And when they dug up the body, . The commission wrote in its official

report, even though the impression had long prevailed that Lewis died by

his own hand, it seemed more probable he died by the hand of assassins.

And that's what opened up this whole idea that

Welcome to Talk With History.

I'm your host, Scott, here with my wife and historian, Jenn.

On this podcast, we give you insights to our history inspired world travels,

YouTube channel journey, and examine history Through deeper conversations

with the curious, the explorers and the history lovers out there.

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mention if folks are listening to this for the first time, this is our 99th.

episode

Yeah.

and so this is our 99th episode so you're gonna naturally if you're

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gonna have to subscribe and follow us to find out the guest the very special guest

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and in a big one especially in her history circle so make sure

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Apple podcast, Spotify, wherever you listen, because a hundredth episode, I

actually already finished editing it.

So that one is scheduled as we are recording this, but this one will

come out and our hundredth episode.

We'll have a very special guest that I think our listeners are

getting almost guaranteed to enjoy.

Today, we're setting sail, well, technically we're setting off on

horseback, on a journey to explore the life and untimely demise of Meriwether

Lewis, the intrepid co captain of the Lewis and Clark You know him as the

guy who explored the vast unknown of the American West alongside William Clark.

But Lewis's story takes a dark turn after their triumphant return.

In 1809, at the young age of 35, Lewis was found dead under mysterious Was it

a tragic case of suicide, or was there a foul play that led to his demise?

The evidence is murky, and the debate rages on.

We'll be diving deep into the final days of Lewis's life, examining the

clues and exploring the theories behind this historical whodunit.

So saddle up history detectives.

Join me as we untangle the truth about the mysterious death of Meriwether Lewis.

All right, Jenn.

Meriwether Lewis, Lewis and Clark.

I know, Big

name in American history,

names.

big name, first name, right?

He's the beginning of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

And really when it comes down to it, Lewis is Jefferson's secretary.

When Jefferson buys the Louisiana Purchase.

know how I remember that?

is the

Oh my gosh

History.

The Drunk, there was a Drunk

There is a junk history

and it wasn't about Meriwether Lewis or Jefferson, but it was about who

was that kind of newspaper article writer?

Calendar, James Calendar.

we made a

It was a Drunk History about James Calendar and they mentioned

very briefly that Meriwether Lewis is the secretary for Jefferson at the

So they're close, right?

They're both from the same area of Virginia.

They've kind of run in the same circles and they're close and he's helped

squash like the Whiskey Rebellion.

He's part of the Virginia militia and he's just a very trusted ally.

advisor to Jefferson, and he's kind of an outdoorsy guy.

And so it's really Lewis who brings Clark on board, because Jefferson picks

Lewis, and Lewis is like, Who have I worked with before that I really liked?

I liked Clark when I when we were in the military

had just finished up the Louisiana purchase.

So Jefferson's Hey,

We need someone to go out and see what I

you're out doorsy.

Go explore all

that, you

go see what I bought.

a jillion acres of land that I just bought.

And really, I have to give Lewis a lot of credit, and I love his first

name, Meriwether, it's super cool.

But he's the one who brings

the people together.

He's the one who kind of hires Sacagawea's husband, who's a French

trader, trapper, who knows the area,

sees the knowledge of Sacagawea, sees her importance.

Clark who brings his enslaved man York with him, but it's Lewis who's very

adamant that we are not going to treat enslaved like enslaved on this trip.

Everyone's going to get a fair vote.

Everyone is a member of this expedition and it's Lewis who sets this precedence

and they very much, even when Sacagawea, they're very much involved in her life

because she's pregnant at the time.

They're a part of her delivery.

They all help with her child, as he's growing up.

I mean, Clark will eventually take care of the child.

And,

and the expedition's takes two and a half

yeah, it's a long

time

So by the end of the, the expedition, I mean, her child is probably two years old.

And,

like I said, they're just very close and it's, it's Lewis who

sets this whole precedence here.

But People see Lewis's

mental state.

and sometimes he can be melancholy, sometimes he can

get a little forlorn, depressed.

during the expedition as

well?

during the expedition, and Jefferson had seen him do it sometimes as well.

There is some family history for Lewis of his father having kind

of a mental health deterioration.

So there could be a family history of that.

And that's not always hereditary, but it can be.

So it's just, you have to, acknowledge

sure

Also acknowledge

that this expedition took so long.

They doubled back a couple times.

And in a way, as much as Meriwether,

Lewis is

very.

Vital to all the drawings and all the all those things they

are bringing back, all the

the documentation,

he's very good at all of that.

They aren't quite getting

the whole, the important thing they were supposed to

get, Yes.

which is the waterway,

They were looking for a waterway from, basically from east to

From east to west.

And so maybe, maybe almost not Mississippi up, they're just looking for a waterway

that could take you from Pacific, maybe down the Mississippi, maybe to Gulf.

So basically, you're not going completely around South America,

because at the time, there's no Panama.

And so you can tell that Maybe he's in that.

And I'm a historian.

I'm just kind of giving an idea.

I don't know.

He's feeling less

optimistic

about that.

And so then he's the pessimism that he's not hitting the thing that he

was really supposed to discover.

And that's becoming more realistic as the expedition goes on.

I think it's It's something that the general public doesn't really think

about when you're learning about the whole Lewis and Clark expedition, because we see

it as a, in a, through a fairly romantic

Mm hmm

Oh my gosh, that's so amazing.

What would it be like to be on the Lewis and Clark expedition?

Exploring this.

all this land and seeing Oregon for the first time and all the stuff that the, you

kind of, especially as someone from the West coast, learning about that, but you

don't think about, well, what was their true mission, their mission, like what

was their goal and if their goal, like the one thing that they set out to accomplish,

aside from just the general nature of the expedition that they weren't able to.

Someone like Mary Weather Lewis that might have affected

Sure, so you can think, he's almost in charge of

this.

He's worked for Jefferson.

He knows how important this is for Jefferson.

Jefferson hasn't.

just

said, Oh, and if you find a waterway, that would be great.

He's probably that's what you need to find.

I hope I bought this with a

waterway.

It's a trade thing.

And, but even when they come back like you said, it took a couple

of years and they come back.

They are very much treated as celebrities.

This has made news.

I mean, cause they've, they've seen things that never been seen before.

They've discovered things that never been seen there by, by the English settlers.

I know they're meeting American Indians out there.

They've seen the

Yeah.

And, French fur

French, which they've seen, but this is like for the general public, no one's.

And now it's American land.

Cause before it was all French land.

So kind of letting all the Americans know what's out there.

So they are seen as, as.

celebrities, . And because of that, after they return home, Lewis is

rewarded 1600 acres and he is made the governor of the Louisiana Territory.

So when you think Louisiana Purchase, Louisiana Territory,

it's bigger than the state.

It's like that area.

And so the capital Quotes is in st.

Louis, and that's where he settles.

So

Yeah, and remember, just for time frame here, I

mean this is the early 1800s.

So the expedition was 1803 to 1806, and so they come home, great

fanfare, and he's made the governor of the general Louisiana area.

I don't know what they call it,

so they call it the upper upper Louisiana

Okay.

And so he's made governor in 1807.

So he's gotten back 1807, governor of this Louisiana Territory.

Now, what starts to happen is he's, he's writing his journals, he wants

to get his journals published.

He's, he's starting to establish roads.

He's starting to establish laws, right?

This is a former French territory.

This is a very much American Indian territory.

So he has to negotiate peace among all these quarreling Indian tribes.

And he's trying to enforce these Indian treaties.

And he's trying to protect Western Indian lands and encroachment

because Manifest Destiny is a big

proponent now of this Lewis and Clark expedition because Americans realize

that it's all this land and we want to go

want to go settle it.

historian here.

But the, the American government kind of stoked that fire, right?

It was, it was part of the whole Manifest Destiny and said, Hey, Manifest

Destiny, partly to get population out there so that they could kind of expand

the American population which would then expand everything else within

Yeah.

And so he's, he's fighting DC, which Jefferson's no longer president.

After this, it's going to be Madison, who's very good friends with Jefferson.

So it's not like Lewis still isn't, held in high esteem because he

is because Madison and Jefferson are basically the same person.

And then you, you're going to have these, you're going People who want

to come out and settle, you have the American Indians, you have treaties, and

he's trying to negotiate all of this.

And people in D.

C.

are wondering, why is this so difficult?

Why is, are you having a hard time?

And historians have argued that he was a poor administrator, because

he was trying to handle all of this.

And as he's handling all of this, and bringing in different, Chiefs, he's paying

for all of these logistics, whether it is to travel in chiefs or bring people,

he's paying for logistics of this.

And so he's reaching back to DC to get reimbursed for these things.

And DC is well, you're not doing a very good job.

And we don't believe that this is the these are accurate receipts and it's

putting Lewis in a financial burden.

And so this is why he's traveling to DC.

He's going to DC to Basically be in person, make the argument, talk

about these are the receipts for this and this is the receipts for

this and this is what happened here.

Now

his letters are not very quick and timely and people equate that to his mental

illness, that his melancholy, that all these things that he, he wasn't quick

to respond to the inquiries from D.

C.

and because of that.

He, the mental illness, and that's also what people don't trust him.

It's also why they feel like he's a poor administrator.

No one knows for sure.

but it could have been other medical reasons that are happening at the

time.

So he, does the expedition for a couple years,

is kind of disappointed.

I don't know, did he write that in his journals?

I mean, I don't remember, I don't remember, but obviously they didn't

accomplish the one primary mission.

Accomplished a lot.

Came back, I don't know if he volunteered, asked for, or was saddled

with governorship, but it sounds like he, after spending a couple years

exploring the wilderness, that's quite a shift, going from one to the other.

Becomes governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory, isn't doing a good

good job

is Basically spending money that he doesn't

have and

trying to get reimbursed for it.

So he says, Hey, I'm going to go make my case to DC.

I'm going to go talk to Madison who's, I already know because

he's good buddies with Jefferson.

I'm going to go to DC, make my case, see if they can get them to reimburse

me for all this stuff so that I can keep the wheel spinning over

here in Upper Louisiana Territory.

Okay.

Okay.

that's the point.

He's, he's leaving St.

Louis to travel to D.

C.

to make the argument about these receipts.

To get reimbursed, so he's not in financial ruin, to kind

of defend his governorship.

And he's fighting with the former Louisiana governor, who's down

in the lower Louisiana territory.

There are differences in governing.

Decides

to travel from St.

Louis.

to New Orleans where he's going to get on a big ship and then travel from

New Orleans across the Gulf over to

Okay, so take the Mississippi down to the, basically the Gulf

and Ocean go up around the coast.

And with him, he's bringing I think it was like four big

trunks, six big trunks of all of his journals to get published.

So finally, that was everybody wanted to see what do these fish look like?

What does this fauna

look

like, Yeah, it's been a couple years.

It's been a couple years, right?

And he's finally got them finished.

He's going to bring them to DC as well.

So it's very precious cargo.

So when he hits Memphis, 18.

09.

This

is around the time when the British are starting to act up with impressments.

This is going to lead us into the War of 1812.

So he's getting a little nervous about going to New Orleans.

He's getting nervous about putting his trunks on a ship and, and traveling

around Hatteras, North Carolina.

Yeah, and if you've heard any of our past episodes, like that's

very dangerous sailing out there

sometimes.

there.

Important documents can be lost forever.

Aaron Burr.

And so he gets nervous and he's when he hits Memphis and he's

I'm going to travel from Memphis.

Cause you're like, why doesn't he travel from St.

Louis across?

Why?

Why does he go down to Memphis?

And then, so for Memphis, he goes, I'm going to go across to DC and I'm going to

so, he's I'm going to go across Tennessee, kind of take that route

I'm going to get on the Natchez trace, which is a trail that's easily

traveled and I'm going to go to DC.

Gotcha.

So he hits Memphis.

He gets malaria.

He gets sick.

And if we know anything about Memphis, mosquitoes, yellow fever, right?

And he gets sick.

Malaria can make you delirious.

He's taking opium.

Those are the kind of pills that you took to combat the

fever that you get with malaria.

And he He has a suicide attempt or that's what they claim.

He was trying to jump off the side of the ship

Yeah.

He was probably just like super high or hallucinating.

they stop him from doing that and they're like, he had a suicide attempt.

So this is, these are the things that kind of

back the case of the future

Suicide claim.

So

he's there for a couple of weeks.

He, It gets a travel buddy.

Basically, his name is Neely, and he's a Chickasaw Indian agent.

He will bring his enslaved man with him.

Lewis is traveling with a free black servant, Perna.

He's not.

enslaved.

He's, but he's, hasn't been paid in a while.

So he's owed like 200, so he's traveling with Louis still but he hasn't been paid.

Because Louis doesn't have any money, because it's all tied up in his receipts.

Neely comes with him, they take, they take, two big trunks with

them, two goes with Lewis, two goes with Neely on a a wagon.

And they start to travel from Memphis about two weeks later after he gets better

to up the Natchez trace up to Nashville.

Cause the Natchez trace takes you from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville.

And he hits grinder stand alone because two of the horses have run

away and Neely goes looking for those two horses and he goes by himself.

The two servants, the one enslaved man and the one free man of color travel

behind Lewis with the four trunks.

Okay.

And Grindr stand was like, basically like an inn, like a

place for the people to stop.

So Grinders stand is a stand or an inn.

They call it a stand is kind of a word for in,

Oh, okay.

and it's located on the Natchez Trace.

It was owned by the grinder.

So Robert grinder and Priscilla grinder, but there was no D in their name.

So it's Grinner,

Oh, okay.

but the D was added for the stand.

Grinder stand, but they're Grinner.

And so kind of a, when you're looking for their names in the, in the

archive, there's no D in their names,

classic historian switcheroo,

is hard for historians.

There's a lot of these names that we use here are misspelled

or the spelling is changed.

It was two rough log cabins.

And this is the whole reason why we do this video is we stopped at that

location where they have recreated grinder stand along the trace.

And there is Merriweather Lewis's grave.

There were two cabins that kind of were adjoined at right angles.

There was kind of a dog trot between them, so they weren't connected.

And that's why when you hear Priscilla Grinder doesn't sleep in the same

cabin as Merriweather Lewis that night, it's because she's in the other one.

A dog trot between them is not a lot, right?

And with wood planks, there's not a lot.

You can hear, right?

So just, just bear in mind,

And that's that's what, that's why she's able to hear what

Yes.

Even though she's going to give three separate accounts.

over the years of what happened that

Like three different

three different

ones,

Oh,

even though she really is the only witness, besides the two men

who are traveling with them, the two men of color, which we'll talk about.

So Meriwether Lewis gets there on the night of October 10th,

1809.

He

gets there about six o'clock and He asks for a room, and she gives him

the one whole cabin, and then she with her children are in another room.

Now, where's Robert, where's her husband?

There's a family folklore from the Grinder family that Robert

caught Priscilla and Louis in bed

together.

And Robert was will be the one to shoot Lewis and then he runs away to Texas

and that really did happen right after Meriwether Lewis is killed at the log

cabin.

Robert is gone to Texas.

He runs away.

I didn't know that.

So this stand used to be called

Indian Line

stand, and they had just opened it because the Chickasaw had seceded this

land to Tennessee in 1805, and they had just established this stand in 1807.

So it's only been around for two years.

But Robert Grinder made his money by selling alcohol to the American Indians.

That's the whole, that's what he, that was his business there.

So he's not like the most upstanding guy.

You have to understand, the trace, too, is not a very, lawful area.

Yeah, I mean, it's a wilderness path.

Yes.

And so you're going to get highwaymen, you're going to get bandits,

because most people are traveling with some kind of means with them.

And it's just think of Robin Hood.

It's a very easy way to rob people because who are they going to rob?

We're going to get right here along this middle of nowhere path.

So Meriwether Lewis gets there before his enslaved men who are coming behind

him with these four trunks, gets a room.

He gets, he eats dinner, Priscilla and the children go to the other room.

cabin and he's there in the night or before the end of the night, the two

men of color get there and they're put up in like a barn, like a lean to

that's a little bit away from the house.

Not far, but because we've been there, if you want to see our video, it's

probably where the parking lot is.

So it's not

Yeah, everything's pretty

close

pretty close.

And they there and there for the night.

Well, about two o'clock in the middle of the night, two gunshots

pretty close together go off.

Now, Priscilla like I said, there's three different stories that she gives.

She gives a story right away when Neely gets there,

the day later, Neely will get there after he's died.

Neely will be the one who will be the eyewitness to, he'll

hear Priscilla's first story.

Her first story is, she heard the two gunshots.

She had her children go wake the servants, the two men, the two men went to Lewis.

Lewis was distraught and he's, he gave these great like last lines,

like I am too strong to die.

The Lord take me.

He was begging for water.

They gave him water.

He basically bled out and died.

About six years later, she's interviewed again for a newspaper and she

claims that Louis came to her door.

After she heard the two gunshots, knocked on her door, screaming and

like moaning, asking for water.

She was too afraid to give him water.

She heard him scratching the, the gourd of the bucket at

the well, trying to get water.

And she's still too afraid to go out and give him water.

He comes to her door again, knocking for water.

Please help me get some water.

He , wanders around, they see him like, fall down.

He falls over a tree stump, he falls down, and then, and then she sends her

two kids to go get the two servants.

And then two servants come and help him.

And same thing, he's asking for water, they give him water and he dies.

And then the end of her life it's, it's a It's, he was the night

he was screaming and yelling.

He was like talking to himself.

He, it was almost like he was having a conversation with himself at dinner.

And then he got very aggressive.

He looked out the window and was like talking to someone

who was very aggressive.

And she asked him questions and he like just stared at her and she

didn't understand what was happening.

And he was, he was just very like, someone's following me.

Like he was very anxious.

And.

She wasn't sure what that was all and that's like the end of her life.

She's telling this

story.

So three separate

stories Even though she really is the only eyewitness and then the

family story is Robert grinder

. When the ser when when Perna and Neely's servant find the Lewis in the room.

He's conscious, but a piece of his forehead is blown

away, exposing his brain.

And it says without having blood much, which I find very hard to believe,

but he was wearing a Buffalo robe, Buffalo skin robe, probably what he

got from his expedition, because he probably gathered a lot of things.

He's I bet the blood, you couldn't tell from the Buffalo skin.

And he had uncovered the side with, he showed the, but a bullet

had entered right under his chest.

So when I say he was shot in the gut, like he was shot in the

gut, like right under his chest.

It was the second and he begged them to take his rifle and blow out his brain.

So he had asked them to finish the job.

And in return, he'd give him all the money he had in his trunk.

He said, I'm no coward, but I'm so strong, so hard to die.

He told Perna, not to be afraid that he would not hurt him, but

two hours later he had died just as the sun rose above the trees.

They kind of just let him die.

He will bury him in the Pioneer Cemetery, which is right beside

the cabin, if you see our

like 50

So Pioneer Cemetery what are you talking about?

When people take this Natchez Trace, think of it a lot like the Oregon Trail.

Think of people are settling, right?

They're moving their families and people will die along the trail

because of disease and sickness.

And it's very sad even when we looked at some of them that are marked, which I'm

sure that is very few that are marked.

But do you see

infant?

I think we saw

Yes.

Do you see a whole families?

You see it, so it very much is reminiscent of the Oregon Trail, where people will

get sick, it'll take out a whole family.

You probably have different kind of massacres that are

happening along the trace.

I mean, this is still very volatile, white settlers, American Indians.

And it's just a, a cemetery that was along the trace there.

And so he's buried there in that cemetery.

Neely wrote a letter to Jefferson saying that he decently buried him

as I could in that place, and if there's anything else they'd like him

to do, he's, he waited instructions.

So the only doctor to examine Lewis's body did not do so

until 40 years later in 1848.

The Tennessee State Commission, including Dr.

Samuel Moore, was charged with locating Lewis's grave.

So there was some guy who ran the cemetery who knew where Lewis's grave was.

It's it's over here.

And when they dug up the body, they verified that there was a

gunshot to the head and to the gut.

The commission wrote in its official report, even though the impression

had long prevailed that Lewis died by his own hand, it seemed more probable

he died by the hand of assassins.

And that's what opened up this whole idea that it wasn't suicide.

It

Well, to be perfectly just from a common sense perspective, it, it

seems unlikely to me that someone would try to shoot themselves in the gut.

And then in the head, right?

Like he would do this himself.

Like he would try

Yeah, well, if they think he shot himself in the head first,

And then he tried to shoot

yeah, which I think you'd be so delirious from a headshot.

I mean, your brain is exposed.

Whole thing is just

a gun.

Right.

So it just seems.

improbable, but because Jefferson and Clark, when they both hear of

the suicide, and because of what had happened two weeks earlier with them,

with him trying to jump off the boat, and because they knew him to be melancholy

at times and not good keeping up his correspondence, they weren't surprised

by the suicide the suicide theory.

And because of that, you get.

Like I said, famous historian Stephen Ambrose, who wrote Undaunted Courage

about the whole Lewis and Clark expedition, who's not questioning the

suicides.

Yeah it was just kind of universally

very much.

And because there could be a family component because, and for me, there is

one thing that kind of really is strong for me that it, that it was more suicide

than someone else is that when Lewis sees.

the two servants.

He doesn't say, someone shot me, right?

He doesn't say this was someone else.

Now, he doesn't say he was robbed, although no money is found that he

had, he had borrowed money when he went to Fort Pickering to make the trip.

The money's gone.

But there could be other people.

Plus, there are other theories.

People have put forth James Wilkinson that was the governor of Louisiana.

That didn't like him very much, that was kind of following him,

that he had paid someone to do it.

And that's kind of what he was so kind of afraid about.

Like he knew someone was after him and that he was more mad about the situation.

So he's not going to be like, someone shot me.

He was more like, why can't I just die just so now there's other

theories against the suicide that he.

was not in his right state of mind, and the theories for that are the

malaria because of the opium and syphilis has been put because,

and Clark has a child with an American Indian woman while he's on the expedition.

Lewis?

Oh, Clark does.

So it's not far fetched to think Lewis probably wasn't sleeping

with American Indian women as well.

Yeah.

And you see there is evidence of Lewis looking up ways to cure

syphilis, ways to cure venereal disease.

And he was taking, I think it was Mercury tablets or something to help and but

if everybody knows stages of syphilis do involve mental delirium because

it does it's a disease that affects your brain and so those are theories.

that family has put forth about his erratic behavior, about the way he was

acting, about the melancholy, about all of these things where he's so good in some

essences of his job as governor, and then he'll be so backwards and not communicate.

And then he's so good again.

And then he's so backwards that he he's having these issues with this mental.

health, and it's brought on by these illnesses.

Now, the family has tried to exhume the grave, because if you can exhume

the grave and get DNA samples, which would still be present in bone

marrow, you can test for those things.

And it could give some families, some closure or to try to make sense

of these these very few eyewitness stories that you have which really

one lady changing her story three times and Maybe putting together

what's really going on with Lewis.

don't know if the family feels ashamed of the suicide I don't know if that is

the case or they just want more answers

But the family has signed a suicide petition over 200 family members.

Now, Lewis doesn't have any direct descendants because he

never had any children, but he had sisters who had children.

He has nieces and

and

He had, and they're descendants of the Lewis family.

So he does have

that

that.

They are a

and they're

And there's like people in William and Mary or Lewis family members.

And so they have, they're all on board with this.

They would really love to have this body exhumed for testing.

Now this area, and we talked about it, is owned by the National Park Service,

and the National Park Service does not do disinterments to test for any kind of

Yeah, I think you even said that they, it was one of

those things they just can't set

They don't want to set the precedence, and then, when you see

our video, you see how sporadic these pioneer graves are, there really is no

rhyme or reason to how they're buried.

It looks very haphazard and scattered as a pioneer cemetery would be.

And so the national park service is concerned about disrupting other

graves, which completely makes sense.

I don't think Stephen Ambrose did a great job.

I think because it probably was a secondary story to what he was telling.

And he just kind of, Because Thomas Jefferson, and William Clark

are not questioning the suicide, he just says that is accurate.

Instead of what, there's other stuff, if you were just investigating the

death, there's other stuff around the death that probably could Use

more of a lens to look through.

And as historians today have done more, a deeper dive into those things

and giving them more probability, which is only could be answered by,

So, how did his, his journals and all that stuff finally, I

still, do they still make it to

DC?

He still made it.

Neely took them?

So they, what's the aftermath here?

Clark, he has a great life.

He lives to old age, has a bunch of kids takes care of second to be

a son he is very much a, a mean

enslaver, which is too bad that Lewis couldn't have been

more of an influence on him.

Perna, Perna tries to go to Jefferson's house to get his 200, turned away by

Jefferson, ends up committing suicide.

So what did he know?

What did he not know?

Maybe he's just, so destitute as well.

did he actually

Yeah, did he actually commit suicide?

His journals eventually make it to DC and he is completely

cleared of all wrongdoing.

So he was right all

He was

right all along.

All his debts are paid.

He was right all along.

He's completely exonerated.

When they finally get his letters and get all of his stuff, they

realize he has done nothing wrong.

he's been doing his best out

He's been doing his best.

Everything is documented and he's completely exonerated and paid.

So really the name of Lewis as a leader holds tight today as

an influencer holds tight today.

It's just the end of his

of his

that has the big question mark.

too, so much stuff going on, whether it's, it's disease or

mental or external circumstances.

It sounds like it sounds like those last couple of years were pretty tumultuous

and like I said, for a man that's so important to American history, so

tied, everybody learns about the Lewis and

Clark Expedition.

He's the first name in the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

For his end of life to be such a question of American history,

I just think it deserves more

of American history, I just it deserves some more answers.

Place to visit.

It's a fun video to watch.

So obviously that link will be in the show notes of this.

But I would encourage you guys about an hour outside of Nashville.

If you want to go visit it, it's kind of out there.

If you want to go do some outdoorsy stuff, but it was pretty neat.

the Lewis and Clark expedition stands as a monumental

achievement in American history.

And Lewis's role in it should not be forgotten.

Lewis alongside William Clark led the historic Corps of Discovery expedition,

forging a path westward and opening up vast new territories in the United States.

He documented countless plant and animal species, meticulously mapped

the unknown and fostered relationships with Native American tribes.

Though his final chapter remains a mystery, Lewis's legacy as a trailblazer

is undeniable, but in the end, did Lewis succumb to his own demons or was

there a more sinister plot at play?

remains shrouded in mystery.

Thank you for listening to the Talk with History podcast, and please reach out to

us at our website, talk with history.com.

But more importantly, if you know someone else that might enjoy this

podcast, please share it with shoot 'em a text and tell 'em to look us up.

We rely on you, our community to grow and we appreciate you all every day.

We'll talk to you next time.

time.

Thank you.

Hey, let me record this real fast so you can cut it in.

Nearly.

So the guy who's traveling with Lewis, he continues for three more

years as an agent to the Chickasaws.

And then he's abruptly discharged by the secretary of war for incompetence.

And then he disappears from the pages of history.

Really?

Yeah.

Just poof.

exactly.

Huh.

So that all these kinds of people

surrounded.

This would make such an movie.

You could totally just like kind of start from the tail end of the

expedition and follow Lewis all the way

It's very

Huh.