‘So Hard to Die’: Meriwether’s March Across the Continent

The Legacy of Meriwether Lewis

By guest author Warren Steury.

Our contemplation of the annals of American history lead us into a state of reverence for the power and bravery of those men who came before us. We look to the past not as a distant recitation of fading memories, but rather as the living history of our fathers’ honor. The stories of Valley Forge, the Battle of New Orleans, and Normandy have inspired America’s progeny to live the heroic life, the necessity of which we now meet face to face. Through 250 years of national history, some stories have been forgotten. They patiently wait their turn for a curious mind to come find them, polish them off, and put them back on the mantel of glory for all to see.

There is one man who is perhaps our nation’s most neglected hero. His life and legacy epitomize the exertions of the American Spirit. He walked away from wealth and comfort to serve his nation, fought in Washington’s militia, lived and studied with Thomas Jefferson, and led 40 men through the American wilderness for two and a half years. In the prime of his life at the age of 35 years old he would meet cold, merciless fate on the Natchez Trace some 70 miles from Nashville. This man is Meriwether Lewis, captain of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, and this is a brief story of this man’s legacy.

Meriwether Lewis was a Virginian born on August 18, 1774, at the Locust Hill Plantation ten miles west of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. According to Jefferson, Lewis was born “of one of the distinguished families of that state,” but his father died of pneumonia when Lewis was five years old. From a young age, Lewis was adventurous and had a thirst for knowledge. In an 1813 letter, Jefferson would describe him as “remarkable even in infancy for enterprise, boldness & discretion. when only eight years of age, he habitually went out, in the dead of night, alone with his dogs, into the forest to hunt.”

When Lewis was eight years old, his stepfather, Captain John Marks, led a group of Virginians to Northwest Georgia where a new colony was being established on the Broad River. Lewis followed, and this is perhaps where the explorer got his first taste of a true long-distance overland expedition. It was clear that the small frontier outpost Lewis was living in would be unable to meet his educational desires, and at the age of 13 he was sent by his mother back to Virginia to enroll in schooling. Lewis was described by his tutors as having “a martial temper, great steadiness of purpose, self-possession, and undaunted courage. His person was stiff and without grace, bow-legged, awkward, formal, and almost without flexibility.”

For five years, Lewis bounced around from tutor to tutor before deciding at the age of 18 to move his mother back to Virginia and begin his career as a Virginia planter and head of household. Thus was the end of his formal schooling. He was left 2,000 acres, 520 British pounds cash, 24 slaves, and 147 gallons of whiskey, which had all been managed by a family member since his father’s death.

On the other side of the continent in 1792, American Captain Robert Gray had just sailed his ship, the Columbia Rediviva, into the mouth of the Columbia River and fixed its longitude and latitude. Now the vast stretch of soil between this point and the frontier town of St Louis, in the Louisiana Territory, was the world’s great mystery to be solved, and there was a race to find out. Spanish, French, and English influence was probing all over the American continent, and something had to be done about it.

The American Philosophical Society proposed the first plan in 1792 to explore the uncharted land. An 18-year-old Meriwether Lewis was quick to approach Jefferson and put his name in the hat for the appointment. Jefferson chose French botanist André Michaux instead. This turned out to be a waste of time, as Michaux was revealed to be a French spy, more interested in going after the Spanish outposts than successfully conducting a surveying expedition.

Back at the Locust Hill Plantation, Lewis was becoming restless. The sedentary life of a planter was not for him, and at the age of 20, “yielding to the ardor of youth, & a passion for more dazzling pursuits” as Jefferson put it, he volunteered for General Washington’s militia and shipped off to fight the Whiskey Rebellion. After serving in Washington’s militia, Lewis would enlist in the regular Army. In 1800, Lewis was promoted to the rank of Captain, and in 1801, Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated as the third President of the United States of America. Beyond the Appalachian Mountains still lay an endless stretch of unknown territory. Something was out there, and Jefferson knew that the U.S. needed to get her hands on it.

Prior to his inauguration, Jefferson wrote to Lewis that he was in need of a personal secretary. Lewis accepted the job and resigned his Army commission. This resulted in the greatest bachelor pad of all time, as Lewis moved into the President’s Mansion with Jefferson, who was now a widower, where they would live and work together for two years. Jefferson wrote his daughter Martha, “Captain Lewis and I are like two mice in a church.” During this time, Lewis had access to Jefferson’s library, social circle, and mind. This would mark a period of intellectual growth and social distinction for Lewis who, at 27 years of age, was now living with, and learning from, one of the wisest minds ever to dwell upon the earth.

In the spring of 1801, Jefferson caught wind of treaties between France and Spain that transferred ownership of the Louisiana Territory, 828,000 square miles, to France. This territory comprised the entire states of Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, as well as portions of Colorado, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. Jefferson did not like the idea of France becoming powerful on the North American continent — he knew that Napoleon was hungry for power and was aware of the expansionist attitude he’d already taken during his campaigns. Jefferson wanted France to keep her distance from the U.S.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent, Scottish Explorer Alexander Mackenzie embarked on the first expedition through the Northwestern Territories and inscribed his name on a rock overlooking the Pacific Ocean. All of a sudden, two of Jefferson’s greatest rival nations were treading all over his sought-after land, and he knew that something had to be done immediately about it. Jefferson would waste no time: sometime in the summer or fall of 1802, he told Lewis that he would be leading an expedition into the Louisiana Territory.

The decision for Jefferson to appoint Lewis was an easy one by then. Recollecting his decision in 1813, he would write that Lewis was

of courage undaunted, possessing a firmness & perseverance of purpose which nothing but impossibilities could divert from it’s direction, careful as a father of those committed to his charge, yet steady in the maintenance of order & discipline, intimate with the Indian character, customs & principles, habituated to the hunting life, guarded, by exact observation of the vegetables and animals of his own country, against losing time in the description of objects already possesd, honest, disinterested, liberal, of sound understanding, and a fidelity to truth so scrupulous that whatever he should report would be as certain as if seen by ourselves; with all these qualifications, as if selected & implanted by nature in one body, for this express purpose, I could have no hesitation in confiding the enterprize to him.¹

The next year for Lewis is the story of grand preparation, rigorous study, data collection, devouring literature, studying under mentors, and traveling for knowledge. Lewis would have a limited amount of time to prepare himself to lead men across the continent and back while taking precise geographical measurements the entire way and cataloging the myriads of animals, plants, and humans he would encounter. There was not an hour to be wasted. This year is, to me, equally as interesting as the expedition itself.

Jefferson’s library contained the world’s most expansive collection of literature on the geography of North America, and Lewis would’ve consumed as much of it as possible. Lewis read the journals of Captain Cook, du Pratz’s History of Louisiana, and other relevant literature from Jefferson’s library. Jefferson also schooled Lewis in botany, mineralogy, astronomy, geography, and ethnology.

While Lewis was studying, Jefferson had to figure out how to pitch the idea to Congress to get the funds he needed. By leading with the motives of commerce and trade, he was able to get the money. The truth was a bit more blurry. Jefferson was going after land, something many saw no business in meddling with at the moment, and he was willing to do whatever it took to make it happen.

Not only was Lewis responsible for preparing his mind to record the necessary scientific observations needed to bring back a proper survey of the territory; he was also in charge of preparing the expedition by acquiring supplies and choosing men. Together Lewis and Jefferson wrote up a list of supplies, and Lewis got to work putting it all together. Lewis planned to be in St Louis by August 1, 1803, to cross the continent in 1804 and be back in Washington before winter set in. That plan was idealistic at best.

In the middle of this mad scramble to conquer the continent before someone else could, something extraordinary happened. It is considered the greatest real estate deal in the history of mankind: the Louisiana Purchase. Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon for $15 million — 828,000 square miles for 3¢ an acre. This land deal doubled the size of the United States and gave Lewis’s expedition an entirely new level of importance.

In the summer and fall of 1803, Lewis completed his preparations for the expedition, choosing his former commanding officer and friend William Clark to co-captain. In December 1803, he and 33 volunteers started the journey and spent the winter camped at Camp Dubois near Wood River, Illinois.

In May 1804, the Corps of Discovery departed Camp Dubois and began to make their way up the Missouri River. In August, tragedy struck, and Sergeant Charles Floyd fell ill of apparent appendicitis and died. For the entirety of the expedition, this would remain the only death of a member of the expedition. In the fall of 1804, the men built Fort Mandan near present-day North Dakota and spent the winter with the Mandan and Hidatsa tribes.

In April 1805, the expedition departed from Fort Mandan, bringing along Toussaint Charbonneau and his 17-year-old Shoshone wife Sacagawea. Charbonneau and Sacagawea would prove invaluable as translators and diplomats for the expedition as they continued to move through a wilderness populated by savages with strange languages.

In the summer of 1805, the expedition would come to the Great Falls of the Missouri, described by Lewis as “[t]he grandest sight I ever beheld,” and undertook a grueling 18-mile portage around the Falls with the entirety of their gear. Upon moving beyond the Falls and crossing the Lemhi Pass, Lewis spotted some Indian women. He convinced them of his peaceful intentions and asked them to take him to their camp. On the way, they met up with Shoshone Chief Cameahwait and around 60 warriors on horseback. Lewis and his party were received peacefully and taken to the Indian camp, where they explained their reasons for being there, and were entertained with pipe smoking, food, and dancing.

What happened next is an extraordinary coincidence. As Clark brought up the rest of the expedition, they discovered that Sacagawea was the long-lost sister of Chief Cameahwait (she had been kidnapped years ago). This family reunion was emotional and further solidified a bond of union between the Shoshone and the Corps of Discovery.

The next thing to conquer was the Rocky Mountains. The Shoshone provided a guide, Old Toby, and horses to the expedition for their crossing. After nearly freezing and starving to death, the Corps of Discovery made it over the Bitterroot Mountains. Without the help of the Shoshone and their horses, the expedition would have been unable to make this crossing.

On November 7, 1805, William Clark wrote in his journal, “Ocean in View! O the Joy!” Battered, beaten, and bruised, the expedition had made it to the Pacific Ocean. They built Fort Clatsop there, near present-day Astoria, and wintered until the spring of 1806. After finding no sailing vessel to hitch a ride back to the East Coast, the Corps began their journey eastward in March 1806. On September 23, 1806, the Corps of Discovery sailed back into St. Louis. After more than 28 months on expedition, the world was convinced that they were surely dead, but they had triumphed and were national heroes.

Captains Lewis and Clark had successfully completed the expedition of an era, having mapped over 8,000 miles of unexplored land, documented over 300 animal and plant species, and established contact with over 50 native tribes. Their completion of this journey solidified the right of the U.S. to the Louisiana Territory and opened the frontier of our young nation to new horizons.

It is here that I wish I could tell the tale of a happy life for Captain Lewis. I wish I could write earnestly about how he continued to explore, had a family, and retired at an old age into a philosophical life. Yet his fate was not so. William Clark married Julia Hancock of Fincastle, Virginia. He was 37 and she 16 at the time, and they had five children together. Lewis, on the other hand, found trouble courting a wife.

In February 1807, President Jefferson appointed Lewis as the Governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory. By then the entire nation was waiting anxiously for the publishing of the Journals of the Corps of Discovery. “Never did a similar event excite more joy thro’ the United States. the humblest of it’s citizens had taken a lively interest in the issue of this journey, & looked forward with impatience for the information it would furnish,” wrote Jefferson regarding the Journals. Lewis had the expectations and eyes of the nation resting on him and his ability to produce a comprehensive account of the expedition’s journey.

The publication of these sacred journals would never come to fruition while Lewis was alive. The surmounting pile of administrative work on his desk, political quarrels with his colleagues, and a destructive relationship with alcohol may have all contributed to Lewis’s delays. It is the most unfortunate case of writer’s block in the history of literature.

In March 1809, James Madison was inaugurated as the fourth President of the United States, and Jefferson left office, meaning that Lewis no longer had the same unfettered access to the highest office in the land. The new President cracked down on spending, and soon Lewis was having to draw from his own pocket for expenses relating to his administration in the Louisiana Territory. Not to mention by now Lewis had utterly failed to court a wife, trying multiple times, describing himself as a “musty, fusty, rusty old bachelor” in a letter to Clark.

Nearly broke, unable to write his journals, and seemingly surrounded by people trying to get the best of him in St. Louis, Lewis knew that he had to get back to his mentor in Virginia to recollect himself and figure out what to do next. Additionally, he had to sort out financial affairs with D.C. and get his journals to Philadelphia for publishing. In the fall of 1809, Lewis began his journey back to Virginia, taking the Mississippi downriver. It is here where we encounter the first shade of mist that shrouds the death of Meriwether Lewis in mystery.

Jefferson had known Lewis from a young age and would later write:

Governor Lewis had, from early life, been subject to hypocondriac affections. it was a constitutional disposition in all the nearer branches of the family of his name, and was more immediately inherited by him from his father. they had not however been so strong as to give uneasiness to his family. while he lived with me in Washington, I observed at times sensible depressions of mind; but knowing their constitutional source, I estimated their course by what I had seen in the family. during his Western expedition the constant exertion, which that required, of all the faculties of body & mind, suspended these distressing affections; but after his establishment at St. Louis in sedentary occupations, they returned upon him with redoubled vigor, & began seriously to alarm his friends. he was in a paroxysm of one of these, when his affairs rendered it necessary for him to go to Washington.²

Lewis’s friend in St. Louis, William C. Carr, wrote a letter to his brother on August 25, 1809, reading: “Our Governor left us a few days since with his private affairs altogether deranged. He is a good man, but a very imprudent one — I apprehend he will not return.” Repeated sentiments like these continue to support the picture of a sick, lost, desperate Lewis. Vardis Fisher, on the other hand, wrote in his 1993 book Suicide or Murder? The Strange Death of Governor Meriwether Lewis³ regarding Lewis’s final weeks:

All this — his handwriting during these last days in St. Louis, his clear and orderly record of his debts, and his investing three friends with the power of attorney, to sell his property during his absence, if creditors should demand it — all this certainly does not look like the behavior of a man in a paroxysm.

After making his way 250 miles down the Mississippi River, Lewis was in New Madrid, and there wrote his will, leaving all of his assets after debts settled to his mother Lucy Marks. There was also the report of two suicide attempts by Lewis during this riverboat ride. Two years after Lewis’s death, Captain Gilbert Russell, who was the commanding officer at Fort Pickering near Memphis when Lewis arrived, would state in a deposition:

…[T]he Commanding officer of the Fort on discovering his situation, and learning from the Crew that he had made two attempts to kill himself, in one of which he had nearly succeeded, resolved at once to take possession of him and his papers, and detain them there until he recovered, or some friend might arrive in whose hands he could depart in safety.⁴

There is no further narrative relating to these suicide attempts.

After being held at Fort Pickering by Captain Russell until his delirium seemed to pass, Lewis decided to depart from his original plan of taking the Mississippi all the way to the Gulf of Mexico and go overland instead, by way of the Natchez Trace, to Nashville. He would write to President Madison while at Fort Pickering:

My apprehension from the heat of the lower country and my fear of the original papers relative to my voyage to the Pacific ocean falling into the hands of the British has induced me to change my rout and proceed by land through the state of Tennessee to the City of Washington.⁵

Lewis would depart Fort Pickering with James Neelly, an agent to the Chickasaw Nation, and each of their two servants. They passed through the Chickasaw Nation, where Neelly reported that Lewis “appeared at times deranged in mind.” On October 10, 1809, Lewis rode up to a roadside inn named Grinder’s Stand located about 70 miles from Nashville. The inn consisted of two cabins connected by a breezeway.

The following account which you will read is largely derived from a testimony of Priscilla Grinder, the sole primary source regarding the fateful evening, given to Alexander Wilson seven months after the incident. Grinder said that Lewis asked if he could stay for the night, and that “[h]e called for some spirits, and drank very little.” She reported that Lewis “had eaten only a few mouthfuls when he started up, speaking to himself in a violent manner.” Lewis’s erratic behavior continued throughout dinner as he spoke in manic fits before settling himself with his pipe and commenting on what a fine evening it was.

Grinder prepared a bed for Lewis when Lewis told her that he would sleep on the ground, and called for Pernier, his servant, to bring his buffalo robes. Grinder was unable to sleep as Lewis paced himself back and forth in his room and talked to himself out loud “like a lawyer.” Then at 3 A.M. Grinder heard something terrible. It was at this hour that Lewis, as Jefferson would write, “did the deed which plunged his friends into affliction, and deprived his country of one of her most valued citizens.” The sound of a gunshot rang out, then something falling heavily on the floor followed by the words “O Lord.” Then a second shot, and in a few minutes Lewis was scratching at her door saying: “O Madam! Give me some water, and heal my wounds.”

For a moment I invite you to picture in your mind’s eye this confusing tragedy we now find ourselves in the midst of. Meriwether Lewis, the man who had traversed the wilderness, made peace deals with Indians, and conquered the continent, deliriously begging for his life under such awful circumstances. My soul weeps at the thought of these fateful moments.

Through the gaps in the logs of her cabin Grinder said she saw a shadowy figure stumbling around the yard, leaning against a tree for a moment to rest before making his way back into the cabin. Then Grinder heard the sound of Lewis scraping the bucket outside of her door seemingly in an attempt to acquire something to drink. As the golden fingers of dawn stretched over the Natchez Trace, Grinder sent her kids to fetch the servants from their quarters and tend to Lewis.

They found Lewis lying on his bed still alive. A piece of his forehead had been blown away, and he revealed to them another gunshot wound in his chest. He begged Pernier to take his rifle and blow his brains out, offering all of the cash in his trunk if he would oblige. Lewis would succumb to his wounds just after sunrise.

The controversies regarding the death of Lewis are numerous and many not without merit. Lewis had replaced James Wilkinson as the Governor of Louisiana, a man notorious for his attempts to secede parts of the United States in a plot with Aaron Burr. Thirty years after Lewis’s death, Priscilla Grinder would even give a different story, adding a few other men to Lewis’s caravan and other details regarding his appearance upon arrival. Pernier traveled to Monticello to give Jefferson his account and verdict: suicide.

Jefferson would write in 1810 that

we have all to lament that a fame so dearly earned was clouded finally by such an act of desperation. he was much afflicted & habitually so with hypocondria. this was probably increased by the habit into which he had fallen & the painful reflections that would necessarily produce in a mind like his.⁶

We are now left to ponder what really happened that fateful night and what the truth may be. Regardless of what the circumstances may have been, the spirit of Meriwether Lewis lives in his final words:

“I am no coward, but I am so strong, so hard to die.”

1. Thomas Jefferson, “I. Thomas Jefferson to Paul Allen [August 18, 1813],” Founders Online, National Archives.

2. Thomas Jefferson, “I. Thomas Jefferson to Paul Allen [August 18, 1813],” Founders Online, National Archives.

3. Vardis Fisher, Suicide or Murder? The Strange Death of Governor Meriwether Lewis (Ohio University Press, 1993).

4. Gilbert C. Russell, “Statement of Gilbert C. Russell [November 26, 1811],” Lewis County Museum of Natural History.

5. Meriwether Lewis, “Lewis to James Madison, 16 September, 1809, Chickasaw Bluffs (Fort Pickering),” Lewis County Museum of Natural History.

6. Thomas Jefferson, “Thomas Jefferson to Gilbert C. Russell [April 18, 1810],” Founders Online, National Archives.