence that leads me to this conclusion.
Their general motive for killing him was that Meriwether Lewis could jeopardize their plans for an invasion of Mexico in 1810. The invasion plan was a replay of the Burr-Wilkinson Conspiracy of 1806, and the goal was the same—the fabulous wealth of the silver mines of Mexico. Another motive must have been control of the lead mines south of St. Louis. Lead was another source of great wealth—and of military power, because bullets were made from lead in that era.
RECORDS OF THE LAND CLAIMS BOARD in St. Louis played an important role in the assassination. Smith T. had very large land claims in the lead mine district south of St. Louis, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Smith T. had been waging a private war in the lead district for years against Moses Austin (the father of Stephen Austin, the founder of Texas) for control of profitable mines. He also manufactured bullets and employed two slaves full time in making guns. Their guns were considered the best in the West.
During Wilkinson’s tenure as the first Governor of Louisiana Territory in 1805-06, he had been notoriously involved in fraudulent land claims. Both Wilkinson and Smith T. probably feared exposure of their corrupt land dealings.
LEWIS WAS CARRYING PAPERS to Washington that they wanted to obtain. There are two rather direct proofs of this. The first is that the neatly bundled papers that were given to Thomas Freeman to carry to Virginia after Lewis’s death were so badly mixed up when they arrived in Virginia, that no sense could be made of them in regards to their original inventory. Thomas Freeman was a long time associate and employee of General Wilkinson. (See documents 4 & 5, pp. 233–36.)
The second is that Lewis wrote a very carefully worded memorandum for Captain Russell about the two trunks of papers he left at the fort. (See document 10, p. 245.) They were either to go to St. Louis in the care of Jean-Pierre Cabanne; or—if Lewis sent a written request from Nashville—they were to be sent to Nashville. Regretfully, this may indicate that Lewis didn’t know if he was going to be alive to make it to Nashville. If he did, then he would write. Otherwise Cabanne was to take the trunks back to St. Louis and give them to Will Carr, the federal land agent.
Russell wrote in his first letter (document 9, pp. 243–45) that he was going to follow the instructions of someone who showed up at the fort after Lewis left—someone who told him that Lewis said to hold the trunks at the fort. In other words, don’t send them back to St. Louis. They must have wanted to examine the papers in the trunks, and to destroy whatever incriminating evidence the papers contained. ( Jefferson later requested these trunks be sent to him.)
Russell also noted on the memorandum that Benjamin Wilkinson, the General’s nephew, left the fort on the same day as Lewis, September 29th, taking Captain James House’s trunks to New Orleans by boat. Lewis had originally intended to take a ship out of New Orleans, and was taking House’s trunks as a favor to him. House was traveling by an overland route to Baltimore. Benjamin Wilkinson was also traveling to Baltimore, but by ship. He died on board ship, in February, 1810, of an unknown cause.
FALSE STORIES WERE NOW BEING TOLD. There were several people involved in the conspiracy in the region. Someone showed up at the fort and said hold the trunks. This was probably the same person who told Russell that Lewis was drinking heavily as he travelled with James Neely, the Indian Agent. The drinking heavily story lays the ground work for the death by suicide story. It was part of the conspiracy plot. (See document 11, pp. 246–47.)
The stories of derangement and attempted suicides were launched in Nashville, even before Meriwether Lewis had left the fort. Captain House wrote a letter to his friend Frederick Bates, on September 28th, reporting an alarming rumor. He had seen Major Amos Stoddard in Nashville—
“I arrived here two days ago on my way to Maryland—Yesterday Majr Stoddard of the Army arrived here from Fort Adams, and informs me that in his passage through the Indian nation, in the vicinity of Chickasaw Bluffs he saw a person, immediately from the Bluffs who informed him, that Governor Lewis had arrived there (sometime previous to his leaving it) in a State of mental derangement—that he had made several attempts to put an end to his own existence, which the patroon [boat leader] had prevented, and that Cap Russell, the commanding officer at the Bluffs had taken him into his own quarters where he was obliged to keep a strict watch over him to prevent his committing violence on himself and had caused his boat to be unloaded at the ferry to be secured in his stores.”
The Major met this person as he traveled from Chickasaw Bluffs, the site of Fort Pickering on the Mississippi River, to Nashville. The encounter probably took place about five days earlier, around September 23nd. By then Lewis had recovered his health, but was waiting another week at the fort for Captain Russell to receive permission from General Wilkinson to travel with him. This permission was denied. The person whom Major Stoddard met, who had come immediately from the fort, was probably the same person who told Captain Russell to hold the trunks.
The false stories of derangement and attempted suicides are entirely contradictd by the two letters that Russell, the commander of the fort, wrote to Thomas Jefferson. (See documents 9 & 11, pp. 243–47.) The letter of Captain House to Frederick Bates is the only statement with false evidence to appear before the death of Lewis. Secretary Bates, of course, spread the news in St. Louis. He wrote to his brother Richard on November 9th, about the reaction to these rumors in St. Louis:
“You have heard no doubt, of the premature and tragical death of Gov: Lewis. Indeed I had no personal regard for him and a great deal of political contempt; Yet I cannot but lament, that after all his toils and dangers that he should die in such a manner.
At the first, in Washington, he made to me so many friendly assurances, that I then imagine our mutual friendship would plant itself on rocky foundations. But a very short acquaintance with the man was sufficient to undeceive me. He had been spoiled by the elegant praises of Mitchell & Barlow, and overwhelmed by so many flattering caresses of the high & mighty that, like an overgrown baby, he began to think that everybody about the House must regulate their conduct by his caprices….
I should not speak of these things now, but for the purposes of explaining what followed. Gov. Lewis, on his way to Washington became insane. On the arrival of this unhappy news and before we heard of his death, an Honble. Gentleman of this place, a Colleague of mine at the Land Board [Clement Biddle Penrose], commenced a regular and systematic traduction of my character—He asserted in several respectable companies that the mental derangement of the Governor ought not to be imputed to his political miscarriages; but rather to the barbarous conduct of the Secretary [Frederick Bates].”
Clement Biddle Penrose, a nephew of General Wilkinson’s wife, was one of the three original members of the Land Claims Board. He was obviously more than a little upset with Frederick Bates.
Frederick Bates now held almost all the governmental power in the territory—Territorial Secretary, Acting Governor and Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and Recorder of Land Titles. He was also one of three members of the Land Claims Board, having been appointed to fill the position of the commissioner whom Jefferson had fired.
WAS BATES IN ON THE PLOT to assassinate Lewis? He was conspiring with Lewis’s enemies on land claims issues, but it is doubtful he was a conspirator in the assassination plot. He ended a letter of July 14th, 1809 to his brother by bragging:
“A circumstance, besides has lately transpired, as much for me, as against my Colleagues, and I really feel so triumphant on the occasion that I cannot forbear mentioning it to you. The People had appointed a committee of correspondence on the subject of their claims to Lands depending before the commissioners … the gentlemen addressed themselves to certain members of the Senate who replied that ‘the opinions of Mr. B. if in favour, would have great weight in inducing government to grant the Petition…. It places me however in the most dangerous & delicate of all imaginable situations, to conduct myself in which with prudence & exempt from imputation will require all the wariness & circumspection of which I am master.”
“THE MOST DANGEROUS & DELICATE of all imaginable situations” referred to an effort led by Smith. T. to get rid of the most honest member of the Land Board, Judge John B. C. Lucas. At the same time that Governor Lewis was preparing to go to Washington, his nemesis John Smith T. was also preparing to go to Washington. Smith T. was bringing a formal protest from a citizen’s committee asking Congress to not reappoint Judge Lucas as Territorial Judge and Land Board Commissioner. Judge Lucas was an old friend and ally of Albert Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury.
LEAD MINE OPERATOR MOSES AUSTIN, Smith T.’s greatest rival, wrote to Bates on August 27th with a warning. He reported having a conversation with “one of the members of the Grand Committee” (the Citizens Committee headed by John Smith T.). This person told Austin that drafting the Memorial to Congress was being postponed until they had an opportunity to examine the Commissioner’s books and—
“… to take such extracts as would answer the intentions of the party. They are to be taken from time to time and in such a way as not to give alarm to the Comrs. it was also hinted that if the extracts could not be obtained in any other way, a friend in court would furnish them. I will not say who this friend is, but the board you know, has three members. and a clerk… How far the board of Comsrs. are bound to suffer a mutilated Statement to be taken from the books is not for me to say… the drawing of the memorial is suspended until Octb 2 next… I felt it a duty incumbent on me to apprize both yourself and Judge Lucas of the plans preparing to stab your reputation with the Government.”
The letter was torn in a place that obscures the name the person they wanted to remove in addition to Lucas. But Judge Lucas was “more particularly pointed out.” The other name would have been Clement Penrose; since there were only three commissioners, and Bates was the third one.
This warning from Moses Austin must have referred to the “most dangerous & delicate” situation Frederick Bates found himself in—Bates was “the friend in court” who would remove the records if necessary. Austin ends the letter with a P. S. that Thomas Riddicks, the clerk, is not to be doubted.
In effect, Austin was warning Bates that he had informed Judge Lucas of the planned attempts to alter or destroy the records, and that Bates had better not try to do it. Austin implored Bates to keep silent, as:
“I need not tell you how much I have suffered by this same party… as you value my safety and the peace of my family [the page is torn]
Austin was referring to the real possibility that John Smith T. would try to kill him if he knew he had written this letter. John Smith T. had already killed between 15-20 men in duels.
JUDGE LUCAS wrote to Secretary of War Eustis sometime in December, 1809. It was received on January 11, 1810. The letter explained the history of the Board of Land Commissioners and the reason why he had enemies.
First of all, before the board even started meeting in December, 1805, General Wilkinson, the first Governor of Louisiana Territory, had been meeting with area residents for three months teaching them how to “enter their claims.”
“… everyone got a lecon from him agreably to their respective cases—as to the best way to get the most possible from the united States … he lamented and sympathized very much with the fate of Land Claimants… whether this extraordinary conduct on the part of James Wilkinson was the result of a desire of a vain, popular applause, or of a deep laid scheme to secure on his side the phisical strength of the Territory, for some future important occasion is a thing foreing to the subject of this Letter.”
Judge Lucas refused to go along with the other two board members when these claimants appeared before the board.
“It was my peculiar Misfortune to entertain opinions Much less favorable to the land Claimants.”
President Jefferson, however, supported Judge Lucas’s opinions, and a “Board of Revisions” was ordered. The Board of Revisions (the new name of the Land Board) had just finished taking oral testimony and confirming land titles under 800 arpents (678 acres) in December, 1809. Finally, after four years, all ordinary land holders had their titles legally sorted out and confirmed by the board.
THE CITIZENS’ COMMITTEE was formed in response to the next stage of the Board of Revisions work—the matter of the large land claimants, with Smith T. being the obvious problem.
Bates stated that when Lewis arrived in Louisiana Territory he immediately “assumed the whole management” of the lead mine business. One thousand square miles of the lead district has been reserved as public land by Congress. New claims could be leased for a period of three years. Both Austin and Smith T. had acquired old Spanish land claim titles. Smith T. had a “floating claim” where he took over any productive mines that he wanted with the use of armed men and lawsuits.
After Lewis’s death, the inventory of his possessions that was supposed to be carried to Virginia and Washington, D. C. included a bundle of papers “relative to the mines” for President James Madison. It is doubtful that these papers reached the President. (See documents 4 & 5, pp. 233–36.)
JOHN SMITH T. represented the Citizens Committee in Washington. In January, 1810 he brought a formal protest, or “remonstrance,” to Congress stating that Judge Lucas should not be reappointed as a Judge of the General Court—and should be removed as Commissioner of Land Titles when his term as Judge expired in March, 1810. It would be “a great public calamity” if he continued in office. Smith T. also brought a petition signed by hundreds of residents asking that the Louisiana territorial status be upgraded to the 2nd grade, so they would be allowed to elect representatives to the territorial legislature, rather than have federal appointees.
CONGRESS, however, decided to reappoint Judge Lucas in March and left the territorial status of Louisiana unchanged. The death of Meriwether Lewis undoubtedly influenced the decision to remain with the status quo.
REUBEN SMITH, John Smith T.’s younger brother, set off on a “trade mission” to Sante Fe in the winter of 1809-10. Smith’s group left from Ste. Genevieve on November 20th, less than three weeks after news of Lewis’s death reached St. Louis. Smith was accompanied by John McLanahan, James Patterson, interpreter Manuel Blanco and three slaves.
It was a most unusual time of year to start on a 5-600 miles journey to Sante Fe. Traveling without the required passports, they were captured and arrested by Spanish officials in February, 1810. The three traders were taken to Chihuahua, Mexico where they were put to work in chains in the silver mines of Chihauhau.
McLanahan was a former sheriff of St. Louis; and Patterson was from Giles County, Tennessee, the county south of Maury County, where Meriwether Lewis met his death. The three of them were ransomed by John Smith T. in 1812. Within months, all three were participating in a new filibuster. Along with Wilkinson’s son, Joseph B. Wilkinson, they joined the Gutierrez-Magee Expedition to liberate Mexico in September of 1812.
In November, 1809 the Missouri Gazette changed its name to the Louisiana Gazette. The name change occurred in the very next issue after the announcement of Governor Lewis’s death—providing evidence of Lewis’s role as a silent partner in the Missouri Gazette. In the same month, the newly-named Louisiana Gazette announced the departure of Reuben Smith’s group “to open a commercial intercourse with the upper provinces of Mexico.”
Then in 1811 the Louisiana Gazette responded indignately to a story in the national Philadelphia Gazette. The Philadelphia article on August 14, 1810 contained some inaccuracies—
“Three Americans, and a Spaniard called Blanco, spies or emissaries of Bonaparte, have been arrested at Chihuagua … that these persons had arrived at Upper Louisiana from Baltimore and were going to the town of Sante Fe…. there were found in their possession a paper written in English and a letter from the curate of Ste. Genevieve in France also thirteen fire arms, six cutlasses, three axes and five flasks of powder.”
Joseph Charless quoted this story in the Louisiana Gazette issue of March 14, 1811 and noted:
“ * Mark the pretended ignorance of these bloodhounds, they knew these gentlemen were from St. Genevieve in the Territory of Louisiana, they well knew the character of the worthy pastor (Rev. Mr. Maxwell), whose letters of credence they bore.”
Mud slinging was going back and forth.
FATHER MIGUEL HIDALGO, an educated and liberal Mexican priest, rang the bell of liberty at his church in Dolores on September 16, 1810, starting an armed conflict between Mexican nationalists and their Spanish rulers. September 16th is still celebrated as Mexican Independence Day, or El Grito de Dolores (“Cry of Dolores”). Dolores is located in central Mexico in the state of Guanajato, the site of the some of richest silver mines in Mexico. The revolution started by Father Hildalgo failed, but Mexico would finally gain its independence in 1821.
THE GUTIERREZ-MAGEE EXPEDITION established “The First Republic of Texas” in 1813, flying an emerald green flag. Augustus Magee, a protege of General Wilkinson, was a young former U. S. Army Lieutenant and West Point graduate. Col. Bernardo Gutierrez, who participated in a revolt at San Antonio, had traveled to Washington seeking support for the revolution against the royalists.
Secretary of State James Monroe wrote to the Governor of Tennessee on September 3, 1812 about an “illegal enterprise” of armed citizens “assembling in Giles County for the purpose of joining the Mexican revolutionists” under the leadership of Augustus Magee. That month Magee and his party of 300 men crossed the Sabine River into Texas. This venture would also fail. Magee would be dead by February 6, 1813, dying while he and men were under seige at the Presidio La Bahia (fort on the bay) in Goliad, Texas.
GENERAL WILKINSON IN 1809 was in a lot of trouble. An army of 2,000 soldiers had been ordered to New Orleans to defend against possible incursions by the British into Florida or the French into Texas. The General had been busy acting as a special envoy of President Madison, visiting Spanish officials in West Florida and Cuba while en route to New Orleans. When he finally arrived in New Orleans, he found many of the troops were sick and dying.
Disregarding direct orders from Secretary of War William Eustis to move the troops up to the relatively healthy climate of Natchez, Mississippi, General Wilkinson selected land on the eastern edge of New Orleans. It was called “Terre aux Boefs,” and would become as infamous in its day as the same site was during Hurricane Katrina in 2005—that is, as a place of suffering and death. It was three feet under sea level normally.
Finally, in September, 1809 the General followed orders and began moving the troops up river. Military historian James Ripley Jacobs states in his biography of James Wilkinson, Tarnished Warrior, that over a one year period, from February, 1809 to January, 1810 “losses [by death and desertion] aggregated about 1,000 men out of about 2,036 men.”
Not only was the General struggling to cope with this catostrophe, he was also facing the most serious personal attacks against him during his long and contentious career. The richest man in New Orleans, his former friend Daniel Clark, published a book in 1809 entitled Proofs of the Corruption of Gen. James Wilkinson and of his Connexion with Aaron Burr. Excerpts were published in newspapers around the country.
Wilkinson responded in 1811: Burr’s Conspiracy Exposed; and General Wilkinson Vindicated Against the Slanders of His Enemies. In it, he provides a great deal of information and sworn testimony—that, in fact, is very damaging to his own defense. He talks about what was happening that fall in New Orleans. Daniel Clark had published his book, and the General had learned that the accountant for the War Department, William Simmons, was “ransacking the war department” for evidence to be used against him in the next session of Congress. In addition, the editor of the Louisiana Gazette & New Orleans Advertiser, James Sterrett, was told that Jefferson had turned against Wilkinson, and he would be gotten out of the service.
As if this weren’t bad enough, Wilkinson’s old friend John Adair, the Senator from Kentucky—whom the General had arrested in New Orleans during the Burr Conspiracy in 1806 and shipped out of New Orleans to Richmond—pressed charges on grounds of false imprisonment against him. A warrant was issued for the General’s arrest in Washington County, Mississippi, on October 9, 1809. This was two days before Lewis’s death. It is not known whether the General went to jail. He posted $7,000 bond on October 25th. It is rather suspicious that the General reports this matter and includes the documents in his own book. The records themselves have long been missing.
In November, 1809 the General was removed from his command and ordered to report to Washington for congressional investigations. Two investigations were held in 1810, without results; one on the deaths at Terre aux Boeufs and the other on charges that he was in the pay of Spain. The investigations were turned over to a military court in 1811. A court martial cleared him of all charges, and he returned to service. During the War of 1812 he was in command of a planned attack on Montreal; and again faced a court martial in 1815 in regards to his failure on the northern frontier. And again he was cleared. He retired from the service, and wrote a three volume set of his Memoirs. The General moved to Mexico City in 1822, where he spent the last three years of his life distributing bibles for the American Bible Society and advising the new Mexican nationalist governments.
WILKINSON COMPOSED THE FORGED RUSSELL STATEMENT during his first court martial at Frederick Town, Maryland in November, 1811. Forensic documents examiner Gerald Richards has provided an analysis of the handwriting of the Russell statement, and a 12 page court brief signed with the name of James Wilkinson that was written around the same time preparing for his defense. (See Appendix for this analysis.) Richards’s examination shows that neither document was written by either Russell or Wilkinson, but instead both were written in the handwriting of a third person—probably a clerk.
Major Russell was present at the court martial on November 26, 1811, the date of the so-called statement. Jonathan Williams’s trial notes indicated that Russell testified very briefly about an unrelated matter. Does this mean that Russell had a change of heart and wrote a statement almost two years later that contradicts everything he wrote in his letters to Jefferson? No, for the statement is written in the unmistakable, overblown, hyperbolic style of General James Wilkinson. A deeply offensive passage comes at the end of statement, where Lewis’s last words are supposedly reported—
“he lay down and died with the declaration to the Boy that he had killed himself to deprive his enemies of the pleasure and honour of doing it.”
Wilkinson had been a master of intrigue and forged documents since his earliest days in the army when he participated in the Conway Cabal against George Washington. Historians agree that he created forged documents which ended the career of his rival, General George Rogers Clark, William Clark’s older brother. Aaron Burr feared that he would be assassinated by Wilkinson’s agents, and Wilkinson admittedly used altered documents against Burr. He was a master of the paper trail.
What is interesting is that in 1811, when he was immersed in justifying his own conduct, he thought it would be prudent to get a new statement that could be passed off as coming from Captain Russell. He was right. It laid unseen in the files of his old friend Jonathan Williams for almost two hundred years before Donald Jackson published it in his Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1962. When it was published, without the accompanying letters written by Captain Russell to President Jefferson, it was accepted as being written by Russell, and as a confirmation of Lewis’s suicide. (Though author Vardis Fisher questioned its authenticity in his book, Suicide or Murder? The Strange Death of Governor Meriwether Lewis.)
Then, at the 1996 Coroner’s Inquest, the two document examiners both testified that the statement was neither written nor signed by either Gilbert C. Russell or Jonathan Williams, who witnessed it. Williams was serving as one of the judges at the Court Martial of Wilkinson. If it was in truth a copy of an official statement, it should have noted by the copyist that it was a copy. In addition, if it was a real copy, the signature would have been correctly signed Gilbert C. Russell. Instead, since it was manufactured by Wilkinson, the signature was written as Gilbert Russell. Altogether, it is a fake document, meant to confuse and conceal Wilkinson’s role in the assassination of Meriwether Lewis.
In preparing the documents for this book it became apparent that William Clark had also received forged letters from “Captain Russell.” They have never been found. But again, it was the mark of a master intriguer to have thought to throw William Clark off the track of suspecting murder. Clark had received a letter from Lewis indicating how unhappy he was with the situation he was in, but that letter has never been found. A man can be excused for writing to his best friend about his troubles. The other letters that Clark received immediately after Lewis’s death are what persuaded him to accept the suicide story.
IN CONCLUDING THIS CHAPTER discussing the possible motives for Lewis’s assassination, it is clear that Lewis was in the midst of a nest of intriguers, the old “Burrites” in St. Louis, who resented his attempts to bring order out of chaos. The two events surrounding Lewis’s departure—John Smith T. going to Washington on behalf of the large land claimants, and his brother Reuben Smith’s departure for Sante Fe—are reasons for his assassination. Lewis was bringing incriminating evidence to Washington which could derail their plans. Wilkinson was undoubtedly involved—both in what they wanted concealed and in the assassination itself.
Did they benefit by the assassination? Wilkinson kept his job, despite two congressional hearings and two court martials; Smith T. became one of the wealthiest men in Missouri; Reuben Smith became a merchant and mine operator in the lead mine district; and Frederick Bates continued in office, eventually becoming the second Governor of the State of Missouri.
Lewis’s estate wound up paying for the publication of the Territorial Laws, as the $1,517.95 he had advanced for its publication was never repaid—and Frederick Bates received the credit for publishing them.
Pierre Chouteau reimbursed Lewis’s estate for the $940 in trade goods Lewis had advanced for his expedition to return the Mandan Chief. The arrangement always was that Chouteau would keep the goods if they weren’t needed. The issue was that the government should pay for them if they were needed. Lewis’s estate paid all of his debts; and when it was finally settled in February, 1815, the remaining assets totalled $9.43 and ½ cents.
WILLIAM CLARK was asked to take the job of Governor of Louisiana Territory after Lewis’s death but he refused. In 1813, he agreed to became Governor of the new Missouri Territory and Superintendent of Indian Affairs—both vitally important positions on the western frontier during the War of 1812. When Missouri acquired statehood in 1821, Clark lost his bid for governor, but he continued serving as Superintendent of Indian Affairs until his death in 1838.
Clark arranged for Nicholas Biddle in Philadelphia to edit the expedition journals for publication. Expedition member George Shannon, who had lost his leg in the Arikara attack on the Pryor Expedition, helped him. The journals were finally published in 1814.
RATHER THAN DWELLING ON MERIWETHER LEWIS’S DEATH on the Natchez Trace, his hasty burial in a lonely grave, and Seaman choosing to die with his master, I prefer to keep an image in mind of a happier time. I imagine Lewis taking a hike in St. Louis with 13 year old Toussaint and Seaman on a lovely day in early summer to climb the great Indian mound overlooking the Mississippi River, and enjoying the view.
DOCUMENT EXAMINATION
by Gerald B. Richards, Richards’ Forensic Services
December, 2008
The statement (letter) dated November 26, 1811, (referred to as the 11/16/1811 letter) signed Gilbert Russell and J. Williams and the October 31, 1811 letter (referred to as the 10/31/1811 letter) signed J. A. Wilkinson were compared to determine if they were, or were not, written by the same writer. In addition, they were compared with the known writing of Russell and Wilkinson, respectively, to determine if either individual wrote one or both letters.
Writing can only be compared to other comparable writing, i.e. upper case “A”s can only be compared to other upper case “A”s, and lower case “d”s can only be compared to other lower case “d”s. This can make the comparison extremely difficult if there are two relatively large bodies of writing that are similar in style and letter design, but composed of different letter combinations and words, such as in the case of these letters. The 11/26/1811 Russell letter is four pages long, and the 10/31/1811 Wilkinson letter is twelve pages long. To assist in determining which letter combinations and words are the same between the two documents, and inter-comparing that writing, a computer program was employed. This program has been used by Forensic Document Examiners for a number of years and is called “Write-On 2”, Document Comparison Software, by Pikaso Software Inc., 528 River Road, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1V 1E9, 613-859-6544, www.pikaso.com. To give an example, there are a total of 920 unique words in the two documents, there are 258 “the”s; 159 “of”s; 115 “and”s; and only 1 “weather”; “whose”; “wild”; and “washington”; etc. The program allows the examiner to determine what these common words and letter combinations are and then to see the actual written words on the computer screen.
Based on this examination it was determined that the 11/26/1811 Russell letter and the 10/31/1811 Wilkinson letter were both written by the same writer. It was further determined that it is highly probable that neither Gilbert Russell or J. A. Wilkinson wrote either the 11/26/1811 Russell letter or the 10/31/1811 Wilkinson letter. It is most likely that both of the questioned letters are “fair copies” of the original letters or drafts written by a third individual.
The following letter reversed the decision of the National Park Service rejecting the original application to exhume Meriwether Lewis. It is the latest and unreversed official statement on the subject which is being implemented at this time.
United States Department of the Interior
OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY
WASHINGTON DC 20240
BY FACSIMILE AND U.S. MAIL JAN 11 2008
Mr. Steven P. Quarles, Esq.
Ms. Ann Klee, Esq.
Crowell & Moring
1 OO 1 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20004-2595
Re: Application to Exhume the Remains of Meriwether Lewis
Dear Mr. QuarIes:
Thank you for taking the time to meet with the National Park Service (NPS) and the Department of the Interior to discuss your clents’ application for permission to exhume the remains of Mr. Meriwether Lewis from the grounds of the Meriwether Lewis National Monument. As you know, the regional director for the southeast region of the NPS denied your clients’ application on the basis that the proposed action would conflict with NPS policy. You have asked my office for a review of this decision.
We have thoroughly and independently reviewed your clients’ application under the Archeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA), associated provisions of the Code of Federal Regulations, and applicable provisions of the NPS Management Policies (2006) (“Management Policies”). We have analyzed your clients’ plans for performing the exhumation in a minimally intrusive manner, their qualifications for research and study, and the historical values that would be served by the proposed exhumation of the remains. Additionally, we note with special consideration that Mr. Lewis’s descendants overwhelmingly support the proposed exhumation.
Based on the material presented to us, the unique circumstances of the death of Meriwether Lewis, and the desires of the Lewis family, we believe that the applicants have presented compelling arguments and documentation that the proposed exhumation of Mr. Lewis may provide the public and the Lewis family with new and important information about his past. For these reasons we find that the applicants have demonstrated that the proposed exhumation of Mr. Lewis’ mains for this purpose is appropriate and in the public interest.
As you may know, the final issuance of the requested permit will be subject to compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act. To facilitate the timely completion of this process, please make arrangements to meet with NPS staff at your nearest convenience to discuss, among other things: (1) the time and duration of the exhumation and study; (2) plans to access the park unit during the proposed activity; (3) anticipated disposition of an retrieved artifacts; (4) the scope of the environmental assessment and the costs thereof; and (5) the nature of your destructive analysis and expectations for the reburial ceremony. As background information, the NPS will provide the applicants, within 10 working days of this letter: (1) a copy of all documentation concerning the NPS reconstruction of the Meriwether Lewis National Monument in 2000-2001; and (2) a draft permit which will include substantially all conditions that the applicants must meet for final permit to issue.
Thank you again for your courtesy in this matter. In the event you have any concerns which require the immediate attention of this office, please feel free to call us at
Sincerely,
Lyle Laverty (signed)
Assistant Secretary of the Interior
Fish and Wildlife and Parks
cc: Mary Bomar, Director of the National Park Service
