September 12, 2010
The Death of Meriwether Lews: Murder or Suicide on the Natchez Trace?
What happened to Lewis after his great journey through North Dakota? The scholars will discuss his life after the epic expedition, which ultimately led to his financial ruin and death.
In the introduction of By His Own Hand? The Mysterious Death of Meriwether Lewis, Clay Jenkinson explains why the death of Meriwether Lewis prompts continued examination.
"Nobody doubts that Meriwether Lewis, the governor of Upper Louisiana Territory, died of gunshot wounds in the early morning hours of 11 October 1809 at a rude inn on the Natchez Trace, approximately seventy miles from Nashville, Tennessee.
He was thirty-five years old and still, though diminished, an American hero.
There were no direct eyewitnesses. The three quasi-witnesses …all reported that Lewis had shot himself once in the head and also in the abdomen. They were, as seems likely, either convinced that Lewis had indeed committed suicide, or they were engaged in a conspiracy to explain or cover up the murder of Governor Lewis. Most historians now support the view that Lewis committed suicide, but a determined minority find the suicide story implausible and insist that, in effect, the case needs to be reopened. "
"The enduring attraction of the Lewis and Clark story lies precisely in the fact that it is not pat, that some key elements o f the experience are unresolved. Though most people don't like to admit it, the fact that the leader of the nation's greatest journey of exploration was a strange man who continues to elude easy analysis and who died just three years after his triumphal return, under circumstances that continue to compel and perplex, is one source of the magic of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Had Lewis lived on, like his more stable friend William Clark, and died quietly in his sleep sometime in the middle of the nineteenth century, one great source of the fascination of the Lewis and Clark Expedition would evaporate.
We are fortunate that one of America's greatest stories has fundamental mysteries at its core. Our duty as scholar-historians is to find, sort, and analyze all available evidence, but the glory of the humanities is that no matter what we turn (or dig) up, we can never pluck out the heart of the mystery of Meriwether Lewis."