Meriwether Lewis

Meriwether Lewis (born Aug. 18, 1774, near Charlottesville, Va. [U.S.]—died Oct. 11, 1809, near Nashville, Tenn., U.S.) was an American explorer, who with William Clark led the Lewis and Clark Expedition through the uncharted American interior to the Pacific Northwest in 1804–06. He later served as governor of Upper Louisiana Territory.

Born to William Lewis and Lucy Meriwether, Meriwether Lewis grew up on Locust Hill, the family’s plantation in Ivy Creek, Va.—near Monticello, home of the future U.S. president Thomas Jefferson. Lewis’s father died while serving in the Continental Army in 1779. His mother then married John Marks and relocated her family to Georgia before being widowed again by 1792. Returning to Virginia, Lewis began managing Locust Hill under his uncle’s supervision. He joined the Virginia militia in 1794 to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania. The following year he enlisted in the army at the time of the Northwest Indian War against Miami Chief Little Turtle and served for a brief time in William Clark’s Chosen Rifle Company. Lewis’s military career advanced rapidly from ensign (1795) to lieutenant (1799) to captain (1800), and he served as an army recruiter and paymaster. In 1801 President Jefferson asked Lewis to be his personal secretary and aide-de-camp.

In 1803 Jefferson appointed Lewis commander of an expedition to explore the American territory newly acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. His considerable frontier skills, military service, physical endurance, intellectual prowess, and literary skills made him an excellent choice. Lewis traveled to Philadelphia to study astronomy, botany, zoology, and medicine with some of the country’s brightest scientists and doctors. He also began making preparations, recruiting men, and purchasing equipment, boats, and supplies for the expedition. When Jefferson informed Lewis of the numerous commercial, scientific, and diplomatic purposes of the venture, Captain Lewis invited his good friend Clark to co-command the expedition. Although Clark was officially a lieutenant and second in command because the U.S. secretary of war refused him the same status as Lewis, the expedition leaders referred to each other as “captain” to mask this bureaucratic distinction.

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Exploration and Discovery

The Lewis and Clark Expedition spanned 8,000 mi (13,000 km) and three years (1804–06), taking the Corps of Discovery, as the expedition party was known, down the Ohio River, up the Missouri River, across the Continental Divide, and to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis served as the field scientist, chronicling botanical, zoological, meteorological, geographic, and ethnographic information. He also gathered specimens—plant, animal, and mineral—to send back East for further study. Although there are several time lapses in Lewis’s journal entries, the expedition’s records are a national treasure. The co-commanders advanced the American fur trade by documenting the river systems and fur resources in the West. They met Indian leaders, distributed trade goods, delivered speeches, invited Indian delegations to travel to Washington, and conducted peace, friendship, and trade negotiations. Moreover, they announced the sovereignty of the United States and left calling cards of empire such as medals, flags, and certificates.

Upon the conclusion of the expedition, Congress rewarded Lewis with double pay and 1,600 acres (650 hectares) of public land. In 1807 Jefferson appointed his protégé governor of the Territory of Upper Louisiana. Post-expedition endeavours—preparing a three-volume narrative of the expedition for publication, courting women, reporting back to Jefferson on the treason trial of his former vice president Aaron Burr, and attending to family business—delayed Lewis from assuming his post until March 1808. Trying to govern the territory from the East proved impractical, and Lewis’s absence empowered the territorial secretary, Frederick Bates, who undermined Lewis’s authority by setting his own regulations on trading and mining licenses and filling positions through favouritism. When Lewis arrived in Missouri, he clashed with Bates over the administration of Indian and territorial affairs, which resulted in an irreparable rift between them.

Lewis authorized the construction of Fort Madison on the Mississippi River and Fort Osage on the Missouri River. His attention was also demanded by the Osage Indians, who protested treaties and whose land had been encroached upon by emigrant tribes such as the Cherokee. Lewis faced additional pressures from his superiors regarding his infrequent correspondence and his handling of land claims, mining disputes, unlicensed traders, intertribal warfare, and the delayed return of Mandan Chief Sheheke (who had traveled with Lewis to Washington, D.C.) to his village. Secretary of War William Eustis refused to honour some of Lewis’s expense vouchers, which destroyed Lewis’s credit and sullied his reputation. Nonetheless, Lewis had been successful in publishing territorial laws, supporting St. Louis’s inaugural newspaper, and establishing the first Masonic lodge in Missouri.

In 1809 Lewis, age 35, embarked for Washington, D.C., to explain his public expenditures and to clear his name. Leaving the Mississippi River at Chickasaw Bluffs (Memphis, Tenn.), he set out along the Natchez Trace, stopping for the evening at Grinder’s Stand near present-day Hohenwald, Tenn., about 70 mi (110 km) from Nashville. There on October 11 Lewis died a violent and mysterious death from gunshot wounds to the head and chest; the circumstances have fueled a long-standing debate over whether his death was a suicide or murder. Many scholars believe Lewis took his own life as a result of depression, alcohol abuse, or failing to marry or to publish. Others assert that thieves, opportunists, or political opponents murdered him. Another explanation suggests it may have been accidental. In 1848 Tennessee erected a grave-site marker that in 1925 became the Meriwether Lewis National Monument. See also Lewis and Clark Expedition.

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