Meriwether Lewis FAQ

Lewis’s family filed the application with the National Park Service in January, 2009 and the necessary permit requirements are being pursued to exhume his remains. The family wants to have a Christian reburial ceremony at the National Monument gravesite. 170 family members have signed a petition requesting an exhumation to determine the cause of death. James E. Starrs will be the lead investigator on the exhumation team if the permit is approved. The government will be asking for public response.

His bones were identified back in 1848 when the monument over his grave was first erected, by the presence of specially made iron nails to hold his log coffin together. Professor Starrs now has DNA samples from descendants to do a scientific match with the bones. When they built the gravesite monument in 1848, the monument committee reported to the state legislature after viewing his remains that it “was more probable that he died at the hands of an assassin.” The state of Tennessee has always said it was murder because of this report.

The HBO 10 hour mini-series based on Stephen Ambrose’s book, Undaunted Courage, will star Edward Norton as Meriwether Lewis and Brad Pitt as William Clark. It is being co-produced by the stars, writer Michelle Ashford, and National Geographic Films. It is still in development, and hopefully will air in 2010.

Meriwether Lewis was 35 years old when he died on October 11, 1809, two hundred years ago. He was Governor of Louisiana Territory. He was traveling from St. Louis to Washington D.C. to protest some bills the government wasn’t paying. Lewis and two servants stopped at a roadside inn on the Natchez Trace. Mrs. Grinder, the wife of the owner, told three contradictory stories over the years about what happened next. She said she heard two or three gun shots, didn’t investigate, and Lewis’s two servants didn’t either. In various versions, she sees Lewis crawling around the yard begging for water, and found Lewis cutting himself with his razor after shooting himself twice with two horse pistols with ½ inch lead ball bullets. One shot is to his head, exposing part of his brain. The other shot is to his chest. Then he cut himself and begged to die. All three accounts are included in the documents section along with other important evidence.

He was mad and upset about government bureaucrats not paying bills he had personally paid for as Governor in expectation of being reimbursed. But he was going to Washington to straighten it out. Lewis had "adopted" (or signed indenture papers for) the 13 year old son of a French Canadian interpreter when his family went back to the Mandan Villages in North Dakota a few months earlier. He promised to pay for the boy’s education and living expenses. The interpreter's family had come down to St. Louis with the Mandan Chief Big White and his family and had travelled with Lewis to Washington D. C. Lewis was going to bring his mother to St. Louis. His brother Reuben was already there. Lewis established the first newspaper and Masonic Lodge in St. Louis. He had a lot to live for. The stories of him being suicidal, alcoholic, or mentally deranged are all cover up stories based on false information and/or forged documents.

I believe he was murdered, but robbery wasn’t the motive. I think it was a high level assassination arranged by two men, General James Wilkinson, the Commanding General of the U. S. Army, and John Smith T., a wealthy land speculator. They arranged for Lewis’s assassination because he was going to expose their fraudulent land deals in the lead mine district south of St. Louis and ruin their plans to invade Mexico. Lead was used for bullets. They wanted to start a revolution in Mexico and gain control of the Mexican silver and gold mines, the richest in the world. I have circumstantial evidence supporting this theory.

Jefferson was under attack for supporting General Wilkinson, who was widely accused of being a double agent in the pay of the Spanish government. These charges were proven to be true when Spanish archives were opened years later. The president couldn’t “afford to go there.” Wilkinson was called “the general who never won a battle and never lost a court martial.” William Clark was deceived by forged letters supposedly written by the commander at Fort Pickering where Lewis spent some of his last days. The letters were most likely created by Wilkinson, who was known to create forgeries. These matters are covered in detail in the book.

I think the title of his book, Undaunted Courage, more truly reflects his opinion. Ambrose wrote a foreword for a biography on Lewis written by Richard Dillon, who believed Lewis was murdered. Ambrose praised Dillon’s book, and said it “was such a model biography, there is no need for another.” The basic adventure story of the expedition needed to be told for the bicentennial commemoration in 2003-2006. Ambrose and other historians elected to tell the basic story without examining the suicide story.

A. It was reported that Seaman died of grief at the gravesite of Lewis, refusing to take food or water. His collar with a special inscription was on display at a Masonic Museum in Fredericksburg,Virginia but has since disappeared. The document concerning this is included in Part Two Evidence section.