THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY:The Final Steps of America's Greatest Pathfinder (by Vonn McKee)

Meriwether Lewis

        

In my very first blog post for Western Fictioneers, “A SACRED PATH,” I shared some history of the old Natchez Trace, which meanders within a few miles of my house. (If you’d like to read that post for backstory of the Trace’s beginnings as a buffalo and Indian path, click here.

  I mentioned that the grave of Meriwether Lewis is located at Mile 385.9, near Hohenwald, Tennessee. I was amazed to learn that the man called “America’s Greatest Pathfinder” met an untimely and mysterious demise in the dense forest of south central Tennessee.

 It’s a lot like one of those “The Rest of the Story” segments written by the late radio broadcaster Paul Harvey. We all know a bit about the Lewis and Clark Expedition…that President Thomas Jefferson handpicked Meriwether Lewis (who happened to work as his personal secretary) to lead the Corps of Discovery Expedition across the great American West in search of a waterway to the Pacific.

Lewis was bright, energetic and forceful…else he would not have survived working for the obsessively organized Jefferson. In order to round out the skills needed to command such a journey, the president arranged for his aide to study medicine, astronomy, and navigational methods. By the time he assembled the Corps of Discovery team, Meriwether Lewis was quite the Renaissance man.

Map Detail
(Drawn by William Clark)

He recruited William Clark, with whom he had served in the Army, and their company of thirty-three men embarked westward from near St. Louis, spending more than two years battling extreme terrain, disease and hostile natives.While they were unable to find a continuous river route to the west coast, they returned with hundreds of plant, seed, and soil samples, along with Lewis’s meticulous flora and fauna illustrations and splendid maps drawn by Clark.

From Meriwether Lewis's Journal
(Corps of Discovery Expedition)

After dedicating years of his young life to preparing and carrying out the adventure of a lifetime, Lewis suddenly found himself without a purpose. President Jefferson appointed him Governor of the Louisiana Territory, which esssentially shackled the former explorer to a desk in St. Louis. Always prone to moodiness, Lewis proved ill-suited to politics and brokered several questionable deals that brought criticism from Washington. He began to neglect his duties and took to drinking heavily.

On September 3, 1809, Meriwether Lewis boarded a ship at St. Louis bound for New Orleans and, ultimately, Washington, D.C. He hoped to resolve financial issues surrounding his government dealings and to present his expedition journals to a publisher, although he reportedly had not completed them—even after Jefferson’s continual admonishments.

There are some reports that Lewis, in mental distress, attempted suicide on the voyage but was restrained. For unknown reasons, he changed his mind about making the trip by boat and disembarked at Memphis. He struck out overland via the Natchez Trace—a dangerous trail fraught with robbers and murderers.

On the evening of October 10, he stopped at Grinder’s Stand. (“Stand” was the common term for “inn” at that time.) During the night, the proprietess heard two gunshots and peeked through the cracks of the cabin to see Lewis crawling to the door, asking for water. She was too terrified to let him in, possibly since her husband was away. Early the next morning, October 11, Meriwether Lewis was found dead in his room with bullet wounds to his head and abdomen. He was thirty-five years old.

                                                                                

The cabin at the Meriwether Lewis gravesite is not
an exact replica of Grinder's Station

Most who knew him well believed it was suicide. Thomas Jefferson noted his “sensible depressions of mind.” William Clark, upon hearing the news of Lewis’s death, wrote “I fear the weight of his mind has overcome him.” It is thought that Lewis may have contracted syphilis or malaria, the latter of which can cause dementia.

Descendants of the Lewis family have long maintained that he was murdered and have campaigned unsuccessfully to have his body exhumed. (The grave is on National Park Service property.) Their claims are explained at solvethemystery.org Some scholars agree, although speculations of the murderer’s identity run the gamut from highway robbers to a government-hired assassin. They point out that Meriwether Lewis was too skilled a marksman to botch his own suicide.
 
The answers lie beneath a stately monument of Tennessee blue limestone. Even after 200 years, forensics could accurately analyze the skull (if intact) for gunpowder residue and fracture patterns. DNA samples could reveal details about Lewis’s health.

A broken column...
the symbol of a life cut short

We may never know the truth of Meriwether Lewis's last night on earth. Whether suicide or murder, it was a tragic and senseless end for the courageous American explorer. Rather than dwell on his final moments of suffering, I choose to picture him sitting tall in a keel-boat, journal in hand, ready to document the sights waiting around the next bend in the river.


 Information about the Meriwether Lewis Monument:
 http://www.nps.gov/natr/planyourvisit/upload/M-Lewis-Site-Bulletin-8-30-13.pdf
                   

“I could but esteem this moment of my departure as among the most happy of my life."  Meriwether Lewis  

All the best,
Vonn McKee

2015 WWA Spur Finalist (Short Fiction)
2015 Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Finalist (Short Fiction)

A Sacred Path

I live a couple of miles from the northern terminus of the Natchez Trace Parkway, which the National Park Service describes as “a 444-mile drive through exceptional scenery and 10,000 years of North American history.” The two-lane billboard-free road meanders north from the delta lowland of Natchez, Mississippi, to the rolling hill country near Nashville, Tennessee. Motorists will meet no eighteen-wheelers and see no fast-food neon, but will probably have to brake for plenty of deer and wild turkey.

The parkway more or less follows an ancient footpath that began as an animal track thousands of years ago, maybe even ten thousand. Bison traversed between southern grazing lands and salt licks on the Cumberland Plateau. Later, prehistoric mound builders used the Trace to move between villages. Its native wanderers eventually included the Choctaw, Chickasaw and the Natchez. 

European explorers utilized the old path but its heaviest use was from about 1785 to the 1820’s when the “Kaintucks” of the Ohio River Valley floated goods downriver to the ports of Natchez and New Orleans and returned on foot via the Trace. It was notoriously dangerous: organized gangs of (literal) cut-throats lay in wait for the travelers. Robbery was the least crime feared on the journey.

Today, the biggest threat of traveling the Natchez Trace might be mindlessly enjoying the scenery rather than eyeing your speedometer. Park rangers abound. (I can vouch for the fact that the speed limit is a strict 50 miles per hour.

                           

                                                  

      The Natchez Trace Parkway at Birdsong Hollow, near Franklin, Tennessee           (USDOT Image)

Occasionally, I drive for a ways down the parkway just to relax and take in the sights. I think about those who walked here…the mysterious natives whose burial mounds can be seen along the route. John James Audubon may have sprawled on a boulder to sketch a cocky bluejay. I imagine the tramping of Andrew Jackson’s foot soldiers on their way to fight the Battle of New Orleans.

                                        A few sections of the Old Trace remain.

Near Mile 386, is a memorial to America’s greatest pathfinder Meriwether Lewis, who died here at Grinder’s Stand. The details are sketchy and historians are divided as to whether he was murdered or perhaps committed suicide. He was known to suffer from what President Andrew Jackson called “sensible depressions of mind.”

                    Here lies Meriwether Lewis. Milepost 385.9, near Hohenwald, Tennessee           (NPS Image)

Sometimes my Sunday drive over the Natchez Trace, and all those ancient footprints, turns philosophical. As a writer, I recognize that I follow a path that is not only well-worn, but that has been worn very well. Particularly in the western genre, we have just one time period to write about and just so many character types to choose from. The possible scenarios come (and please, Lord, let them come) from an unseen creative well.

My hope is that I can, now and then, find a new way to say the old thing, to delight a reader with a previously-unvoiced expression or description. But a look at my own bookshelf tells me the hard truth. Others have ridden this way. Bret Harte. Mark Twain. Grey…L’Amour. McMurtry…McCarthy. Wister…Leonard. I’m a piker…and I know it. A greenhorn, if you will.

Oh, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t take the journey. I’m not only writing for readers. I write for the love of the genre and the great period of American history that it represents.

There’s another reason I write too. You see, others ride behind. Someone has to point the way. With every story, we keep the old trail worn, revered, relevant.

Vonn McKee is Louisiana-born but has called Nashville, Tennessee, home for over twenty years. She has spent time in the music business, the construction business, and has even waited a few tables along the way. Vonn has written songs, radio jingles, magazine articles, short stories and is at work on her first novel. She has a real heart for historical fiction, especially the Old West.

You can keep up with the latest news at https://www.facebook.com/VonnMcKee.

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