The Suppressed History of America

  Seventy years later journalist and historian Vardis Fisher explored several murder theories in his book Suicide or Murder? The Strange Death of Governor Meriwether Lewis. Fisher clearly supports the theory that Lewis was murdered, possibly by conspirators who believed Lewis had a map to a gold mine somewhere in the West.

  Historian, journalist, and researcher David Leon Chandler provides an exhaustive explanation of his theory that Lewis was murdered as part of an assassination conspiracy spawned by his old friend Thomas Jefferson. The Jefferson Conspiracies: A President’s Role in the Assassination of Meriwether Lewis suggests that Lewis discovered certain secrets about General James Wilkinson, his predecessor as governor of Upper Louisiana. If revealed, Chandler surmised, the secrets would destroy the reputations of both General Wilkerson and Jefferson. Chandler speculates that Lewis was not just traveling to Washington to reclaim debts and smooth ruffled feathers. He claims Lewis was traveling to Washington to blow the whistle on Wilkinson and Jefferson. Chandler suggests plausibly that Neelly and Major Russell were also involved in the assassination.11

  Perhaps the most complete and compelling murder theory comes from James E. Starrs, professor of forensic science at George Washington University, and independent historian Kira Gale. According to Gale’s book, The Death of Meriwether Lewis: A Historic Crime Scene Investigation, Lewis was likely assassinated by agents sent by then General James Wilkinson and Aaron Burr.

  Burr and Lewis had worked together during Jefferson’s first administration when Burr was vice president and Lewis worked as Jefferson’s private secretary. Lewis was traveling up the Missouri River on the day Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in the now famous duel. After the duel Burr’s political career came to a halt. Burr and Wilkinson, meanwhile, began planning to invade Spanish territory with a so-called filibustering expedition. They would lead a private, armed expedition of more than a thousand men into Mexico with the intent of establishing a new government and appointing themselves its leaders.

  When Lewis and Clark returned from their expedition west, Burr’s plan to invade Mexico overshadowed the triumph of the Corps of Discovery. Burr’s invasion was to launch from the private island estate of wealthy Irish aristocrat Harman Blennerhassett, who was said to be funding the expedition. On November 27, 1806, Jefferson ordered the arrest of Burr and his followers on the charge of illegally planning an armed attack on Spanish territory. Two weeks later Blennerhassett and members of the filibuster fled from local militia, who burned Blennerhassett’s mansion. The group later met with Burr at the mouth of the Cumberland River in Kentucky.

  Meanwhile General Wilkinson, who had been removed from political office as the governor of Upper Louisiana by Jefferson and replaced by Lewis, managed to negotiate peace with Spanish troops that had crossed the Sabine River into the United States. This peace contradicted plans agreed to by Burr and Wilkinson, who were planning to use the Spanish invasion as an excuse to launch their armed invasion of Mexico. Wilkinson, who had been receiving payments for information he had been feeding to the Spanish government, had apparently switched sides. Wilkinson managed to avoid a war with Spain by making a private deal with Spanish General Simon Herrera, who agreed to withdraw his troops. The condition was the creation of a sort of neutral zone on the blurred border between Mexico and the United States. According to Gale, Wilkinson “thus managed to please both his Spanish paymasters and the President, while sacrificing his friend and fellow conspirator, Aaron Burr.”12

  In a message to Congress dated January 12, 1807, Jefferson explained what he described as a plot to separate the western states from the American Union and to invade Mexico. Two days later he held a presidential banquet celebrating the return of Lewis and Clark. Burr, meanwhile, had been arrested at Bayou Pierre near Natchez, Mississippi. Very few people believed at the time that he had planned to separate from the Union, or that he planned to invade Mexico. On February 4, 1807, a grand jury refused to even indict him. Burr then fled, only to be captured a week later and brought to Richmond, Virginia, where he stood trial for treason.

  Burr was later acquitted. Wilkinson, in turn, narrowly escaped indictment for treason by a seven-to-nine vote of the grand jury, according to The Burr Conspiracy by Thomas Abernathy. During this time the territory that Lewis was to inherit was becoming a political hotbed, as wealthy landowners went to war over vast stores of the lead that had been discovered in the Louisiana Territory. Facing war on several fronts, Congress voted to capitalize and control all land bearing lead throughout the territory. William Carr, federal land agent, remarked that profits from the leasing and sale of public lands would likely be able to pay the $15 million cost of the Louisiana Purchase within a few years. Lands rife with lead became small war zones with armed land speculators battling for control. Most notorious and powerful among them was John Smith T., a relative of General James Wilkinson.

  When Lewis was appointed governor of Louisiana Territory he set about “cleaning up” the territory, starting with routing anyone and everyone involved with Aaron Burr. In a letter to William Clark he wrote, “It is my wish that every person who holds an appointment of profit or honor in that territory and against whom sufficient proof of the infection of Burrism can be adduced, should be immediately dismissed from office without partiality favor or affection, as I can never make any terms with traitors.”13

  Lewis’s efforts to clean up Louisiana Territory were blocked perpetually by his nemesis Frederick Bates. When Lewis was reported dead Bates expressed little regret. A letter from Bates to James Howe at the time stated bluntly that he “had no personal regard for him and a great deal of political contempt.”14

  In fact, before Lewis was murdered Bates was charged with terrorizing Lewis to the brink of madness. At the time one of Bates’ colleagues, Clement Penrose, reported to his brother “that the mental derangement of the Governor ought not to be imputed to his political miscarriages; but rather to the barbarous conduct of the Secretary (Bates). That Mr. Bates determined to tear down Gov. Lewis, at all events, with the hope of supplanting him in the Executive Office with a great deal of scandal equally false and malicious.”15 A letter to Bates from his sister Nancy bears the alarming statement, “I lament his death on your account, thinking it might involve you in difficulty.” The statement suggests that Bates may have been involved in the murder.16

  Author Jonathan Daniels suggests that Bates was the only one with an immediate and credible motive for wanting Lewis dead. He speculated that Bates “may have been fearful of Wilkinson, with whom he had been ‘on very intimate terms,’ about something the general required him to keep hidden.”17

  Moreover, Daniels speculates that Wilkinson may very well have helped place the “politically shifting” Bates in his position in St. Louis, hoping that Bates would help cover up his traitorous dealings there. Perhaps, he suggests, Lewis learned something that Bates, Wilkinson, and perhaps even Jefferson wanted to keep secret.

  But there are other, equally plausible suspects, including John Smith T.

  When Lewis took over his role as Louisiana governor he targeted three men that he considered chief conspirators and impediments to his governing of the territory. The first was John Smith T., who had set off to join Burr in his planned invasion of Mexico until it was discovered that Burr had been routed as a traitor. John Smith T., who added to his name a T for “Tennessee,” was considered the most dangerous man in Missouri and was known to have murdered more than a dozen men. By the 1820s he was known as the Lead King of Missouri.

  Smith T. had brought under his control hundreds of thousands of acres in Tennessee and northern Alabama. Historical accounts suggest that Smith T. handled his affairs with litigation, guns, and hired gunmen. Two of Smith T.’s slaves had become renowned gunsmiths, and he managed a shot tower along the Mississippi River that churned out bullets. Smith T. was ready and frequently willing to supply weapons and ammunition for unauthorized invasions of Mexico. In fact he is known to have participated in at least four attemp
ts to invade Texas and Mexico. When James Wilkinson became the first governor of Louisiana Territory in 1805–06, he ousted Moses Austin from several key positions and replaced him with Smith T.

  In The Death of Meriwether Lewis, Gales suggests that a biography of Smith T. by Richard Steward offers a plausible motive for an assassination attempt on Lewis.

  A month before Lewis left St. Louis, a “citizen’s committee” in St. Louis chose John Smith T. as a lobbyist to go to Washington, and to bring two petitions to Congress. The first petition asked for the removal from office of Judge John B. C. Lucas, a friend of both Meriwether Lewis and Albert Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury. Lucas was one of three land claims commissioners in St. Louis and a Judge of the Territorial Court. As a member of the commission reviewing Spanish land claims, he was blamed for too strictly following the law. In addition, the petitioners wanted the law changed, validating land claims that were recorded after France’s secret acquisition of the territory on October 1, 1800.

  The second petition asked for a change of status for Louisiana Territory; an upgrade which would allow residents to elect their own territorial officials, rather than be wards of the Federal Government. It was obviously also the intention of the petition leaders to urge that Lewis not be reappointed as Territorial Governor by the President.18

  Meanwhile Smith T.’s brother Reuben Smith was preparing to make another armed excursion into Mexico. The group was captured by Spanish militia and sent to labor in the mines. Gale notes that Smith T.’s trip to Washington, and his whereabouts at the time, remain a mystery. Gale suggests that Smith T.’s attempts to free Louisiana from federal oversight, the subsequent unauthorized invasion attempt by his brother, the concurring trip by Lewis to Washington to rout so-called Burrites such as Smith T., his brother Reuben, and General James Wilkinson coincide perfectly. Her conclusion is that Lewis was killed by Smith T., or his agents. The motive was to remove Lewis from power so Smith T. and the remaining Burrites could continue to use Louisiana as a staging area for the quest to invade Mexico.

  Whether ordered by Wilkinson, Bates, Jefferson, or some other political rival, Lewis had to be removed. His determination, once his mind was set on an objective, knew no way of turning back. This was as true of his desire to fulfill the mandate of his trip with Clark as it was of his intention to clear the Louisiana Territory of corrupt factions of treasonous remnants of Wilkinson’s bunch.

  Captain Gilbert Russell, during Lewis’s last days, wrote that he had planned to travel with the governor to Washington. He had requested a leave of absence from General James Wilkinson but did not receive it when expected. Seemingly frustrated and impatient, Lewis left with Neelly, a friend of Wilkinson, who had appointed Neelly to his position as agent to the Chickasaw Nation. Gale suggests that Neelly had mysteriously arrived at Fort Pickering without explanation and had waited patiently and without reason to travel to Washington with Lewis.

  Surrounded on all sides by agents and affiliates of his enemies— Wilkinson, Burr, and Smith T.—Lewis never made it to Washington, D.C.

  Afterword

  With the unknown, one is confronted with danger, discomfort and worry; the first instinct is to abolish these painful sensations. First principle: any explanation is better than none. The question “Why?” is not pursued for its own sake but to find a certain kind of answer—an answer that is pacifying, tranquilizing and soothing.

  FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS

  Welcome to the wilderness. Readers expecting a neatly packaged conclusion may be disappointed. But history is complex, messy, sometimes terrifying. Often it’s mysterious.

  There are a thousand conclusions to draw from what you’ve just finished reading. But there are far more questions. These are questions that deserve to be asked, even if a convenient answer doesn’t immediately present itself.

  Was Meriwether Lewis murdered because his journals contained secrets that others wanted to suppress? Did he discover evidence of advanced cultures that might have undermined the moral foundation of planned westward expansion? Or was he murdered because he was in the way of Wilkinson and Smith T. and their nefarious ambitions? Perhaps Lewis, a Master Mason, staunch advocate of state’s rights, and an indefatigable hero, became a liability amid political turmoil that ensconced him upon returning from the wilderness. Perhaps Jefferson learned to regret sending Lewis to rout corruption in Louisiana. Did his headstrong friend and former secretary harbor some damning revelations about Jefferson’s relationship to Wilkinson and Burr?

  The common answers to these kinds of questions often reek of a kind of desperate certainty that belongs more in church than it does in science and academia. Indeed many historians, anthropologists, ethnologists, and other official spokespersons for the dead would like you to believe their version of the past. Many lay claim to history and the truth like greedy land speculators. But, to quote Nietzsche again, we are all better artists than we realize. If you need evidence, take the time to look at the amazing variety of theories and conclusions drawn about the smallest portion of American history. Then recognize that no matter how contradictory, each one is presented with incredible conviction.

  History is as much a work of art as it is a science. Personal preference; the rush to certainty; the need to trump rival theories or rival professors; the need for a comfortable conclusion; the desire to contribute something novel enough to the conversation to earn tenure—all these are as real and present as the motivation to seek and codify the truth.

  We construct history from evidence, sure. But there’s more to it.

  Meriwether Lewis explored the wilderness. Ultimately he paid a price for it. When there are resources to be plundered, the truth becomes a liability, an inconvenience. That’s true whether the resources are vast stores of lead, gold, timber, and land, or the resources produced by the publishing of a book. We lay no claim to the truth. Like Lewis, we’re comfortable in the wilderness.

  But there remains a hunger for the so-called truth. Even when a thousand meticulously researched theories have been constructed and presented, people continue to question. People know when they’ve got only part of the story. But often the need for resolution, notoriety, control, or a quick buck overwhelms the need for truth. That’s true regardless of the source. Whether it’s the sanctioned proclamations of a university professor or the desperate ranting of the latest conspiracy researcher, most of us know deep down when someone is offering speculation disguised as truth.

  But this is more than an intellectual exercise. There are a hundred members of Meriwether Lewis’s family who want to know if he was murdered. It’s been more than a decade since James Starrs filed an affidavit to convene a coroner’s jury in the Tennessee County where Lewis was killed. During the summer of 1996, in Hohenwald, Tennessee, a group gathered to hear testimony from historians, forensic scientists, and experts who offered their opinions on the value of exhuming Lewis’s body. The participants, nearly all of whom said they believed Lewis was murdered, recommended that his remains be exhumed with hope that modern forensic techniques would help solve the mystery of his death. The National Park Service has consistently stood in the way of requests to do so. The Park Service says that participants in the jury offered a one-sided view of Lewis’s death. Officials suggested that the sanctity of the monument was more important than the promise of new information contained in a body that has been decaying for two centuries.

  Robert C. Haraden, former superintendent of the Natchez Trace Parkway & Meriwether Lewis National Monument, wrote:

  There are people who believe that Lewis committed suicide and others who believe he was murdered. Both groups are well intentioned. However, the mystery, the fascination, and the lore of Lewis and Clark and their heroic expedition is that we do not know every detail about them. Nor do we need to know—that’s what keeps the story alive. . . . There is a high potential for damage to the monument and gravesite [from exhumation] and only a forlorn hope that anything positive can be learn
ed after 190 years. . . . Let’s not dwell on Meriwether Lewis’ death. Instead, let us celebrate his life and great accomplishments and let the mystery remain.1

  Or maybe, just maybe, going just a bit deeper into the wilderness would serve another purpose. Maybe learning the truth about Lewis’s demise would help hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people find a peace that has eluded them. Maybe learning the truth would shed new light on the past we thought we knew, thereby changing the present, and the future. Maybe digging for the truth of America’s history would violate the territory claimed by the Parks Service, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Ivy League. Someone might have to add a footnote to their lecture materials. Someone might have to come up with an extra line item on their annual budget. Someone might have to dig around in the vast stores of antiquities that have been cataloged but never explored or presented as part of history. Someone might have to admit that they didn’t get it all right the first time.

  More than that, though, someone might have to admit that burying the truth for the sake of celebrating the life of a man who was murdered, cultures that were murdered, or a country that was built on murder, isn’t really much of a celebration at all.

  Notes

  INTRODUCTION

  1. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage, 76.

  CHAPTER 1. THE OLMEC RIDDLES

  1. Whittaker, Africans in the Americas: Our Journey Throughout the World, 15.

  2. O’Halleran, “Another Mystery of Mesoamerica.”

  3. Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods, 124–25.

  4. Ibid., 137.

  5. Ibid., 140.

  6. Ibid., 148–49.