The Aftermath of the Lewis and Clark Expedition

Arguably the definitive book on the most momentous expedition in American history is Stephen E Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage ; Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, which focuses on the expedition and Lewis’s suicide. After a triumphant return as a national hero, Lewis’s life was cut tragically cut short after he took to drink, engaged in land speculation, piled up debts, made jealous political enemies and suffered severe depression. The controversy continues to this day as to whether he committed suicide or was murdered.

Meriwether Lewis by Thomas C. Danisi and John C. Jackson focuses on Lewis’s life before the expedition and his term as governor of the Louisiana Territory until days before his death  in October 1809.  It highlights the bitter political battles and indifferent Washington bureaucrats that Lewis encountered and clearly refutes claims of diminished mental capabilities.

Meriwether Lewis died from two gunshot wounds while staying at a crude inn along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee. Who fired these shots may never be known. Was his death a suicide, an accident, or a homicide?  By His Own Hand? The Mysterious Death of Meriwether Lewis  edited by John D. W. Guice is the first book to subject the evidence to careful analysis and consider the murder-versus-suicide debate with its full historical context. Readers can come to their own conclusions. Although descendants of Meriwether Lewis have requested that his body be exhumed to determine if he committed suicide or was murdered, the National Park Service has refused to do so.

Larry E. Morris in The Fate of the Corps : What Became of the Lewis and Clark Explorers After the Expedition relates the final stories of the individuals who served with the expedition. Some became legends during their lifetimes, others faded into anonymity. Of the 33 corps members, eight died violent deaths at least one by his own hands.

Morris also discusses another controversy, the controversy about Sacagawea. An elderly Shoshone woman by the name of Porivo was laid to rest on April 9, 1884 in Wyoming on the Wind River Indian Reservation, and that her son Bat-tez was Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau. Porivo claimed to have been with Lewis and Clark on the expedition to the Pacific and spoke of being a guide for the expedition, knowing details about the journey that her listeners did not supply on their own. Primary documents indicate that Sacagawea went up the Missouri with Charbonneau in 1811 and died at Fort Manuel near present-day Kenel, Corson County, South Dakota in 1812 at the approximate age of 25.  William Clark adopted Charbonneau’s children in the summer of 1813, and said that Sacagawea was dead. Moreover, Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau’s life is well documented and Bat-tez could not have been Jean-Baptiste.

The final member of the Corps passed away in 1870. Some members went on to hold public office, two were charged with murder. Many continued to adventure forth into the western frontier.  Morris concludes that research on the members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition will continue as there is still a lack of information on some of the members.

~Brenda, Central Library