---

Historical Background

Lewis heads for Washington

After granting Clark and two other close friends the power of attorney to dispose of his property to pay off his debts, on September 4, 1809, Lewis and his free mulatto servant, John Pernier, set out down the Mississippi by boat, intending to travel to the East by sea from New Orleans. Apparently Lewis planned to raise money en route, for he had sent ahead to New Orleans his 1,600-acre land warrant to be sold if possible at $1 per acre. Besides official papers concerning the protested drafts, Lewis carried with him the Lewis and Clark journals and other documents relating to the expedition for use in his publication project. On September 11, for some reason, he prepared his last will and testament.

Omens of tragedy

Four days later, on Lewis' arrival at Fort Pickering, at the Chickasaw Bluffs (present Memphis), the post commander, Maj. Gilbert C. Russell, found him to be in a "state of mental derangement." Also learning that the boat crew had been watching Lewis closely because he had twice tried to commit suicide and once nearly succeeded, Russell temporarily took possession of his papers and detained him. Within about a week, he apparently recovered and before long seemed able to resume his journey.

Hearing rumors of imminent war between Britain and the United States and fearing that the papers dealing with the expedition might fall into British hands at sea, Lewis decided to proceed overland to Washington via Nashville, through Tennessee and Virginia, instead of by sea from New Orleans. On September 29, or exactly 2 weeks after his arrival at the fort, he and Maj. James Neelly, the Chickasaw Indian agent and newly found traveling companion he had met at the fort, their two servants, and some Chickasaw chiefs, set out. They first traveled southeastward to the Chickasaw Agency, near present Houston, Miss., where the chiefs apparently remained. Lewis, Neelly, and their servants rested at the agency for 2 days, during which Neelly noticed evidences of relapse. Nevertheless, they left there on October 6, moving northeastward along the Natchez Trace.

Lewis' demise

During the night of October 9-10, at a camp near present Collinwood, Tenn., two of the packhorses escaped. At Lewis' request, in the morning Neelly remained behind to search for them. Lewis, promising Neelly he would halt at the next white habitation, and the two servants continued along the trace. That night they stopped at a backwoods inn, or "stand," Grinder's Stand. Arriving there the next morning, Neelly found Lewis dead from two gunshot wounds, and buried him beside the trace near the inn; the gravesite is today part of Meriwether Lewis Park (Natchez Trace Parkway).

One week later, Neelly, writing to Jefferson from Nashville to inform him that Lewis had taken his life, reconstructed the events based on the accounts of Mrs. Robert Grinder and the two servants. Apparently, after Lewis arrived at the inn, on October 10, Mrs. Grinder, noting his aberrant behavior and frightened because her husband was away, moved with her children into a small detached kitchen building to spend the night. The two servants slept in the stable.

About 3:00 a.m., awakened by the sound of two pistol shots from the direction of the inn, Mrs. Grinder aroused the servants. They rushed to Lewis' room, where they found him wounded in the head and just below the breast. Exclaiming to Pernier, according to Neelly's later account, "I have done the business my good Servant give me some water," he died within a few hours. Thus his career ended tragically at the age of 35, only 3 years after his triumphant return to St. Louis as commander of an epochal exploration. Unmarried, he left neither widow nor child to lament his death.

Except for some members of the Lewis family, apparently none of his contemporaries doubted his suicide. Years later, rumors that he had been murdered, either for political reasons or while being robbed, began to spread among residents along the trace. By the 1880's, the murder theory was well embedded in local folklore. During the next decade, the theory began to appear in print and in time gained wide circulation. Some historians and journalists accepted it and others did not; the debate continues to this day.

Yet, not a single bit of contemporary evidence points to foul play. [166] Indeed, most of the evidence, though circumstantial in nature, strongly indicates suicide. It is unlikely that any of the people directly involved, Neelly, the servants, or Mrs. Grinder—though the latter subsequently elaborated upon the event and gave some contradictory information—had any reasons to hide the truth.

Jefferson, who substantiated Neelly's account by personally interviewing Pernier, never seems to have doubted that Lewis committed suicide. In a preface to Biddle's history of the expedition (1814) entitled "Life of Captain Lewis," Jefferson stated that Lewis from early life had been subject to "hypochondriac affections" inherited from his father and other family members and that while serving as his private secretary had at times demonstrated "sensible depressions of mind." But after Lewis took up his duties in St. Louis following the expedition, Jefferson said, the symptoms returned "with redoubled vigour, and began seriously to alarm his friends." Clark, his most intimate friend, upon hearing of the death, exclaimed, "I fear O! I fear the weight of his mind has overcome him."

Other major factors pointing to suicide are Lewis' serious difficulties as Governor of Louisiana Territory, personal financial troubles, the preparation of a will shortly after leaving St. Louis, and reports of his mental instability all along his final journey.