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Read Stephen Ambrose's bestselling book about Merriwether Lewis at barnesandnoble.com
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R E C E N T L Y

Raging against "the Machine"
By Julekha Dash
A Congolese student says death threats accompanied his campaign for U. of Alabama's student presidency
(03/19/99)

Battling stag/nation
By Jill Priluck
Radical hag Mary Daly stands up to Boston College for forcing coed classes
(03/17/99)

Pimps and Ho's
By Isaac Zaur
One college's theme party is another man's ethical dilemma
(03/17/99)

The fabulous kingdom of gay animals
By Susan McCarthy
A biologist offers the first vision of a tantalizingly diverse natural world: Not all animals are straight arrows
(03/15/99)

To sir, with love?
By Susanna Stromberg
It looked like sex, but maybe it was just old-fashioned teaching
(03/12/99)

BROWSE THE
IVORY TOWER
ARCHIVE

WHO KILLED MERIWETHER LEWIS? | PAGE 1, 2, 3
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Starrs is just one of a number of scholars in recent years who have made headlines -- and ruffled feathers -- by using forensic techniques in an attempt to resolve historical conundrums. It was Starrs who disinterred the remains of Jesse James and confirmed that they were the real McCoy. The New York Times Magazine article profiled Starrs alongside researchers involved in such projects as analyzing a lock of Beethoven's hair for signs of syphilis and using computer-imaging software to determine whether Emily Dickinson's personal letters conceal testimonies of a lesbian relationship. Featured as well, of course, was retired pathologist Eugene Foster's DNA investigation of the Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings case.

Starrs was dismayed to find his project lumped in with what he considered sensationalistic forensic enterprises (though some might argue that whether or not Beethoven suffered from syphilis is at least as historically valid a question as whether Meriwether Lewis was murdered). Not surprisingly, some of Starrs' colleagues have bristled at his criticisms. "Jim has his share of detractors in the forensic science community. Some find his pointed comments on some of our professional shortcomings too pointed," says forensic scientist Barry Fisher, adding that he himself considers Starrs "a voice of conscience in forensic science." Starrs himself is also not immune to the charge of sensationalism. "I am concerned that occasionally you hear comments that he is more or less seeking publicity, which is certainly not true," says his colleague Guice, who describes Starrs as being "totally dedicated to seeking out the truth in this matter" and as "a man of the highest integrity."

Forensic historical research is controversial in part because of questions of propriety: It involves many of the same issues as a decision to perform an autopsy. In Lewis' case, the fact that his family has signed off on the exhumation removes one major objection. But a larger historical question remains. Certainly, before giving scientists permission to take the extraordinary step of exhumation, it's reasonable to expect that they give compelling reasons. Mere suspicion should not be enough -- after all, virtually every historical event more than 50 years old can be called into question. There must be, at the very least, reasonable doubt -- and some would argue that the burden of proof lies with the revisionists. Have Starrs and his fellow revisionists raised sufficient doubt about the conventional version of how Lewis died to justify his proposed removal?

The thesis that Lewis committed suicide rests upon several pieces of circumstantial evidence (no firsthand evidence exists to support either position). First, there's Capt. Russell's document asserting that Lewis had tried to kill himself twice on his journey, that he was drinking heavily and that he had to be placed under suicide watch. Second, there is the contemporaneous account of Mrs. Grinder. Third, there is the reaction of the man who knew Lewis best, his fellow explorer William Clark, who wrote upon hearing of Lewis' death, "I fear O' I fear the weight of his mind has overcome him, what will be the Consequence?" Finally, there is the fact that neither Clark nor Thomas Jefferson, who also knew Lewis intimately, ever doubted that Lewis killed himself. After Lewis' death, Jefferson wrote that "Governor Lewis had from early life been subject to hypochondriac affections ... I observed at times sensible depressions of mind ... his Western expedition ... suspended these distressful affections; but after his establishment at St. Louis in sedentary occupations they returned upon him with redoubled vigor, and began seriously to alarm his friends."

It's an impressive array of evidence, but Starrs and the revisionists question all of it. Their most powerful counter-argument is the fact that Mrs. Grinder, the sole witness, gave differing accounts of what happened, and that her account differs from several other accounts.

According to a letter James Neelly wrote to Jefferson, Lewis arrived at Grinder's Stand to find Mrs. Grinder alone. Mrs. Grinder, "discovering the governor to be deranged, gave him up the house & slept herself in one near it." The servants slept in the nearby stable loft. At around 3 a.m., Mrs. Grinder heard "two pistols fire off in the Governors Room." She woke up the servants, but by the time they arrived upon the scene, they were too late to save Lewis, who "had shot himself in the head with one pistol & a little below the breast with the other." The dying Lewis uttered to his servant, "I have done the business my good Servant give me some water." His servant obliged him, but to little avail. Lewis died a short while after.

By his own account, Neelly arrived upon the scene only after Lewis' death. His letter to Jefferson described only what he had gathered posthumously from Mrs. Grinder, who was an aural witness but not an eyewitness to the shooting. Yet Mrs. Grinder's own muddled accounts hurt the credibility of Neelly's case. Mrs. Grinder's description of the event found its way into four separate written accounts; in each telling, her story was different. Alexander Wilson, the renowned ornithologist, also heard Mrs. Grinder's story, in a separate telling. Wilson transcribed her account in an 1811 letter to one of his colleagues.

In this rendition, Mrs. Grinder remained awake, terrified, listening to Lewis talking to himself, sometimes violently, all night. She heard a pistol fire, a heavy thud, an exclamation of "O Lord!" and another shot. Lewis cried out to her, "O madam! Give me some water, and heal my wounds," but Mrs. Grinder did not go in, watching Lewis through the spaces between the logs in the kitchen wall. Lewis staggered outside, fell and rested beside a tree. Eventually he returned to his room, where Mrs. Grinder heard him scraping a bucket with a gourd for water. Mrs. Grinder allowed Lewis to suffer for two hours. Finally, she sent two of her children to the barn to awaken the servants. When the servants came to Lewis, they found him with part of his forehead blown off, his brains exposed, "without having bled much." Lewis offered them all the money left in his trunk to blow his head off. The servants refused. About two hours later, Lewis died. His last words were "I am no coward; but I am so strong, [it is] so hard to die."

Various aspects of this version of Grinder's account, as told by Wilson, have aroused suspicion. Some historians have observed that a frontier woman would not have acted so timidly. Others have wondered how Lewis, a famously capable shot, could have failed to kill himself.

Further complicating matters is the account given by Capt. Russell, who, after asserting that Lewis shot himself in the head and the breast (the ball in the latter case having "entered and passing downward thro' his body came out low down near his back bone") claims that Lewis "got his razors ... and ... was found ... by one of the servants, busily engaged in cuting [sic] himself from head to foot." This grisly detail is absent from Grinder's accounts.

Scrutinizing these and other accounts has become a cottage industry among Lewis historians ever since Vardis Fisher opened the debate in the 1960s. Since then, nearly everyone involved has been implicated by one researcher or another as a murder suspect. First and foremost is Neelly, fingered most famously by Dr. E.G. Chuinard, the authority on the medical history of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Chuinard points to evidence -- including the angle of trajectory described in Russell's account -- to argue that Lewis awoke to find Neelly rifling through his belongings, and was shot by Neelly as he rose from the floor. Lewis' servant, Pernier, is another major suspect. According to legend, Lewis' mother accused him of murdering her son. There are even wild theories about Lewis dying in a conspiracy involving Thomas Jefferson, or Lewis sleeping with Mrs. Grinder and being caught by a violent Mr. Grinder.

N E X T_ P A G E .|. What does Starrs hope to find, anyway?