Meriwether Lewis - Death

Death

On September 3, 1809, Lewis set out for Washington, D.C., where he hoped to resolve issues regarding the denied payment of drafts he had drawn against the War Department while serving as the first American governor of the Louisiana Territory. Some accounts say he carried his journals with him for delivery to his publisher. Lewis intended to travel to Washington by ship from New Orleans, but changed his plans while en route down the Mississippi from St. Louis. He decided to make an overland journey via the Natchez Trace and then east to Washington. The Natchez Trace was the old pioneer road between Natchez, Mississippi, and Nashville, Tennessee. On October 10, 1809, Lewis stopped at an inn on the Natchez Trace called Grinder's Stand, about 70 miles (110 km) southwest of Nashville. After leaving dinner, he went to his bedroom. In the predawn hours of October 11, the innkeeper heard gunshots. Servants found Lewis badly injured from multiple gunshot wounds, including one to the head. He died shortly after sunrise.

While modern historians generally accept his death as a suicide, there is some debate. Priscilla Grinder, the tavern-keeper's wife, claimed Lewis acted strangely the night before his death. She said that during dinner, Lewis stood and paced about the room talking to himself in the way one would speak to a lawyer. She observed his face to flush as if it had come on him in a fit. After he retired for the evening, she continued to hear him talking to himself. At some point in the night, she heard multiple gunshots, and what she believed was someone calling for help. She claimed to be able to see Lewis through the slit in the door crawling back to his room. She never explained why, at the time, she did not investigate further concerning Lewis' condition or the source of the gunshots. The next morning, she sent for Lewis' servants. They found him wounded and bloody, with part of his skull gone, but he lived for several hours. Priscilla Grinder's testimony is held as a point of contention from both sides of the murder–suicide debate. The murder advocates point to five conflicting testimonies as evidence that hers is fabricated, and the suicide advocates point to her testimony as proof of suicide. In the book The History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, first printed in 1893, the editor Elliott Coues expresses doubt about Thomas Jefferson's conclusion that Lewis committed suicide as presented in the former President's Memoir of Meriwether Lewis, which is included in the book. In a lengthy review of information available to him in the 1890s, Elliott Coues states:

Undoubtedly Jefferson wrote in the light of all the evidence that had reached him in 1813, but it appears that his view of the case was far from being that of persons who lived in the vicinity of the scene at the time. That Governor Lewis did not die by his own hand, but was murdered and robbed, was common report at the time, as vouched by some persons still living....

The only doctor to examine Lewis' body did so in 1848. He reported that Lewis appeared to have died "by the hand of an assassin". Lewis' descendants have retained the report.

When Clark and Jefferson were informed of Lewis' death, both accepted the conclusion of suicide. His mother and relatives contended it was murder. In later years, a court of inquiry explored whether they could charge the husband of the tavern-keeper with Lewis' death. They dropped the inquiry for lack of evidence or motive.

From 1993–2010, many of Lewis' kin (through his sister Jane, as he had no children) sought to have the body exhumed for forensic analysis, to try to determine whether the death was a suicide. A Tennessee coroner's jury in 1996 recommended exhumation. Since Lewis is buried in a national park, the National Park Service must approve; they refused the request in 1998, citing possible disturbance to the bodies of more than 100 pioneers buried nearby. In 2008 the Department of Interior approved the exhumation, but that decision was rescinded in 2010 upon policy review, and the Department has stated the last decision is final. It is making improvements to the grave site and visitor facility.