Part 3 of 3: The Suppressed History of America...Giants in Ancient America...The Hero Returns...Friends in High Places...The Murder of Meriwether Lewis

 The Suppressed History of America

The Murder of Meriwether Lewis 

and the Mysterious Discoveries of 

the Lewis and Clark Expedition

By Paul Schrag and Xaviant Haze

Seven 

Giants in Ancient America 

Meriwether Lewis, described as a giant of American history, may have been preceded by an entire race of real, historical giants. 

Despite being a prominent theme in all the world’s mythologies, the lore about giants generally remains in the realm of children’s tales. It seems odd then that ancient peoples from different parts of the globe would all write and speak of an age of giants. 

Genesis 6:4 offers, “There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” 

In another famous biblical account we learn about the battle between David and Goliath. While digging at Tell es-Safi in 2005, archaeologists from Bar-Ilan University in Israel discovered pottery sherds mentioning the name of Goliath. The writing on the shards represents the oldest Philistine inscriptions ever found. The area of Tell es-Safi was known in ancient times as the lands of Gath; it encompasses an area surrounding two large mounds located on the border between the Judean foothills and the coastal plain. Covering more than a hundred acres, it’s one of the most important archaeological sites in Israel. Professor Aren Maeir, director of the Tell es-Safi/ Gath Archaeological Project, suggests that the discoveries being made there point to the legends being real. 

He says in a press release issued by Bar-Ilan University, “This inscription appears to provide evidence that the biblical story of Goliath is, in fact, based on more or less, the time which is depicted in the biblical text, and recent attempts to claim that Goliath can only be understood in the context of later phases of the Iron Age are unwarranted.”1 

What’s more surprising than reified biblical accounts are stories of giants living in the West. Some of the American giants’ last days have been preserved in what remains of the writings of the conquistadores. The valuable information contained in the various writings from the Spanish invasion of the New World is so fantastic it’s hard to believe what they say. 

Thanks to the tremendous amount of research done by Stephen Quayle, who brought to light the verified written accounts of giants from the early sixteenth century, there now appears to be bona fide written evidence that as little as five hundred years ago giants were living in the Americas.

In 1519, Alonzo Álvarez de Pineda mapped the lands along the Gulf Coast, strategically marking the various rivers and bays, noticeable landmarks, and porting areas, all of which belonged to the king of Spain. After covering the coastlines from Florida to as far as Tampico, Mexico, Pineda sailed back to the mouth of the Mississippi River. Pineda was the first Spanish explorer to venture up the mighty Mississippi, and he reports finding a large settlement of native villages inhabited by giants. After the giants proved to be friendly, Pineda and crew settled among them to rest and make repairs.

Pineda detailed the abundance of gold found in the river, and how the natives wore plenty of gold-engraved ornaments. It’s amazing how Pineda was more interested in the lands, good food, and the shock of discovering giants than he was in gold. As he sailed back to his home base in Jamaica, he made note of more giants encountered on the various islands of the Texas coast. When Pineda returned, he presented Francisco de Garay, the Spanish governor of Jamaica, with the maps and sketches of the entire Gulf Coast. The first known map of the gulf also included Pineda’s writings about the fantastic race of giants living there. These sketches and writings are known as Garay’s Cédula and were archived by the famous Spanish compiler Martín Fernández de Navarrete. They can be found today by visiting the Archivo General de Indias, in Seville, Spain.

Twenty years after Pineda mapped the Gulf, Francisco Coronado marched with a huge expedition across the American Southwest searching for the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola, or what we refer to today as El Dorado. While on their quest Coronado’s expedition crossed paths with several tribes of Indian giants. We have this information thanks to the writings of Pedro de Castaneda, who accompanied Coronado and wrote the complete and amazing history of the expedition. A fascinating tale concerning giants found in Castaneda’s book details the journey made by Hernando de Alarcón.

Low on provisions, a frantic Coronado sent Alarcón to find a river that could bring supplies more easily to the Spanish outposts along the California and Mexican coasts. After nearly destroying his ships and missing the waiting party at the rendezvous point, Alarcón haphazardly floated up the mouth of the murky Colorado River. Alarcón and his men became the first Europeans to fight the rough rapids as he brought his fleet into the heart of the Colorado River, reaching as far as the lower reaches of the Grand Canyon. While coasting up the river, Alarcón and his men came upon a settlement of an estimated two hundred giant warriors. These giants, amazed by foreign intruders on the riverbanks, were ready to attack.[Interesting I have had dreams of being a giant in the Southwest.I also have had dreams of being an Indian,but I have never put the two together in a single dream...  One vivid dream I was out running, leaped into the Grand Canyon with no fear, landed on my feet and kept running. DC]

But Alarcón defused the situation by making peace and offering gifts, which eventually won them over. These giants were later categorized with the prevailing tribes of the area as being the Cocopa Indians. A thousand more members of this giant tribe were discovered and reported farther upstream.

Discoveries of giants have also been reported in Mexico. The Dominican friar Diego Durán is responsible for writing some of the earliest Western books on the history and culture of the Aztecs. His family moved from Spain to Mexico City when he was very young, which allowed him to grow up around the remaining natives of Mexico. While attending school he was frequently exposed to Aztec culture, then under the colonial rule of Spain. He continued to study and travel within the remaining city-states of the Aztec empire. In Texcoco he learned to speak and read the native Nahuatl Aztec language. By winning the Aztecs’ trust, he was able to gain access to a vast amount of knowledge concerning the history of pre-Columbian Mexico.

His writings are some of the oldest known surviving texts that give us actual firsthand narratives from the ancient Aztecs. Because he spent thirty-two years among the Aztecs gathering information, learning how to read ancient native hieroglyphics, and interviewing old shamans, scholars regard Durán’s work as extremely important. In The History of the Indies of New Spain, he exhaustively describes the history of Mexico from its mysterious ancient origins up to conquest and occupation by the Spaniards. In these writings the Aztecs were not shy when it came to talking about giants.

But Durán didn’t need to hear or read about them. He could see them. 

While living in Mexico he came in contact with giant Indians on several occasions. Writing about these encounters, he says emphatically, “It cannot be denied that there have been giants in this country. I can affirm this as an eyewitness, for I have met men of monstrous stature here. I believe that there are many in Mexico who will remember, as I do, a giant Indian who appeared in a procession of the feast of Corpus Christi. He appeared dressed in yellow silk and a halberd at his shoulder and a helmet on his head. And he was all of three feet taller than the others.”2 

Bernal Díaz del Castillo marched as a swordsman in the army under Hernán Cortés during the conquest of Mexico. After surviving these expeditions he lived to be an old man and wrote what is regarded as an exceptionally accurate narrative of the famous campaign. His book would come to be known as The True History of the Conquest of New Spain. Unfortunately Díaz died before seeing his book published. 

Fifty years later the manuscript was found in a Madrid library. It was finally published in 1632. The book provides an eyewitness account of the conquest of Mexico, and it remains one of the most significant sources documenting the collapse of the Aztec Empire and the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Díaz recounts the history of the now-defeated Tlaxcaltec Indians, mentioning a race of enormous giants that had once inhabited their land. During these encounters Díaz even had the chance to examine firsthand evidence of this long-forgotten race.

He writes:

They said their ancestors had told them that very tall men and women with huge bones had once dwelt among them. But because they were a very bad people with wicked customs they had fought against them and killed them, and those of them who remained had died off. And to show us how big these giants had been they brought us the leg-bone of one, which was very thick and the height of an ordinary-sized man, and that was a leg-bone from the hip to the knee. I measured myself against it, and it was as tall as I am, though I am of a reasonable height. They brought other pieces of bone of the same kind, but they were all rotten and eaten away by the soil. We were all astonished by the sight of these bones and felt certain there must have been giants in that land.3

An Italian scholar from Venice, Antonio Pigafetta, traveled with famous Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and his crew on their voyage to the Indies. During the expedition Pigafetta became Magellan’s assistant and kept an accurate journal that detailed the various encounters with native giants. In Magellan’s Voyage: A Narrative of the First Circumnavigation, there are numerous references to giants. Pigafetta amusingly writes: 

We had been two whole months in this harbor without sighting anyone when one day (without anyone expecting it) we saw on the shore a huge giant, who was naked, and who danced, leaped and sang, all the while throwing sand and dust on his head. Our Captain ordered one of the crew to walk towards him, telling this man also to dance, leap and sing as a sign of friendship. This he did, and led the giant to a place by the shore where the Captain was waiting. And when the giant saw us, he marveled and was afraid, and pointed to the sky, believing we came from heaven. He was so tall that even the largest of us came only to midway between his waist and his shoulder.4 

Pigafetta was among the surviving 18 men who returned to Spain in 1522. The other 240 men of the expedition all died, including Magellan. 

Around the same time that Magellan was having his difficulties, the famed Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci was charting the Caribbean islands off the coast of Venezuela. Amerigo, for whom one-third of the world would later be named, wrote about the giants he encountered on the modern-day island of Curaçao.

Recounting this experience, Vespucci writes, “We landed to see if we could find fresh water, and imagining that the island was not inhabited because we saw no people. Going along the shore we beheld very large footprints of men on the sand. And we judged if their other members were of corresponding size, that they must be very big men.”5 

As Vespucci and his men ventured into the island jungle he writes, “We discovered a trail and set ourselves to walk on it two leagues and a half inland; we met with a village of twelve houses in which we did not find anyone except five women, two old ones and three girls so lofty in stature that we gazed at them in astonishment.”6

Vespucci and his men were invited to eat and drink. While doing so they formed a plan to kidnap the three exotic girls. But their plans dissolved quickly when the giant men of the village returned. In a state of anxiety, Vespucci recalls:[typical tool of the European scum DC]

While we were thus plotting, thirty-six men arrived, who entered the house where we were drinking, and they were of such lofty stature that each of them was taller when upon his knees than I was when standing erect. Men that were so well built, it was a famous sight to see them. They were of the stature of giants in their great size and in the proportion of their bodies, which corresponded with their height. When the men entered, some of our fellows were so frightened that at the moment they thought they were done for. The warriors had bows and arrows and tremendous oar blades finished off like swords. When they saw our small stature, they began to converse with us to learn who we were and whence we came. We gave them soft words for the sake of amity and replied to them in sign language that we were men of peace and that we were out to see the world. In fact, we judged it wise to part from them without controversy, and so we went by the same trail by which we had come. They stuck with us all the way to the sea and until we embarked.7 

Vespucci and company made it safely back to their boats and fired off a few shots from their guns. The frightened giants scattered back into their villages, and Vespucci sailed away. He promptly named Curaçao the Isle of Giants. 

One of the most famous and colorful figures of the American Old West was “Buffalo Bill” Cody, an American soldier, bison hunter, and early frontier showman. Buffalo Bill wrote in his autobiography about the strange beliefs of the Pawnee Indians. While camping with Cody and an Army surgeon, the Indians presented them with very large bones. One of them was supposedly a thigh bone from a giant. Cody and the surgeon were amused as they listened to the Pawnee explain the origins of the bone. 

Cody writes, “The Indians said the bones were of a race of people who long ago lived in that country. They said these people were three times the size of a man of present day, and were so swift they could run by the side of a buffalo, and taking the animal in one arm, could tear off a leg and eat it as they ran.”8 

He continues: 

These giants denied the existence of a Great Spirit, when they heard the thunder or saw the lightning, they laughed and declared that they were greater than either. This so displeased the Great Spirit that he caused a deluge. The water rose higher and higher so that it drove these proud, and conceited giants from the low ground to the hills, and thence to the mountains, but at last even the mountaintops were submerged and then those mammoth men were all drowned. After the flood had subsided, the Great Spirit came to the conclusion that he had made man too large and powerful, and that he would therefore, correct the mistake by creating a race of men of smaller size and less strength. This is the reason, say the Indians, that modern men are small and not like the giants of old. The story has been handed down among the Pawnee for generations, and they claim that this story is a matter of Indian history, but what is its origin no man can say.9 

The giant bones belonging to Buffalo Bill were eventually given to a museum, which promptly lost them.

According to an article published in the May 13, 1928, edition of the Humboldt Star, a nine-foot-tall red-haired mummy was discovered deep inside the Lovelock Cave, located twenty miles south of the town of Lovelock, Nevada. Isolated on top of a high hill, the cave is estimated to be 40 feet deep and 180 feet wide. The Paiute Indians told the early Nevadan settlers fantastic stories about the origins of the cave, including tales about their fierce battles with red-haired white giants. In their oral history they claimed to have cornered the remaining giants in Lovelock Cave. Once the giants were trapped, the Piutes blocked the entrance with sagebrush and set it on fire. They reportedly stoked the fire until all the remaining giants had been smothered by smoke.

Further evidence supporting local legends about giants had emerged in 1911 when a mining company plowing for bat guano in Lovelock Cave began to find amazing artifacts. They discovered layers of burned materials and broken arrows that validated the Piutes’ claims. Further down they found the remains of giant red-haired mummies, along with strange stone artifacts and shells carved with mysterious symbols. As usual most of these artifacts were either lost or fell into the hands of private collectors who whisked them away. One museum did manage to preserve some of the items discovered at Lovelock Cave. 

The Humboldt County Museum at Winnemucca, Nevada, has in its collection a skull from one of the giants. Stan Nielsen, the famed treasure hunter, pilot, and photojournalist, went to investigate this skull with some dental plaster and a camera. The museum curator graciously allowed Nielsen to compare the plaster model of a normal-size man’s jaw with a jaw of one of the giants found in the museum’s collection. The photographic evidence clearly shows the vast difference in size between the plaster model and the immense jaw from the giant skull. What’s more amazing is that anyone can see this skull for themselves by contacting the friendly staff at the Humbolt County Museum. Recent e-mail transactions have verified that some of the sensational Lovelock Cave artifacts, including a giant skull, are being kept in the back room of the museum. 

But stories about similar sensational discoveries continue to this very day. An article published online June 29, 2010, by National Geographic titled “Diver ‘Vanishes’ in Portal to Maya Underworld” discusses the recent exploits by the Belize Institute of Archaeology, which was busy exploring the underwater cave system in Belize. Seemingly buried in the article is the important statement made by lead archaeologist Lisa Lucero concerning the discovery of several fossil beds 60 to 90 feet below the surface. While diving and digging through these deep fossil beds, Lucero discovered “femur bones the size of a bowling ball.” These giant bones were discovered near elephant tusks and pelvic bones. Lucero admits to leaving the giant bones behind, saying, “We left those in place. We only removed a few small fossils so we can determine, are they fossilized? Or bone? They are definitely fossilized, so we know they have to be of a certain age. But were they here, were these megafauna present during occupation by humans 20,000, 15,000 years ago? Or are they much older?”10 

The remains of ancient giants in America are scarce, but evidence, both empirical and anecdotal, does exist. By reading the various newspapers and town journals of the 1800s a serious investigator will find a surprising number of stories about discoveries concerning giants. Many tales emerge from mounds that were being excavated by hordes of new frontiersmen moving west along the trail blazed by the Corps of Discovery.

Lewis and Clark’s mission was to find a sensible route to the Pacific Ocean, to categorize the plants and animals, to map the land, and to give new names to the rivers and mountains. Most of all, they came to prepare the way for the onslaught of a new civilization built on concepts of progress, change, and exploitation of resources that were utterly alien to the native people. As trusted friends and military men of experience, they were hand-picked by President Jefferson for this monumental mission. Their instructions were precise.

Their meticulous handling, documenting, and recording of data was necessary and vital to their mission. It is therefore inexplicable that the main participant of this journey would have missing dates and gaps in his journal from October 24 to November 17, 1805, and that it would be unclear on what day exactly the expedition reached the Pacific Ocean. The odd and scattered accounts during those days, and up to November 17, suggest that they may have spent some time doing something other than seeking a way to the beach.

Eight 

The Hero Returns 

The winter spent in Fort Clatsop was a difficult one for the Corps of Discovery. The days were dreary, cloudy, and cold, with little sunlight. The food supply was low, and the explorers had to resort to rationing as the salmon ran out and the bad weather made it impossible to conduct any successful hunting outings. The return trip home weighed heavily on the men’s hearts as they contemplated the long journey back and the possible disasters awaiting them. 

With low morale attributed to starvation, the Corps of Discovery left Fort Clatsop on March 23, 1806, to face fighting the river currents and falls of the Columbia. Bruised and battered, they decided to ditch their canoes and head inland. They retrieved their horses from the Nez Percé and waited for the mountain snow to melt before riding back to the Continental Divide. Here the corps split into two teams. Lewis wanted to explore the Marias River, which he named after his beloved cousin, and took three men along on this detour. He wanted to research the northern reaches of the Marias, and although he didn’t know it at the time, Lewis and his team were wandering into sacred hunting grounds. 

The decision to explore this new territory suggests that Lewis was in full military strategist mode and had become focused on achieving the primary goal of discovering a river route to the Pacific. Locating a route between the Marias and Saskatchewan Rivers would have been helpful in cutting into the pockets of Canadian fur traders. The Canadians dominated the lucrative fur trade business, and America was desperate to get a piece of the action. Lewis was looking for a breakthrough to fulfill this part of the expedition’s assignment. If he had suffered a mental breakdown at Fort Clatsop, it seems questionable that he would have been so motivated. 

Unfortunately the route did not appear, and Lewis had no choice but to continue downriver, where he encountered the Blackfeet tribe. The Blackfeet, who controlled most of the north Saskatchewan River to Canada, noticed the lost white strangers. The natives were heavily armed and known for unprovoked attacks on their neighbors, the Nez Percé and Shoshone.

When the horse-riding warriors approached Lewis, he feared the worst. Outnumbered but alert, Lewis was prepared to fight to the death if the warriors made any attempt to rob him of his papers, survey instruments, or gun. The Blackfeet were shocked to see these white men trotting upon their land and were equally uneasy. The two parties awkwardly shook hands. Lewis knew he was in a vulnerable position, but when the Blackfeet invited him and his men to camp, he had little choice but to agree.

This was the first time they had encountered this tribe, and there were many things Lewis was not aware of. For example, he was unaware that the Blackfeet had been given guns by Canadian and British traders. The Blackfeet’s dominance over the Nez Percé and Shoshone depended on this advantage. Lewis made the mistake of telling the Blackfeet about their earlier dealings with the Nez Percé and Shoshone tribes and naively explained how he was arming and cooperating with the Blackfeet’s rivals, unknowingly creating a direct threat to their interests. Hoping for peace and a decent night’s rest, Lewis offered the Blackfeet some horses and tobacco.

He assigned one man to lookout duty, and Lewis and the others were able to fall asleep. Exhausted, the man on duty also fell asleep. Taking advantage of the situation, a Blackfeet warrior slyly pilfered some of their  guns and was making his escape when one of Lewis’s men woke in time to see him running. The commotion that ensued ended the fretful rest, and Lewis awoke from a “profound” sleep to a chaotic nightmare. After a chase the young Blackfeet thief was caught by one of Lewis’s men. Instead of returning the weapons, the young warrior decided to make a fight out of it. As they wrestled Lewis’s man pulled out his knife and plunged it deep into the Blackfeet’s chest and killed him. 

Moments later the other Blackfeet thieves were rounded up and the guns retrieved. But this was just another distraction as Lewis saw that other Blackfeet were now attempting to steal their horses. Losing their horses would have been an irreparable disaster as this would have left the small band of men alone with no means of escape. Giving his men instruction to shoot if the renegades got brave, Lewis went after the Blackfeet who had taken his horse. Lewis gave chase until he ran out of breath. What followed was the most frightening encounter of his journey. He writes in his journal: 

at the distance of three hundred paces they entered one of those steep nitches in the bluff with the horses before them being nearly out of breath. I could pursue no further, I called to them as I had done several times before that I would shoot them if they did not give me my horse and raised my gun. One of them jumped behind a rock and spoke to the other who turned around and stopped at the distance of 30 steps from me and I shot him through the belly. He fell to his knees and on his right elbow from which position he partly raised himself up and fired at me. And turning himself about crawled in behind a rock, which was a few feet from him. He overshot me. Being bareheaded I felt the wind of his bullet very distinctly.1 

After the shooting, the rest of the Indians fled. Lewis knew he and his men were now in a world of trouble. An ill-fated diplomatic excursion had ended in death for two Blackfeet and near-disaster for him and his men. The echo of the nearly fatal whizzing bullet left him shaken. He rounded up the men and available horses, and fearful of a revenge party, they rode fast and hard out of there. Lewis left behind a reminder of his presence by placing the Jefferson peace medal around the neck of the dead warrior. He and his men rode frantically back to the Missouri, hoping for a reunion with the rest of the Corps of Discovery. 

Meanwhile Clark and his group had entered Crow territory along the Yellowstone River in present-day northern Wyoming. By then it was summer, and the refreshing breeze must have been a welcome change from the chilling Oregon winter, and a sign they were closer to the culmination of the journey. 

While Clark and his men were setting up camp on the riverbanks, the Crow amicably approached them. However, their friendliness was a facade. The Crow natives were the most notorious horse thieves of the plains. By morning half of Clark’s horses were gone, and not a single Crow could be found. The loss of horses made the journey difficult, because the group had to walk long stretches in the heat until new horses were located. 

In contrast to Lewis’s troubled exploration of the Missouri and Marias, Clark’s trip along the Yellowstone held pleasant surprises and visual wonders. Though he missed discovering Yellowstone Park by about forty miles, Clark did discover monuments recognized by other ancient travelers. 

The most memorable one is a giant sandstone pillar containing ancient petroglyphs, which Clark named “Pompy’s Tower” after Sacagawea’s infant son, whom he had nicknamed “Pompy,” which means “little chief.” Captain Clark carved the date and his name on the rock, and he detailed in his journal the various images he tried to make out of the petroglyphs. Many of the oldest glyphs have eroded with time, but Clark’s signature has been framed and protected by a thin screen. These weren’t the only petroglyphs Clark encountered on the return journey. In Kansas, a short distance from the mouth of the Nemaha River, he examined petroglyphs that resembled stars in the night sky. 

After camping near the pillar, Clark and his team continued their journey. Surrounded by bison, they had no shortage of food or panoramic views. The ever-stretching skies blanketed them as they rode their bullboats down the Yellowstone River. They stopped periodically so a few of Clark’s men could venture into the wilderness to hunt for food. Clark’s men weren’t the only ones seeking nourishment in the area. Meriwether Lewis and his men had escaped a sure death from the Blackfeet as they hurried down the Missouri. Eager to be reunited with the expedition at the convergence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, Lewis rode at a blistering pace. 

Exhausted and hungry after a long stretch, Lewis took a break from riding and ventured into the woods to hunt. Spotting some elk, Lewis began to aim his rifle when he was shot in the hip by a bullet. He clutched his hip and screamed out in pain. Lewis immediately assumed one of his own men had shot him, but when he didn’t hear a response, he feared it might have been hostile natives. Rushing back to the river, he organized the men and moved on. There were no native tribes to be seen in the vicinity, and none of the men ever admitted to shooting him. For Lewis it was just another bad omen, a stack of which seemed to be growing since he had left the Pacific coast. Various theories emerged to explain the shooting. A volume of published speculation suggests that Lewis was mistaken for an elk by a poor-sighted riverman and translator Pierre Cruzatte and shot by mistake. 

On August 12, 1806, Lewis reunited with Clark and the rest of the expedition. Relieved and spent, Lewis showed Clark his injury. Fortunately the wound wasn’t life threatening. But the bullet had gone straight through, and the mangled flesh had become infected. With the help of natural medicine and rest, Lewis recovered but was in no mood for writing. His frustration is evident as he makes his last journal entry complaining about the pain he suffered from the gunshot wound. Knowing that the distance home was now shorter, he was eager to get into the canoes and sail with the currents back to St. Louis. It is at this point that Lewis assigns all future writing to Clark, and with obvious  relief he gives up his role as captain of the expedition. He abandons his sworn duties without much concern and settles back as a spectator. 

As Lewis and Clark made their way home during late September the expedition made more important zoological and botanical discoveries. In all, they discovered more than 179 new species of plants and trees and 122 species of animals, birds, and fish. 

As the Corps of Discovery glided down the Missouri, the stress from the journey gradually lifted. The explorers had participated in one of the most adventurous and amazing camping trips of all time and had lived to tell the world about it.

It must be restated here that Lewis and Clark were only rediscovering the ancient lands of America. Dr. Barry Fell was one of the figures who championed this notion, and another who paid a price for it. A Harvard-educated professor, Dr. Fell wrote groundbreaking works on New World epigraphy. This linguistic study consumed Fell as he researched and covered grounds his peers would not. Not surprisingly, the academic establishment ignored his revelations, trying their best to erase him from history with silence or critique. 

But when looking into Fell’s work it becomes clear he possessed an encyclopedic amount of knowledge, especially on the topics of ancient languages. Fell was far ahead of self-proclaimed experts who restrict their work to a single script or language. Fell studied all languages, and he wrote his first study on the ancient petroglyphs of Polynesia in 1940. His life’s work culminated in the publication of a trilogy of controversial books in the 1970s. The most famous of these three books was America BC. 

In it, based on his studies of ancient rock art, he proposed that Celts, Arabs, Phoenicians, and others had visited and traded with Native Americans long before Columbus. This simple truth was bashed by the academic world, and the facts were kept from the general public. The academics even brought out the big guns from the Smithsonian’s anthropology department to write the accepted scholarly rebuttal to Fell’s work. Letting the Smithsonian investigate theories of pre-Columbian visitors to America’s shores is like letting Charlie Manson investigate the Sharon Tate murders. [my side hurts from laughing so hard, good stuff DC]

It is important to bear in mind that the majority of the early European colonists were uneducated in cultural anthropology, and when they looked at any rock art, they had no idea as to the art’s antiquity, its significance, or about the people who had created it. The colonists could barely communicate with the Native Americans about simple survival. This lack of communication resulted in hundreds of years of knowledge waiting undiscovered or unexplored. Fell’s work changed all this, or was at least supposed to, before he was condemned.

Some of Fell’s work addressed the megalithic stone oddities found throughout the New England states. Known as America’s Stonehenge, the ruins found at Mystery Hill, New Hampshire, bear a striking resemblance to those found in England. Some of these stones contained inscriptions that Fell determined to be in the style of ancient Celtic ogham writing. When the inscriptions were translated, Fell discovered they were dedicated to the Celtic sun god, Bel. Bel was also known as Baal and was worshipped by the Phoenicians who came from ancient Palestine. These “eye of Bel” types of engravings have been found inside solar chambers all across New England. 

Fell made another bizarre discovery several miles off the coast of Maine, finding a stone inscribed in what he determined to be Goidelic Celtic writing. After deciphering it Fell determined that the tablet spoke of ships sailing from Phoenicia. This provided evidence of what many now assume to be true—that the Phoenicians and Celts were brave seafaring warriors who touched the lands of America before Columbus.

Fell provided another example of intercultural trade in ancient America when he studied a three-hundred-pound chunk of pink granite first discovered in Bourne, Massachusetts, around 1860. Fell was able to identify the letters inscribed on the stone as a variation of the Punic and Iberian alphabets found in ancient Spain. He translated the writing as recording the annexation of modern-day Massachusetts by Hanno the navigator, a commander of Carthage. The Carthaginians were the natural successors to the Phoenicians and continued the tradition of maritime dominance. Hanno was a real historical figure who explored and colonized along the African coast around 500 BCE. He founded several cities and set up trading posts. The Greeks had been referring to his heroic voyages since the tenth century CE. According to the Greeks, Hanno was said to have circumnavigated the Atlantic. 

After a lengthy examination of the ruins inhabiting the remote areas of Vermont, Fell was convinced of the importance of his discoveries, writing, “Within ten days we were finding dozens of Ogam inscriptions on another more remote site in central Vermont. It became clear that ancient Celts had built these stone chambers as religious shrines, and the Carthaginian mariners were visitors who were permitted to worship at them and make dedications in their own language to their own gods.”2 

Perhaps Fell’s most important contribution to pre-Columbian contact in America was his decipherment of the Davenport Stele. Found in 1874 in a burial mound in Iowa, this stele has been called the Rosetta Stone of the West. Inscribed on this stele were three different types of writing that Fell was able to read. They included Egyptian hieroglyphics, Iberian Punic, and Libyan script. Fell estimated the age of the stele to be ninth century BCE. Another curious stele thought to be of the same age was discovered around 1888 on Long Island, New York, and contains more Egyptian and Libyan script. 

This bilingual inscribed tablet referred to an expedition sent from Egypt. Fell suggested that early visitors from Egypt might have traded with the Algonquin Indians and perhaps taught them how to use Egyptian hieroglyphic signs in writing. Fell analyzed the inscriptions and began to compare them with writings of the Algonquin/Micmac Indians of Maine. Using an Indian-language dictionary prepared by a missionary around 1690, Fell noted the clear similarities between the written script of the Algonquin/Micmac Indians and that of ancient Egypt. He concluded that the Micmac language was actually a derivative of ancient Egyptian.  

This discovery from a professor at Harvard University should have shaken scholars. Instead the findings have been neglected and assigned to shelves of museums and libraries or buried in basement archives. There have been other Egyptian artifacts discovered in America that shared the same fate. A particularly interesting one is a 9-inch high Egyptian soapstone statue found in an ancient burial mound in Libertyville, Illinois. Information about this important discovery is only to be found in an obscure Ancient American magazine article from 1999. The well-crafted object clearly portrays an Egyptian man holding a shepherd’s crook and a flail, both of which are recognizable icons of ancient Egypt. 

In 1952 several coins bearing ancient Hebrew iconography were found in Kentucky. Dr. Ralph Marcus of the University of Chicago identified the iconography on the coins as being related to the revolt of the Jews against Rome in 132–135 CE. 

In Tennessee several artifacts have turned up bearing Hebrew script, the most important being the Bat Creek Stone, professionally excavated by the Smithsonian mound survey project in Tennessee in 1889. The Bat Creek Stone was unearthed from an undisturbed burial mound by Cyrus Thomas, who initially declared that the curious inscriptions didn’t resemble the Cherokee alphabet at all. The stone measures just five inches long and is inscribed with eight Paleo-Hebrew characters dating from about the first or second century CE. Roman coins dating from this period have also been discovered along the Ohio River in Kentucky. However, since the discoverer of these coins in 2009 was a humble fisherman, his claims were denied despite no official study to prove otherwise.

There seems to be no shortage of Roman coins in Kentucky. Once again the establishment chooses its best weapon—silence. 

Take, for example, the case in 1963, when a construction engineer found a stockpile of coins while excavating the north bank of the Ohio River. The coins were huddled together in the remains of a disintegrated leather pouch. The discoverer secretly kept most of the coins, but he did give two away to his friend, also an engineer on the project. Thirty years later the engineer’s widow brought these two coins to the Falls of the Ohio Museum in Clarksville, Indiana. The museum curator, Troy McCormick, identified one of the coins as a bronze of Claudius II, from 268 CE. The other coin was examined by Mark Lehman, an expert in ancient coins and president of Ancient Coins for Education, Inc. He recognized it as a follis of Maximinus II, from around 300 CE. The Falls of the Ohio Museum had these coins on display for a number of years until it was informed by the state of Indiana that the exhibit conflicted with the state’s archaeological policy, claiming there is no documented evidence of pre-Columbian American contacts. 

That we know of, Lewis and Clark didn’t find any Roman coins on their journey, but they definitely walked the path traveled by a rainbow of ancient peoples. 

The Corps of Discovery returned to St. Louis on September 23, 1806, to a roaring celebration. The whole town welcomed Lewis and Clark with a monumental heroes’ reception. Lewis was back in good spirits and finally resumed writing, penning a long letter to Thomas Jefferson. In it he detailed an overview of their discoveries, adventures, and safe return home. When Jefferson received the letter a month later, he responded with joy and relief. After the expedition’s safe homecoming the corps disbanded. 

Dubbed national heroes, the men of the expedition were paid well, and each was given 320 acres of land for his efforts. Some of the men got married and farmed, while others returned to the frontier to trade fur and dig gold. Sacagawea went east at Clark’s invitation and formally let her son be raised by Clark. She returned to her village and gave birth to a little girl. Shortly after, she died from an unknown illness. William Clark was given a high position in the government, with which he quickly grew bored. The only member of the expedition who was not rewarded fairly was William Clark’s slave, York. Despite his help and commitment to the expedition, William Clark denied York his freedom.  

Today we can appreciate the far-reaching magnitude of Lewis and Clark’s journey to the West. But at the time, Jefferson’s goal to find a river route that linked with the Pacific had failed. His assumption that it would take Americans a hundred generations to settle the West was also wrong. Lewis and Clark opened the floodgates, and after the discovery of gold, the hordes were unleashed. The prairies turned into farms, the buffalo were hunted to extinction, the Native Americans were killed, and the survivors were rounded up and placed on reservations. The white man’s diseases would eventually decimate the populations of the Mandan, Arikaras, and Hidatsa, the hospitable tribes whose friendliness and helpfulness were so crucial to Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery. 

The explorers managed an extraordinary feat by surviving the six thousand-mile excursion. The ramifications of this journey would prove to be monumental. The West they traveled would never be the same. 

After resting and recuperating in St. Louis for several months, Lewis departed for Washington in the winter of 1807. Little did he know that the political atmosphere brewing in the heart of Washington would prove to be deadlier than any of the experiences he faced during the expedition.

Nine 

Friends in High Places 

Upon his arrival Lewis was greeted again with a hero’s welcome in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. He became the toast of the town and enjoyed his celebrity status. Returning to the familiarity of the White House, Lewis was also welcomed into the home of President Jefferson, where conversations about the expedition and Lewis’s personal thoughts and opinions on the discoveries were shared in great detail. 

Jefferson, who had always nurtured a spirit of exploration, listened to Lewis’s informative accounts as if the president himself had participated in the historical venture. Lewis obtained extra money and land grants for his men, and he was appointed governor of the extensive Louisiana Territory. His experience as a military officer and the popularity he received after the expedition made him a natural for the position. As Lewis prepared his journals for publication he undoubtedly looked forward to his upcoming duties as governor, a job that would further develop his experience for what at the time seemed to point to his eventual calling: the presidency. Regardless of how excited Lewis might have been about his future possibilities, however, he would soon be discouraged by the political infighting brewing. He was thrown into a hornet’s nest that made the lands of the Louisiana Territory the original Wild West. 

It’s important to recognize just how dangerous a time Lewis was living in. The American Revolution had taken place thirty years earlier, and the newly formed United States was still in a relatively vulnerable position, subjected to the direction and edicts of its founders. 

In this specific regard the disagreements between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson were at a fever pitch. They were famous, potent rivals. Jefferson was aware of Hamilton’s allegiance to a nefarious cult that the president believed was plotting a takeover of the young United States by creating a central bank that would control the country’s currency. Jefferson was suspicious of Hamilton’s association with the Rothschilds and feared betrayal.

It is no secret that most of the founders were in the frequent company of Freemasons. Although he never claimed to be one, Jefferson visited Masonic temples and had high-ranking Masonic friends such as Benjamin Franklin. Jefferson used this access to acquire the knowledge he felt was going to be used against the founders by usurpers who were gearing up for a war. 

Both Lewis and Clark were masons as well. In fact Lewis was known for achieving high rank among American Masons in almost record time. Lewis was elected to the Door of Virtue Lodge in January 1797 and had climbed the ranks to Past Master Mason within three months. By 1799 he had attained status of Royal Arch Mason in Widow’s Son Lodge at Milton, Virginia. Shortly thereafter Lewis had been chosen by Jefferson to be his private secretary. 

In September of 1808, after being named governor of Louisiana Territory, Lewis helped establish the first Masonic lodge in St. Louis and was named Master of St. Louis Lodge, Number 111. During his time as governor Lewis was active in the lodge and shared duties with his most bitter rival, Frederick Bates, who was a close associate of famed traitor General James Wilkinson. When Lewis left St. Louis on his fateful, final journey, he handed over his Master’s role to Bates, who later signed William Clark’s Masonic diploma, presumably after Clark was encouraged to join the Masons by Lewis. 

Today the so-called Illuminati have become darlings of pop culture. But it wasn’t long ago that the mere mention of the words Illuminati or New World Order was enough to squash a prominent career or, even worse, get a person killed. The danger was even worse in the days of Meriwether Lewis, when the Illuminati’s infiltration into the very heart of the country was establishing very strong roots. 

George Washington, the first president of the United States, was personally indebted to the Rothschilds, who were instrumental in helping him obtain his position as a land surveyor. George Washington did not oppose the foreign influence of the Illuminati, but he wrote cautionary letters about them. One of these letters, dated October 24, 1798, says: 

It was not my intention to doubt that the doctrines of the Illuminati and the principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more satisfied of this fact than I am. The idea I meant to convey, was, that I did not believe that the lodges of Freemasons in this country had, as societies, endeavored to propagate the diabolical tenets of the first, or pernicious principles of the latter. That individuals of them may have done it, or that the founder or instruments employed to have found the democratic societies in the United States may have had this object, and actually had a separation of the people from their government in view, is too evident to be questioned.1 

This secret battle continued at the universities as well. On July 4, 1812, Joseph Willard, then president of Harvard University, delivered a speech in Lancaster, New Hampshire, explaining: 

There is sufficient evidence that a number of societies, of the Illuminati, have been established in this land of Gospel light and civil liberty, which were first organized from the grand society, in France. They are doubtless secretly striving to undermine all our ancient institutions, civil and sacred. These societies are closely leagued with those of the same Order, in Europe; they have all the  same object in view. The enemies of all order are seeking our ruin. Should infidelity generally prevail, our independence would fall of course. Our republican government would be annihilated.2 

Alexander Hamilton served as secretary of the Treasury under George Washington during 1789–1795 and learned a great deal about the banking system. This knowledge helped him form the Federalist Party, primarily made up of bankers who advocated a strong central government. Naturally the Anti-Federalists favored states’ rights and remained true to the original ideas fought for by the founders. Because Hamilton was a founder himself his perceived betrayal was an even greater offense. Jefferson was conscious of this and had anticipated an eventual showdown with Hamilton. 

Before Jefferson was able to develop a strategy to handle Hamilton, the wheels of destruction began turning. The infamous House of Rothschild had its sights set on America. It is difficult to unravel historical facts about the Rothschilds from the volumes of paranoid, anti Semitic agitprop that seems to have been recycled continuously since the 1800s. [the source of the pond scum DC]

Put simply, the Rothschild banking family has been the source of an extraordinary amount of absurd propaganda. For centuries proponents have promoted the idea that Jewish banking houses in Europe, and therefore the Jewish race, were responsible for manipulation of financial markets that led to widespread and terrible poverty. This theory has been used by politicians for centuries to woo populist voters and by modern authors to sell a lot of books to people who don’t know any better.[Looking like it's the author who does not know any better, that they happen to be jewish does not matter to this Irishman, their ACTIONS and history preceded me, and THAT and what they have done since I have been on the Earth, is what my judgment is based on not their ethnicity or creed!!!! DC] 

Established by a goldsmith named Amschel Bauer in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1743 this group of elite bankers had already managed to monopolize much of the wealth of Germany and England. They succeeded by creating what we know of today as “fractional reserve banking.” The House of Rothschild learned fast that loaning money to people was small change. The real cash was to be made by loaning money to Friends in High Places H 115 governments, ensuring the money would always be covered by public taxes. Amschel was a pioneer in the art of dominating nations by gaining access to their banking institutions. You needn’t look any further than Amschel himself, who famously declared in 1790, “Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.”3 

In the 1700s Britain was a powerful nation sinking in massive amounts of debt. This was in part attributed to the Rothschilds takeover of local finance institutions and forming the Bank of England. The House of Rothschild also developed plans to extract money from the American colonies. The colonies were flourishing during this time. They controlled their own destiny by using colonial script as purchasing power. The colonies were not in debt to anybody or any entity and were free from the Bank of England. This oversight was not tolerated by the powers of the time, especially the English bankers. Through their privately owned Bank of England they wrote the Currency Act of 1764 and forced Parliament to pass it. 

Although never cited in any traditional history books, the Currency Act truly sparked the Revolutionary War. The act made it illegal for the American colonies to print their own money. Even worse, it forced them to pay taxes to Britain in silver and gold. This brutal blow by the bankers ended the growing economic success the colonies were experiencing through independent trade and forced the eventual showdown over what became known as Taxation Without Representation. 

For the first time the founders were forced to consider raising arms against the crown. In his autobiography Ben Franklin recalls the gloom in the air: 

In one year, the conditions were so reversed that the era of prosperity ended, and a depression set in, to such an extent that the streets of the Colonies were filled with unemployed. The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction. The inability of the colonists to  get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George III and the international bankers was the prime reason for the Revolutionary War.4 

Britain wasn’t worried about fighting a war with America. The British government reasoned it would be an easy victory however, what it wasn’t counting on was America’s use of guerrilla warfare tactics learned from the Native Americans. With a little help from the French navy the colonists shook up the world by defeating the British army— but not before George Washington was tricked into taking a loan from someone he trusted. While the war was on the verge of being lost, Washington borrowed from fellow founder Alexander Hamilton. 

Hamilton was acting as a Rothschild agent, and this one shrewd move essentially won the war for the bankers. When the war was over the colonies were granted independence, but with Hamilton’s sly maneuvering the House of Rothschild already had its proverbial foot in the door. After the Revolutionary War there was a huge debt to be paid, and Hamilton wasted no time in setting up the First Bank of the United States in 1791, shortly after Benjamin Franklin’s death. This bank was privately owned and secretly belonged to the Rothschild consortium. Benjamin Franklin understood the dangers of a privately owned central bank controlling the issue of the nation’s currency. 

Jefferson disagreed with Hamilton strongly about a national bank, believing it would acquire too much power over the government. He said at the time that he considered a private bank issuing public currency and the creation of perpetual national debt to be more of a threat to America than any army. 

Hamilton thought the opposite, convinced banks would play a vital role in American’s future. He championed his position by declaring it was better to have American banks doing the lending than British banks. Of course he never mentioned that the same people who owned the banks of England had made the move to own the first American bank as well. 

In addition to their quarrels over banking, Hamilton and Jefferson disagreed on the projected path of the American future. Jefferson believed that liberty and freedom were the greatest virtues a society could have and that the nation could be sustained by an agrarian society made up of independent farmers. Hamilton laughed at what he referred to as Jefferson’s “outdated” vision and was convinced that an agricultural economy would keep America poor. Hamilton and the powers he worked for were not interested in being peaceful farmers. They were intent on building nations into world powers, sustained by trade and manufacturing. 

Jefferson faced a tremendous challenge in keeping America safe from Hamilton. Hamilton wanted to install an American king and even created the concept of “implied powers,” which was a clause used to cover any governmental action not enumerated in the Constitution. Through his own Federalist Party, Hamilton had infiltrated all branches of the government and gained a near monopoly of the judicial system. Dedicated to achieving a simple goal, Hamilton wanted to increase the federal government’s power over the states. This was never a popular idea, as the voters said “No” time and time again. Even though Hamilton suffered electoral defeat after defeat, he wasn’t discouraged and knew the original plans were being carried out clandestinely. As Jefferson paced the grounds of the White House, he knew he was surrounded on all sides by dark forces. 

However successful Hamilton was in gaining access to and control over America’s newly formed government, it wouldn’t last long enough for him to enjoy it. Aaron Burr killed Hamilton in what may be the most famous duel in American history. With the death of Hamilton, Jefferson had one less enemy to worry about. But Hamilton’s death caused mass commotion and hysteria as Burr, Jefferson’s disgraced vice president, went on the lam.

Less well known as an agent for the British central banking advocates was Nicholas Biddle. Biddle was a brilliant lawyer, publisher, financier, and at the vanguard of American efforts to establish a central banking 118 H Friends in High Places system. Biddle was every bit as responsible as Hamilton for founding the First Bank of the United States. When the First Bank’s charter expired, it was revived and led by Biddle until Andrew Jackson vetoed its charter, leading to its implosion in 1843. Jackson believed that the future of America was in jeopardy thanks to the influence of foreign banking interests such as the Rothschilds. [He was right in 1843, and HE IS STILL RIGHT in 2020 DC]

While all of this was going on, news began to circulate in the colonial streets that the seemingly crazed General James Wilkinson was gearing up for an invasion of Mexico. The triumphs of Lewis and Clark quickly faded from public consciousness as news of Wilkinson’s plans spread. 

Growing up poor, Wilkinson had joined the American Revolutionary Army. Owing to his reckless bravado and cunning, he became a general by the age of twenty. He never seemed to care about the ideals he was supposed to be fighting for. He did, however, seem particularly interested in being paid. That attitude didn’t sit well with the other founders, but the general was tolerated because he was considered a great commander and a charismatic leader. None of the founders trusted him, but they kept him around out of loyalty. Wilkinson would eventually lead the Army longer than any general of his era, but his oversized ego and lofty ambitions outgrew his duties to America. 

Wilkinson had become a land speculator and through his newly acquired connections, acted as a spy and conspired with Spanish agents concerning the lands along the Mississippi. His treachery wasn’t fully realized until the Spanish-American War, when U.S. troops captured the Spanish archives in Cuba. In the archives they found astonishing information regarding Wilkinson’s role as an agent working for Spain. 

After the Spanish left the picture Wilkinson devised a new plot with then Vice President Aaron Burr to organize an unofficial invasion of Texas. His plans failed to manifest again and again as the playing field changed overnight due to events in Europe and the Louisiana Purchase. 

Spain could no longer pay attention to the colonies thanks to Napoleon’s fiery invasion. But when one door closes, another opens. At least it was so for Wilkinson, who, after the Louisiana Purchase, was  appointed governor of the new territory by President Thomas Jefferson. While serving as governor Wilkinson sent secret reconnaissance missions deep into Texas territory. Wilkinson was looking for gold and new routes into Mexico. He was going to invade and overthrow the Spanish with or without support from Congress, and he needed all the resources he could acquire. One way of getting the bullets he needed was to secure the large lead mines found south of St. Louis. 

Congress felt that the immense fortunes to be made in lead mining operations south of St. Louis could pay for the Louisiana Purchase within five years. But the land speculators who had been conniving with the Spanish for control of these mines weren’t about to give them up so easily. It conveniently happened that the man appointed to govern these mines for the United States was the treacherous General Wilkinson. 

Wilkinson’s right-hand man was another chief troublemaker for President Jefferson. Probably the most feared man in the territory, John Smith T. was an aggressive land swindler looking to acquire all the lead mines he came across. He was reputed to have killed fifteen men in duels and always carried four pistols, a Bowie knife, and a rifle. He could provide the remaining lead needed for Wilkinson’s invasion of Mexico, but before they could make the move Jefferson removed Wilkinson from his gubernatorial duties. 

Wilkinson was furious over his demotion when, after the capture of Aaron Burr, fingers began pointing in Wilkinson’s direction as a co-conspirator. Wilkinson’s removal, and the government’s subsequent clampdown on the mines, left the Louisiana territories in a chaotic state. Crime and corruption were everywhere, and the whole area needed to be cleaned out. 

This was the obstacle facing Lewis as he prepared to succeed Wilkinson as the new governor of Louisiana. But Lewis was idealistic and optimistic and reportedly looked forward to taking out the trash corrupting the Louisiana territory. 

Strangely, Lewis then fell silent for an extended period, much to the dismay of Jefferson and others who awaited the publication of his journals.5 Various theories have emerged regarding the delay, including that Lewis was given time to recuperate by Jefferson; that he was actively searching for a wife; and that he fell victim to alcoholism, disease, or some other debilitation. Scholars generally concede that a clear answer to what happened to Lewis during this time is unlikely to ever emerge.

This mysterious delay also resulted in scores of volumes of the journals going missing. Gary Moulton, professor and editor of one volume of the published journals of Lewis and Clark, suggests that throughout the years growing evidence indicates that much of what Lewis and Clark wrote about the westward journey was lost. 

Over the years, numerous documents of the expedition have come to light, some in the most unexpected places. . . . These discoveries seem to support the notion of other lost items yet to be found. No hope of discovery ranks so high as the hope of finding Meriwether Lewis’s diaries, which would fill the large gaps in his writing during and about the expedition.6 

What those journal entries contained, and what truths they may have revealed about the fate of their author, remains a mystery. 

The other strange anomaly that has come to light are the mysterious gaps in Lewis’s journals, which are extensive and have vexed scholars for two centuries. Lewis made no journal entries during the first portion of the journey, for example, from May 14, 1804, until April 7, 1805, when the corps left Fort Mandan. This nearly year long gap during what should have been an enthusiastic beginning is especially curious. Some speculate that Lewis was taking field notes or keeping personal journals that he planned to transfer to official notebooks later and that his collection of unofficial inscriptions was then lost. 

Letters from Lewis to Jefferson suggest that some kinds of journals were kept during the stay at Fort Mandan. Lewis, for example, mentioned a “correct” copy of a journal that he intended to send back to Washington prior to departing from Fort Mandan. Later he sent another letter to Jefferson promising a proper journal to be delivered by canoe to an outpost on the Missouri River. No journal was ever found. Several other sets of writings did materialize, however: lists of herb specimens, mineral deposits, geologic features, astronomical observations, a weather diary, and other notes. Some of these notes are attributed to other members of the party or are considered collaborative efforts between Lewis and Clark, who may have decided to stray from Jefferson’s explicit instructions that they both keep detailed and extensive records. 

Others speculate that some of Lewis’s journals were lost at various points along the journey. One theory suggests that Lewis’s early writings were lost along with Clark’s during a sudden storm that rocked the vessel the corps was traveling in shortly after departing Fort Mandan. Clark’s notes were known to have been lost, but no mention is made of Lewis or his journals during the incident.

Other long gaps include time on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers from September 19 to November 11, 1803; a stretch from November 28, 1803, until May 14, 1804; inconsistent entries from August 26, 1805, to January 1, 1806; and a long stretch from August 13, 1806, until the end of the journey. In total there were more than four hundred days of entries missing from Lewis’s journals between May 1804, and September 1806. Only the gap beginning on August 13, after Lewis was mysteriously shot in the thigh, has a plausible and evident explanation. 

Though it is rarely mentioned in historical accounts of the journey, most scholars involved in collecting, editing, and publishing the journals of the Corps of Discovery conclude that tales of the journey are crafted from a convoluted patchwork of documents: field notes, field journals and notebooks, diary writings, scraps of paper, other various records, and a great deal of conjecture and supposition. 

At least eight men were believed to have kept records: Lewis, Clark, privates Joseph Whitehouse and Robert Frazer, sergeants Patrick Glass, John Ordway, Charles Floyd, and Nathaniel Pryor. All but Ordway returned only partial records of the journey. Clark missed nine days  in February 1805 while hunting for game. Gass’s original journal went missing before a controversial and paraphrased version of it was published in 1807. Though it is assumed he kept some kind of records, no evidence of any documents recorded by Pryor ever appeared. Floyd kept regular entries until his death on August 20, 1804. Private Whitehouse’s diary had several gaps and terminates without explanation on November 6, 1805. Ordway kept the most consistent records regarding the events of the day but didn’t keep extensive scientific records. 

Curiously, Lewis’s diaries are not included among the works compiled to create the tale of Lewis and Clark’s great journey. During a time when the journals were being compiled and prepared for publishing, correspondence between Jefferson, Clark, and one of the first editors of the corps’ collective journals, Nicholas Biddle, mention no concern about Lewis’s missing diaries. 

It is important to note that at this time that Biddle was not yet embroiled in efforts to revive America’s central banking system but was likely already in bed with the Rothschilds and the Federalists. Despite a preponderance of missing documents, stories of the corps began circulating in 1806 via newspapers, word of mouth, and government documents, including Jefferson’s first report to Congress of the journey. In 1808, with the help of schoolteacher David M’Keehan, the journals of Patrick Gass were published amid public and private protest by Lewis. 

Biddle was the first to publish an authorized, official account of the journals kept by Lewis and Clark, albeit a paraphrased narrative and not an edited reprinting of the journals. Biddle was chosen by Clark and several advisors to take on the task that Clark conceded he was not literate enough to complete. At the time Biddle was a young Philadelphia lawyer, editor, and publisher and was considered to be qualified to take on the massive project. At first Biddle refused the job offered to him by Clark but was later convinced by one of Lewis’s mentors, botanist Benjamin Smith Barton, to accept the assignment. 

With the help of Clark, Biddle began work on the project in 1810, supplementing the collective, remaining journals of the corps with face- to-face interviews with Clark, who provided a wealth of additional material from memory during interviews conducted in Fincastle, Virginia. Biddle then returned to Philadelphia to complete the project. 

In June 1811 Biddle finished the manuscript but delayed publishing the work because the chosen publishing house, Conrad, had recently gone bankrupt. Biddle shopped the manuscript around but eventually passed the project off to one of his cohorts at the Port Folio magazine, Paul Allen. At the time Biddle said he was overwhelmed by duties in the Pennsylvania state legislature, at Port Folio, and in his own law practice. 

In 1814 the two-volume History Of The Expedition Under The Command Of Captains Lewis And Clark, To The Sources Of The Missouri, Thence Across The Rocky Mountains And Down The River Columbia To The Pacific Ocean. Performed During The Years 1804– 5–6. By order of the Government Of The United States was published. Strangely, Biddle’s name did not appear on the book, which bore the byline “prepared for the press by Paul Allen, Esquire.” Scholars generally consider this edition the first published work to provide a reliable account of the travels of the Corps of Discovery and refer to it as the “Biddle/Allen edition.” It is generally accepted that Biddle took some literary liberties with the story, including a number of omissions regarding some of Lewis’s checkered history, such as his six court martials while serving in the military, and a generalized effort to craft the narrative into a rousing frontier tale. 

In April of 1818 Biddle claimed to have returned all the journals except Ordway’s to agents of the American Philosophical Society. Ordway’s journal was considered to have been rich with narrative about the daily exploits of the Corps, including strange details such as their encounters with legendary Welsh natives. Since then a number of journals and papers have appeared that indicate Biddle and others may have kept, lost, or miscataloged a number of the original journals given to them to edit. 

In 1903 Reuben Gold Thwaites, editor of the centennial edition  of the journals, received previously unknown Clark diaries and papers from Clark’s descendants. In 1915 Ordway’s journal and several of Lewis and Clark’s missing journals were found among some of Biddles old papers. In 1953 Clark’s field notes were discovered in a roll top desk in Minnesota. Thwaites very clearly believed that many of the remaining missing documents, such as Lewis’s diaries, were lost shortly after his death in Tennessee.

In an essay that first appeared in Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Gary Moulton, editor of a later edition of the Lewis and Clark journals writes, 

These discoveries seem to support the notion of other lost items yet to be found. No hope of discovery ranks so high as the hope of finding Meriwether Lewis’s diaries, which would fill the large gaps in his writing during and about the expedition. This essay looks at Lewis’s known journals, considers where gaps might be filled with the discovery of new materials, and concludes that there are few possibilities of new finds. To a large degree, these considerations are interpretative and speculative and the conclusions are tentative. We can only hope that more of Lewis’s writings are still to be found.7

Ten 

The Murder of Meriwether Lewis 

In June 2009, two centuries after his mysterious death, collateral descendants of Meriwether Lewis launched a website as part of a campaign to exhume and examine the explorer’s remains. The announced goal was simple: use modern forensic techniques to determine once and for all whether Lewis died by his own hand, or by someone else’s. Lewis’s family has worked for more than a decade to secure from the federal National Park Service permission for the exhumation and proper reburial. The campaign encourages concerned Americans to write letters to the secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service, which controls the land in Tennessee where Lewis is buried. 

Lewis’s family began to bang loudly a drum that has been beating consistently since Lewis’s mysterious death at an inn along the historic Natchez Trace roadway. This renewed interest in Lewis’s true fate has caused substantial uproar among historians, government officials, academics, and armchair experts as they review a patchwork collection of documents, reports, and various pieces of evidence. All continue to draw a variety of conclusions based on that same evidence. Some say Lewis committed suicide, succumbing to a lifelong battle with depression, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, malaria, syphilis, or some combination thereof. Others are certain bandits murdered him, and yet others are equally certain that he was murdered as part of an assassination plot carried out by high-ranking officials of the burgeoning U.S. government. If one thing is clear, it is that Lewis’s death has come to represent a growing distrust of American history as presented and popularized. 

Lewis was just thirty-two years old when he returned from the landmark exploration. The celebrations following the adventurers’ return masked the fact that Lewis had returned to an America rife with political turmoil. Upon returning, Lewis and Clark did not waste time in traveling east to debrief President Thomas Jefferson. The explorers were welcomed as heroes wherever they went and spent weeks touring, testifying, and receiving royal treatment. Following a string of celebrations and official inquiries Jefferson rewarded the explorers’ accomplishments with instant appointment to high political office. 

As we know, Lewis was named governor of the tumultuous Upper Louisiana Territory. Clark was appointed brigadier general of the militia and superintendent of Indian Affairs for the same region, serving alongside Frederick Bates, who was named secretary of the Upper Louisiana Territory to serve under Lewis. Clark and Bates quickly left for St. Louis to begin their work. Lewis, in turn, left to wrap up some business in Philadelphia, where he intended to publish volumes and volumes of journals recorded by the Corps of Discovery during their journey. Lewis searched for a publisher and began looking for artists to illustrate the compiled works. The journals and field notes remained in St. Louis, waiting for Lewis to arrive and prepare them for publication. 

Official records of Lewis’s life during the next four months are sparse. A letter from Lewis to old friend Mahlon Dickerson suggests that Lewis spent time celebrating and socializing during his stay in Philadelphia and that he may have sparked a romance and proposed marriage to a woman he met there. Lewis later returned to Virginia and made a round of official visits while hosted by President Jefferson at the White House. He also visited with his mother, Lucy Lewis Marks. Details of his time in Virginia end there. Some scholars speculate that  he attended the treason trial of Aaron Burr in Richmond, Virginia, at Jefferson’s request. 

On March 8, 1807—a full year after he was awarded the position— Lewis arrived in St. Louis to begin his appointed duties as governor of Upper Louisiana. His mysterious absence has never been satisfactorily explained. A letter from Jefferson sent during the interim suggests that he was frustrated and concerned about Lewis’s absence. The letter, dated July 17, 1807, reads, “Since I parted with you from Albemarle in Sep. last [1806] I have never had a line from you nor I believe has the Secretary of War with which you have much connection through the Indian department.” Expressing concern about publication of the expedition journals, he wrote, “We have no tidings yet of the forwardness of your printer. I hope the first part will not be delayed much longer.”1 

Lewis is reported to have taken on his duties as governor with enthusiasm, but he struggled to manage the chaotic political circumstances he had inherited. Secretary Bates is characterized as having it in for Lewis, who he considered a political rival and perhaps usurper of his rightful role as governor of the Louisiana Territory, and is said to have worked hard to undermine Lewis’s efforts as governor. Bates may also have harbored some resentment toward Lewis. Years earlier Bates had applied to become Jefferson’s private secretary, but Lewis was chosen in his stead. 

Meanwhile references to his efforts in letters exchanged between Jefferson and other leaders suggest that Lewis developed a drinking problem. Other letters mark his occasional “melancholia,” which many observers suggest was a reference to clinical depression or late stage of syphilis. When James Madison became president in 1809 Jefferson’s cabinet was replaced, and Lewis’s great ally was no longer able to lend presidential support. Madison’s appointed secretary of war, William Eustis, complicated efforts in Louisiana by refusing to pay expense vouchers. Lewis is said to have paid government expenses from his own pocket, spiraling downward into severe financial trouble. 

In the fall of 1809, Lewis made a special trip to Washington to settle his disputes with the War Department and to revive efforts to publish his journals. Lewis left St. Louis by boat on September 4, 1809, with plans to travel the Mississippi to New Orleans and then travel by sea to Washington, D.C. Reports from Fort Pickering commander Captain Gilbert Russell suggest that Lewis’s health and mental stability were deteriorating. After he arrived at Fort Pickering, near Memphis, Tennessee, Russell relayed that members of the boat crew reported that Lewis had twice attempted to kill himself. Russell was allegedly so alarmed at Lewis’s condition that he refused to let him leave until his health improved. During that time Lewis decided to travel to Washington by land. (Lewis said he changed his plans because he was afraid his expedition journals would fall into the hands of the British at sea.) His plan was to leave Fort Pickering for the Natchez Trace, a rough road that stretched 450 miles from Natchez, Mississippi, to Nashville, Tennessee. From there Lewis could take the road to Washington, D.C.

While Lewis continued his compulsory recovery at Fort Pickering, Major James Neelly, agent to the Chickasaw Nation and a close ally of Wilkinson, arrived and agreed to travel with Lewis. By then Lewis’s health was reported to have improved enough for him to travel. Lewis left Fort Pickering with Neelly and two servants. One of them, John Pernier, was Lewis’s personal servant. The other, an unnamed black man, was Neelly’s travel companion.

Shortly after an optimistic departure Neelly reported that Lewis’s health had begun to deteriorate. The party rested at the Chickasaw Indian agency and then continued on toward Nashville on the morning of October 10. Neelly stayed behind to look for some horses that had strayed while Lewis and the others went on ahead. That evening, Lewis’s party arrived at Grinder’s Stand, a roadside inn about seventy miles southeast of Nashville. Lewis and his travel companions checked in with the intention of waiting for Neelly. 

Early the next morning, on October 11, Meriwether Lewis died in his room from two gunshot wounds and what appeared to be a series of knife wounds. 

Immediate details of the discovery of Lewis’s body and the circumstances surrounding his death are largely contained in a single letter from Neelly. His letter to Thomas Jefferson, and subsequent letters sent by friends and associates of Lewis, all seem to have been based on the accounts of Mrs. Grinder, at whose house Lewis stayed. Those accounts, due to the pace of communication, situational complications, and the remoteness of the site of Lewis’s demise, were collected and delivered to government officials, including Jefferson, during a period of several years. 

The first and most immediate report came from Neelly who, appointed to his position as agent to the Chickasaw Nation by Wilkinson, was suspiciously absent during Lewis’s deadly ordeal and was not an eyewitness. 

Three months after Lewis’s death and Neely’s report, Fort Pickering Captain Gilbert Russell, another Wilkinson appointee, wrote two letters to former president Thomas Jefferson, providing further details of Lewis’s death. Russell’s descriptions of Lewis’s health when he arrived at Fort Pickering, along with other descriptions of the explorer’s overall health, became the foundation for assertions that Lewis committed suicide.

In the first letter, dated January 4, 1810, Russell described Lewis’s condition when he arrived at the fort, noting that he had detained Lewis for his own protection. 

The second letter, dated January 31, 1810, contained more details and suggests that Lewis was struggling with a severe drinking problem that seemed to subside during Lewis’s compulsory stay at Fort Pickering. Russell then accused Neelly of encouraging Lewis to drink again after they left the fort. “Instead of preventing the Govr from drinking or putting him under restraint advised him to it,” Russell wrote, “and from everything I can learn gave the man every chance to seek an opportunity to destroy himself. And from the statement of Grinder’s wife where he killed himself I can not help believing that Purney [John Pernier, Lewis’s servant] was rather aiding and abetting in the murder than otherwise.”2

Author and historian Eldon G. Chuinard, who calls Lewis his hero, calls into question the allegation that Lewis was deranged at the time, inferring that Russell had concocted the story. He notes a letter written by Lewis on September 22, 1809—just two weeks before his death— to Amos Stoddard, commandant of Upper Louisiana. The letter, says Chuinard, appears to be written by a very lucid Lewis. 

The entire letter is a lucid, coherent statement written when he was supposed to have mental derangement while coming down the Mississippi and during his first days at Fort Pickering. . . . Also in the letter he says, “You will direct me at the City of Washington until the last of December, after which I expect I shall be on my return to St. Louis.” This does not sound like a “mentally depressed” person. A return to his duties in St. Louis was clearly on his mind— not suicide.3 

Historical investigator Kira Gale goes even further to discredit Russell’s reports, speculating that they were forgeries produced by Wilkinson. The assertion that Russell’s letters were forged was confirmed by handwriting experts during a coroner’s inquest conducted in 1996. Gale suggests that these were the very letters that convinced both William Clark and Thomas Jefferson that their friend had committed suicide. 

After his friend’s death, Clark received letters citing suicide attempts by Lewis while he was en route to Fort Pickering and 15 days of mental derangement while he was at the fort. It was enough to convince him at the time. But most likely, these letters were forgeries created by General Wilkinson to mislead Clark. Clark thought the letters were written by Captain Gilbert Russell, the commander of Fort Pickering (today’s Memphis, Tennessee), where Lewis spent two weeks in September. 

Lewis died under mysterious circumstances on the Natchez Trace on October 11, 1809 after leaving Fort Pickering. Clark wrote to his brother Jonathan Clark on November 26, 1809 with news of Lewis’s suicide attempts and mental derangement—information contained in the letters Clark had received, supposedly written by Captain Russell. These letters from Russell have never been found, so the handwriting cannot be analyzed. However, we have two authentic letters written by Captain Russell to President Thomas Jefferson in January, 1810. These letters to the President provided a wealth of detail, but they contain no report of prior suicide attempts while en route to the fort, no report of 15 days in a state of mental derangement while Lewis was at the fort, and no report of a second will written at the fort. All things Captain Russell would surely have reported to the President if they were true.4 

Further details of Lewis’s demise appeared in a letter from Alexander Wilson to a mutual friend. Wilson was a well-known ornithologist and friend of Lewis and had agreed to complete the bird illustrations for Lewis’s published journals. Two years after Lewis’s body was discovered, while traveling the Natchez Trace, Wilson interviewed Mrs. Grinder. He recounted the conversation in a letter to Alexander Lawson. 

Dated May 28, 1811, it reads: 

Next morning (Sunday) I rode six miles to a man’s of the name of Grinder, where our poor friend Lewis perished. In the same room where he expired, I took down from Mrs. Grinder the particulars of that melancholy event, which affected me extremely. This house or cabin is seventy-two miles from Nashville, and is the last white man’s as you enter the Indian country. Governor Lewis, she said, came there about sun-set, alone, and inquired if he could stay for the night; and, alighting, brought his saddle into the house. He was dressed in a loose gown, white, striped with blue. On being asked if he came alone, he replied that there were two servants behind, who would soon be up. He called for some spirits, and drank a very little. When the servants arrived, one of whom was a negro, he inquired for his powder, saying he was sure he had some powder in a canister. The servant gave no distinct reply, and Lewis, in the meanwhile walked backwards and forwards before the door, talking to himself. Sometimes, she said, he would seem as if he were walking up to her; and would suddenly wheel round, and walk back as fast as he could. Supper being ready he sat down, but had not eat but a few mouthfuls when he started up speaking to himself in a violent manner. At these times, she says, she observed his face to flush as if it had come on him in a fit. He lighted his pipe, and drawing a chair to the door sat down, saying to Mrs. Grinder in a kind tone of voice, “Madam this is a very pleasant evening.” He smoked for some time, but quitted his seat and traversed the yard as before. He again sat down to his pipe, seemed again composed and casting his eyes wishfully towards the west, observed what a sweet evening it was. Mrs. Grinder was preparing a bed for him; but he said he would sleep on the floor, and desired the servant to bring the bear skins and buffalo robe, which were immediately spread out for him; and it being now dusk the woman went off to the kitchen, and the two men to the barn, which stands about two hundred yards off. The kitchen is only a few paces from the room where Lewis was, and the woman being considerably alarmed by the behavior of her guest could not sleep but listened to him walking backwards and forwards, she thinks for several hours, and talking aloud, as she said, “like a lawyer,” She then heard the report of a pistol, and something fall heavily on the floor, and the words “O Lord.” Immediately afterwards she heard another pistol, and in a few minutes she hear him at her door calling out “O madam! Give me some water, and heal my wounds.” The logs being open, and unplastered, she saw him stagger back and fall against a stump that stands between the kitchen and room. He crawled for some distance, raised himself by the side of a tree, where he sat about a minute. He once more got to the room; afterwards he came to the kitchen door, but did not speak; she then heard him scraping the bucket with a gourd for water, but it appears that this cooling element was denied the dying man! As soon as day broke and not before, the terror of the woman having permitted him to remain for two hours in this most deplorable situation, she sent two of her children to the barn, her husband not being at home, to bring the servants; and on going in they found him lying on the bed; he uncovered his side and shewed them where the bullet had entered; a piece of the forehead was blown off, and had exposed the brains, without having bled much. He begged they would take his rifle and blowout his brains, and he would give them all the money he had in his trunk. He often said, “I am no coward, but I am so strong, so hard to die.” He begged the servant [John Pernier] not to be afraid of him, for that he would not hurt him. He expired in about two hours, or just as the sun rose above the trees. He lies buried close by the common path, with a few loose rails thrown over his grave. I gave Grinder money to put a post fence round it, to shelter it from the hogs, and from the wolves; and he gave me his written promise he would do it. I left this place in a very melancholy mood, which was not much allayed by the prospect of the gloomy and savage wilderness which I was just entering alone.5 

Biographer and editor of one of the earliest accounts of Lewis’s adventures, Dr. Elliot Coues describes the account given by Wilson of Lewis’s death as the one likely to be most accurate. He explains that because of Wilson’s scientific training and experience as a researcher, the accuracy of his account should be considered highly, despite the amount of time that lapsed between Lewis’s death and the report. What he doubts, however, is the story provided by Mrs. Grinder, which he characterizes as preposterous at best. He also questions strongly the final memoir written by Jefferson. In fact, Coues was so certain that the claim of suicide was bogus, he wrote his own supplement to Jefferson’s memoir of Lewis: 

 . . . Jefferson’s Memoire of Lewis is a noble and fitting tribute, leaving little to be desired as a contemporaneous biography. It has been accepted as authoritative and final, and has furnished the basis of every memoir of Lewis I have seen. . . . What else I have to say concerns not Lewis’ life, but the circumstances of his death; and certain subsequent events. . . . The affirmation of suicide, though made without qualification, has not passed unchallenged into history. . . . Undoubtedly Jefferson wrote in the light of all evidence that had reached him in 1813; but it appears that his view of the case was far from that of persons who lived in the vicinity of the scene at the time. 

There is no more room to doubt Wilson’s painstaking correctness than there is reason for doubting his veracity. But the narrative of Mrs. Grinder is very extraordinary. A woman who could do as she said she did, after hearing and seeing what she testifies, must be judged “fit for treason, stratagem, and spoils,” and not to be believed under oath. The story is wildly improbable on its face; it does not hang together; there is every sign it is a concoction on the part of an accomplice in crime, either before or after the event. On the theory that Mrs. Grinder was privy to a plot to murder Governor Lewis, and therefore had her own part to play in the tragedy, even if that part were a passive one—or on the theory that, becoming afterward cognizant of the murder, she told a story to shield the actual criminal or criminals—on either of these theories we could understand Mrs. Grinder; otherwise her story is simply incredible. Yet it is upon such evidence as this that the imputation of suicide rests.6 

As Coues points out, the details of Mrs. Grinder’s story are hard to believe. Lewis did indeed seem to have been worried and agitated about something. But why would a woman, who managed a stop along a notoriously dangerous stretch of road, have been unable to sleep over such a thing? Why, upon hearing pistol shots, a thud, and cries for help, would she simply peer through the cracks of her kitchen wall  to investigate? When she saw Lewis crawling, falling, struggling, why didn’t she aid him? Why wait two hours after shots were fired to raise an alarm? Why send a pair of children to ask servants, who had heard nothing, to investigate? Why did they do nothing as Lewis begged and bribed, for two hours, for them to put him out of his misery? Moreover, as noted by Chuinard, the story told by Grinder does not constitute a reasonable medical probability, no matter how strong Lewis’s constitution was. 

Despite the implausibility of the reported circumstances, and the knowledge that the first reports came from Neelly and Russell—both allies of Lewis’s sworn enemy Wilkinson—it appears that those were the very details upon which Lewis’s three closest friends, Thomas Jefferson, William Clark, and Mahlon Dickerson, accepted the notion that he had committed suicide. 

In a letter to his brother Jonathan, William Clark wrote, “I fear O! I fear the weight of his mind has overcome him.” 

Dickerson mourned Lewis’s death in his diary and did not question the explanation of suicide. 

While he lived with me in Washington, I observed at times sensible depressions of mind. . . . 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 in St. Louis in sedentary occupations they returned upon him with redoubled vigor, and began seriously to alarm his friends. He was in a paroxym of one of these when his affairs rendered it necessary for him to go to Washington.7 

From those few statements and conclusions derive countless books, official reports, biographies, and dissertations that conclude unquestioningly and uncritically that Lewis, an expert marksman and roadhardened explorer, had sloppily committed suicide by shooting himself in the back of the head and chest, and then cutting himself from head  to toe with razors. All was done presumably to protect him from enemies that Gilbert and others assert were figments of Lewis’s deranged imagination. Lewis was buried hastily along with details of his death and the definitive truth of his killer. 

In 1848, nearly forty years after Lewis’s demise, the state of Tennessee began an effort to erect a monument at his gravesite. His remains were located, verified, and then reburied. A monument was erected at the site to honor Lewis and his contributions. The monument was made of rough-cut stone at the base, topped with a 12-foot column of Tennessee marble, deliberately broken at the top. The committee report states, “The design is simple, but it is intended to express the difficulties, successes and violent termination of a life which was marked by bold enterprise, by manly courage and devoted patriotism.” 

What’s far more intriguing, however, is the unsolicited questioning of reports about Lewis’s death contained in a “Report of the Lewis Monumental Committee,” presented to the legislature of 1849–50. It reads, “The impression has long prevailed that under the influence of disease of body and mind—of hopes based upon long and valuable services—not merely deferred, but wholly disappointed—Governor Lewis perished by his own hands,” the report reads. “It seems to be more probable that he died by the hands of an assassin.”8 

Tennessee lawyer James D. Park devoted a great deal of time to investigating the cold case of the death of Lewis and delivered his finding in a September 1891 issue of the Nashville American, echoing the sentiment expressed in the report by the Lewis Monumental Committee. Park claimed, in what amounted to a legal brief arguing that Lewis was murdered, that no one in the vicinity of Lewis’s murder was ever convinced that Lewis committed suicide. He wrote, “It has always been the firm belief of the people of this region that Governor Lewis was murdered and robbed. The oldest citizens now living remember the rumor current at the time as to the murder, and it seems no thought of suicide ever obtained footing here.”9 

Based on interviews with people who were employed at Grinder’s Stand, Park surmised that Lewis had been murdered and robbed by Mr. Grinder. Reports from the region indicated that Grinder had even stood trial for the murder but was acquitted for lack of evidence. 

Park, like Coues and others, suggests that Lewis’s character, health, and overall mental state at the time of his death stand in contradiction to claims that he committed suicide. Park writes: 

It seems incredible that a young man of 35, the governor of the vast territory of Louisiana, then on his way from the capital to that of his nation, where he knew he would be received with all the distinction and consideration due to his office and reputation, should take his own life. His whole character is a denial of the theory. He was too brave and conscientious in the discharge of every public duty, public and private; too conspicuous a person in the eyes of the country, and crowned with too many laurels, to cowardly sneak out of the world by the back way, a self-murderer. This idea was doubtless invented to cover up the double crime of robbery and murder, and seems to have been the only version of his death that reached Mr. Jefferson and his other friends in Virginia.10 

The question then remains, who killed Lewis? 

One of the most popular and widely accepted murder theories suggests that bandits murdered Lewis during a robbery. The Natchez Trace was a long and treacherous stretch of road through dark woodland, and there were plenty of murders and robberies reported along the trail. But bandits are not the only suspected culprits. Nearly everyone close to Lewis on that fateful night has been listed among potential murder suspects, including Mr. and Mrs. Grinder, Lewis’s servant, John Pernier, Major Neelly, a local renegade named Runion, and several native chiefs who reportedly had been traveling with Lewis and Neelly.

Seventy years later journalist and historian Vardis Fisher explored several murder theories in his book Suicide or Murder? The Strange Death of Governor Meriwether Lewis. Fisher clearly supports the theory that Lewis was murdered, possibly by conspirators who believed Lewis had a map to a gold mine somewhere in the West. 

Historian, journalist, and researcher David Leon Chandler provides an exhaustive explanation of his theory that Lewis was murdered as part of an assassination conspiracy spawned by his old friend Thomas Jefferson. The Jefferson Conspiracies: A President’s Role in the Assassination of Meriwether Lewis suggests that Lewis discovered certain secrets about General James Wilkinson, his predecessor as governor of Upper Louisiana. If revealed, Chandler surmised, the secrets would destroy the reputations of both General Wilkerson and Jefferson. Chandler speculates that Lewis was not just traveling to Washington to reclaim debts and smooth ruffled feathers. He claims Lewis was traveling to Washington to blow the whistle on Wilkinson and Jefferson. Chandler suggests plausibly that Neelly and Major Russell were also involved in the assassination.11 

Perhaps the most complete and compelling murder theory comes from James E. Starrs, professor of forensic science at George Washington University, and independent historian Kira Gale. According to Gale’s book, The Death of Meriwether Lewis: A Historic Crime Scene Investigation, Lewis was likely assassinated by agents sent by then General James Wilkinson and Aaron Burr. 

Burr and Lewis had worked together during Jefferson’s first administration when Burr was vice president and Lewis worked as Jefferson’s private secretary. Lewis was traveling up the Missouri River on the day Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in the now famous duel. After the duel Burr’s political career came to a halt. Burr and Wilkinson, meanwhile, began planning to invade Spanish territory with a so-called filibustering expedition. They would lead a private, armed expedition of more than a thousand men into Mexico with the intent of establishing a new government and appointing themselves its leaders. 

When Lewis and Clark returned from their expedition west, Burr’s plan to invade Mexico overshadowed the triumph of the Corps of Discovery. Burr’s invasion was to launch from the private island estate of wealthy Irish aristocrat Harman Blennerhassett, who was said to be funding the expedition. On November 27, 1806, Jefferson ordered the arrest of Burr and his followers on the charge of illegally planning an armed attack on Spanish territory. Two weeks later Blennerhassett and members of the filibuster fled from local militia, who burned Blennerhassett’s mansion. The group later met with Burr at the mouth of the Cumberland River in Kentucky.

Meanwhile General Wilkinson, who had been removed from political office as the governor of Upper Louisiana by Jefferson and replaced by Lewis, managed to negotiate peace with Spanish troops that had crossed the Sabine River into the United States. This peace contradicted plans agreed to by Burr and Wilkinson, who were planning to use the Spanish invasion as an excuse to launch their armed invasion of Mexico. Wilkinson, who had been receiving payments for information he had been feeding to the Spanish government, had apparently switched sides. Wilkinson managed to avoid a war with Spain by making a private deal with Spanish General Simon Herrera, who agreed to withdraw his troops. The condition was the creation of a sort of neutral zone on the blurred border between Mexico and the United States. According to Gale, Wilkinson “thus managed to please both his Spanish paymasters and the President, while sacrificing his friend and fellow conspirator, Aaron Burr.”12 

In a message to Congress dated January 12, 1807, Jefferson explained what he described as a plot to separate the western states from the American Union and to invade Mexico. Two days later he held a presidential banquet celebrating the return of Lewis and Clark. Burr, meanwhile, had been arrested at Bayou Pierre near Natchez, Mississippi. Very few people believed at the time that he had planned to separate from the Union, or that he planned to invade Mexico. On February 4, 1807, a grand jury refused to even indict him. Burr then fled, only to be captured a week later and brought to Richmond, Virginia, where he stood trial for treason. 

Burr was later acquitted. Wilkinson, in turn, narrowly escaped  indictment for treason by a seven-to-nine vote of the grand jury, according to The Burr Conspiracy by Thomas Abernathy. During this time the territory that Lewis was to inherit was becoming a political hotbed, as wealthy landowners went to war over vast stores of the lead that had been discovered in the Louisiana Territory. Facing war on several fronts, Congress voted to capitalize and control all land bearing lead throughout the territory. William Carr, federal land agent, remarked that profits from the leasing and sale of public lands would likely be able to pay the $15 million cost of the Louisiana Purchase within a few years. Lands rife with lead became small war zones with armed land speculators battling for control. Most notorious and powerful among them was John Smith T., a relative of General James Wilkinson. 

When Lewis was appointed governor of Louisiana Territory he set about “cleaning up” the territory, starting with routing anyone and everyone involved with Aaron Burr. In a letter to William Clark he wrote, “It is my wish that every person who holds an appointment of profit or honor in that territory and against whom sufficient proof of the infection of Burrism can be adduced, should be immediately dismissed from office without partiality favor or affection, as I can never make any terms with traitors.”13 

Lewis’s efforts to clean up Louisiana Territory were blocked perpetually by his nemesis Frederick Bates. When Lewis was reported dead Bates expressed little regret. A letter from Bates to James Howe at the time stated bluntly that he “had no personal regard for him and a great deal of political contempt.”14 

In fact, before Lewis was murdered Bates was charged with terrorizing Lewis to the brink of madness. At the time one of Bates’ colleagues, Clement Penrose, reported to his brother “that the mental derangement of the Governor ought not to be imputed to his political miscarriages; but rather to the barbarous conduct of the Secretary (Bates). That Mr. Bates determined to tear down Gov. Lewis, at all events, with the hope of supplanting him in the Executive Office with a great deal of scandal equally false and malicious.”15 

A letter to Bates from his sister Nancy bears the alarming statement, “I lament his death on your account, thinking it might involve you in difficulty.” The statement suggests that Bates may have been involved in the murder.16 

Author Jonathan Daniels suggests that Bates was the only one with an immediate and credible motive for wanting Lewis dead. He speculated that Bates “may have been fearful of Wilkinson, with whom he had been ‘on very intimate terms,’ about something the general required him to keep hidden.”17 

Moreover, Daniels speculates that Wilkinson may very well have helped place the “politically shifting” Bates in his position in St. Louis, hoping that Bates would help cover up his traitorous dealings there. Perhaps, he suggests, Lewis learned something that Bates, Wilkinson, and perhaps even Jefferson wanted to keep secret. 

But there are other, equally plausible suspects, including John Smith T. 

When Lewis took over his role as Louisiana governor he targeted three men that he considered chief conspirators and impediments to his governing of the territory. The first was John Smith T., who had set off to join Burr in his planned invasion of Mexico until it was discovered that Burr had been routed as a traitor. John Smith T., who added to his name a T for “Tennessee,” was considered the most dangerous man in Missouri and was known to have murdered more than a dozen men. By the 1820s he was known as the Lead King of Missouri. 

Smith T. had brought under his control hundreds of thousands of acres in Tennessee and northern Alabama. Historical accounts suggest that Smith T. handled his affairs with litigation, guns, and hired gunmen. Two of Smith T.’s slaves had become renowned gunsmiths, and he managed a shot tower along the Mississippi River that churned out bullets. Smith T. was ready and frequently willing to supply weapons and ammunition for unauthorized invasions of Mexico. In fact he is known to have participated in at least four attempts to invade Texas and Mexico. When James Wilkinson became the first governor of Louisiana Territory in 1805–06, he ousted Moses Austin from several key positions and replaced him with Smith T. 

In The Death of Meriwether Lewis, Gales suggests that a biography of Smith T. by Richard Steward offers a plausible motive for an assassination attempt on Lewis. 

A month before Lewis left St. Louis, a “citizen’s committee” in St. Louis chose John Smith T. as a lobbyist to go to Washington, and to bring two petitions to Congress. The first petition asked for the removal from office of Judge John B. C. Lucas, a friend of both Meriwether Lewis and Albert Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury. Lucas was one of three land claims commissioners in St. Louis and a Judge of the Territorial Court. As a member of the commission reviewing Spanish land claims, he was blamed for too strictly following the law. In addition, the petitioners wanted the law changed, validating land claims that were recorded after France’s secret acquisition of the territory on October 1, 1800. 

The second petition asked for a change of status for Louisiana Territory; an upgrade which would allow residents to elect their own territorial officials, rather than be wards of the Federal Government. It was obviously also the intention of the petition leaders to urge that Lewis not be reappointed as Territorial Governor by the President.18 

Meanwhile Smith T.’s brother Reuben Smith was preparing to make another armed excursion into Mexico. The group was captured by Spanish militia and sent to labor in the mines. Gale notes that Smith T.’s trip to Washington, and his whereabouts at the time, remain a mystery. Gale suggests that Smith T.’s attempts to free Louisiana from federal oversight, the subsequent unauthorized invasion attempt by his brother, the concurring trip by Lewis to Washington to rout so-called Burrites such as Smith T., his brother Reuben, and General James Wilkinson coincide perfectly. Her conclusion is that Lewis was killed by Smith T., or his agents. The motive was to remove Lewis from power so Smith T. and the remaining Burrites could continue to use Louisiana as a staging area for the quest to invade Mexico. 

Whether ordered by Wilkinson, Bates, Jefferson, or some other political rival, Lewis had to be removed. His determination, once his mind was set on an objective, knew no way of turning back. This was as true of his desire to fulfill the mandate of his trip with Clark as it was of his intention to clear the Louisiana Territory of corrupt factions of treasonous remnants of Wilkinson’s bunch. 

Captain Gilbert Russell, during Lewis’s last days, wrote that he had planned to travel with the governor to Washington. He had requested a leave of absence from General James Wilkinson but did not receive it when expected. Seemingly frustrated and impatient, Lewis left with Neelly, a friend of Wilkinson, who had appointed Neelly to his position as agent to the Chickasaw Nation. Gale suggests that Neelly had mysteriously arrived at Fort Pickering without explanation and had waited patiently and without reason to travel to Washington with Lewis. Surrounded on all sides by agents and affiliates of his enemies— Wilkinson, Burr, and Smith T.—Lewis never made it to Washington, D.C.

a short afterwood and the footnotes for these chapters can be found at the source

https://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Paul%20Schrag%20-%20The%20Suppressed%20History%20of%20America.pdf

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