Lewis & Clark article of interest

[Ol Gabe]

Moderator, please reassign if necessary...
Saw this today and found it of interest to Mil-History buffs.
Best regards and good reading!
'Ol Gabe
...

Lewis and Clark in murder mystery 200 years after their final expedition...
Meriwether Lewis, one half of the Lewis and Clark explorer duo who first reached the Pacific by land, may have been murdered, say descendants who want his body exhumed.


By Jacqui Goddard in Miami
Published: 3:25PM BST 27 Jun 2009


When explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark completed a trailblazing expedition across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean in 1806, they were revered as American heroes and their journals as literary classics.

But Lewis's death three years later, at the age of 35, is now turning into a historical whodunnit as academics, scientists and generations of his descendants question whether he really committed suicide, as was accepted at the time, or whether he may have been felled by an assassin's bullets.

Now, as the 200th anniversary of his death approaches, his descendants have mounted a fresh push to have his body exhumed and the cold case reopened, believing that modern forensic procedures could settle the mystery.

Lewis, 28, and Clark, 32, embarked on a two-year odyssey to map previously unknown regions of the American west, making the first contacts with 50 native Indian tribes and discovering more than 300 species of flora and fauna that had never been recorded before, including the grizzly bear and the coyote. But at the height of his fame, the young explorer was found dead - shot through the head and the chest - in a room in an inn, where he had been lodging for the night while en route to see the president in Washington.

"Just about every single child in America learns about Lewis and Clark. When I speak to them I ask how the story ends and they say 'suicide' - but we don't know that," said Howell Lewis Bowen, 73, Lewis's great-great-great-great nephew.

"We need to close the door on the mystery, find the end of the story and be sure that the truth is taught."

Mounted on the orders of President Thomas Jefferson, the expedition resulted from the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, the $15 million acquisition by the US of an 820,000-square-mile swathe of territory which had until then been owned by the French. Whereas maps of the US once stopped at the Mississippi River, leaving a giant blank space to the west, the US now had the opportunity to find out what lay beyond and to establish new trading routes.

The epic, 8,000-mile adventure won the two young army officers a place in history alongside the likes of Christopher Columbus and Captain James Cook. So large do their exploits loom, that a television mini-series starring Edward Norton as Lewis and Brad Pitt as Clark is currently under production in the US.

"It was every bit as exciting as going to the Moon for the first time. They were on a very perilous excursion and frankly a lot of people didn't think they would be able to do it and come back alive," said Mr Bowen.

But they did - and Lewis's reward upon their return in 1806 was the governorship of the new Louisiana Territory.

On October 11, 1809, he was found dead in his room at an inn located in the Tennessee mountains, where he had been lodging for the night while on route to Washington to see the president. He had been shot - one bullet to the head and a second to his chest.

An often melancholy character, his death was noted as a suicide and, despite his status, his body was buried hastily and without ceremony nearby. A monument subsequently erected in 1848 paid homage to his courage and "scrupulous fidelity to the truth" - a quality that his descendants say they are now also upholding as they seek to settle speculation as to what really happened that night at the inn.

Members of the monument committee who viewed Lewis's remains in 1848 concluded it was "more probable that he died at the hands of an assassin" and in 1996, a Tennessee coroner's hearing recommended a full forensic study of the bones. But the federal government has held out against granting the necessary permit.

"They say 'We don't want to set a precedent, people will want to do the same thing for others buried on National Parks land,' but we have a duty to find out what happened," said Dr William M.Anderson, 91, Lewis's closest living relative, who is pressing the new administration in Washington for a rethink.

"There were things about the suicide story that didn't add up but there wasn't much that could be done about it until recent years, when science has advanced so far that it does seem possible now that an examination could show the nature of his death, how it happened, maybe even why it happened," he said.

Forensic scientists are already standing by ready to examine the bones for clues, such as where the bullets entered and left Lewis's body, which could be crucial factors in proving whether he fired the shots himself.

If he did not, the list of suspects has already been drawn. Among those in the frame are General James Wilkinson, commanding general of the US Army, acknowledged by historians as one of America's most notorious traitors. Some theorise that he arranged Lewis' assassination to prevent him from blowing the whistle on his plans to invade Mexico and seize control of gold and silver mines.

Also on the list of possible conspirators is James Smith T, a wealthy land speculator who worked with Gen Wilkinson on fraudulent land deals in order to take over lucrative lead mines south of St Louis. He always carried four pistols, a knife and a rifle that he christened "Hark from the Tombs".

Historian Kira Gale, co-author of a new book The Death of Meriwether Lewis, with Professor James Starrs, a forensic pathologist at George Washington University, said: "It's a tangled web of politics, conspiracies and expansionism."

Dr Anderson, whose great-great-grandmother was Lewis's sister, said: "The family will accept whatever the studies - if they are granted - ultimately find. I just want history to be history, and not fiction."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5587897/Lewis-and-Clark-in-murder-mystery-200-years-after-their-final-expedition.html

[Daniel Nighteyes]

TWO bullets - one to the chest and one to the head?  And they called it suicide?  I always knew those folks were tough, but...