On September 4, 1809, Lewis and his servant John Pernia, a free black or mulatto, loaded up Lewis’s trunks and made their way through the muddy streets of St. Louis to book passage on a keelboat. But within days, Lewis was sick, possibly with malaria. He and Pernia stopped 200 miles to the south at New Madrid, where the governor made out his will and bequeathed his property to his mother, Lucy Marks.

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When the two men reached Fort Pickering, near present Memphis, Tennessee, Lewis was again ‘indisposed.’ In one letter, fort commander Gilbert Russell attributed Lewis’s problems to drinking, although in another he indicated Lewis was simply ill. The keelboat crew had also told Russell that Lewis had twice tried to kill himself on the trip, but Russell said in six days Lewis was ‘perfectly restored in every respect & able to travel.’

Changing his plans, Lewis decided to continue overland. He and Pernia departed with Chickasaw agent James Neelly (sometimes spelled Neely) and Neelly’s servant. The four men rode along the Natchez Trace, an eight-foot-wide, 500-mile trail that ran through the dense woods of Indian territory. The Trace led them into present Alabama, where they paid a man to ferry them across the swift Tennessee River. Following the winding Trace over streams and through thick forests that blocked out the sun for hours at a time, the four riders entered Tennessee.

On October 10, the travelers awoke to find that two packhorses had gotten loose during the night. Neelly remained behind to search for the horses, and Lewis rode on, with the servants following some distance behind. That evening Lewis stopped at Grinder’s Stand, an inn that offered food and lodging to travelers of the Trace. According to Mrs. Grinder, wife of the absent owner, Lewis asked for spirits but drank little. When the servants arrived, the landlady prepared dinner for the three men, but Lewis acted strangely,’speaking to himself in a violent manner.’ He calmed down, then grew agitated again. Then he sat down outside and lit his pipe.

‘Madam,’ he said, staring out at the twilight, ‘this is a very pleasant evening.’

Mrs. Grinder prepared a bed for Lewis in one of the cabins, but he preferred to sleep on the floor with bearskins and a buffalo robe. The landlady and her children then went to their cabin and the two servants to a barn 200 yards away. Late into the night, Mrs. Grinder heard Lewis in the other cabin pacing and talking to himself. Then she heard a pistol shot and something falling heavily to the floor.

‘Oh, Lord!’ Lewis cried out.

The pistol fired a second time. Then Mrs. Grinder heard Lewis at her door. ‘Oh, Madam,’ he moaned, ‘give me some water and heal my wounds.’

As Lewis suffered and groped in the dark for a drink of water, Mrs. Grinder was afraid to do anything but wait. At dawn, she sent her children to get the servants. Pernia and his companion came running, ‘and on going in they found him lying on the bed. He uncovered his side, and showed them where the bullet had entered; a piece of his forehead was blown off, and had exposed the brains, without having bled much.’ Lewis begged the servants to take his rifle and ‘blow out his brains,’ promising he would give them all the money in his trunk. They watched helplessly as Lewis’s life ebbed. He said several times, ‘I am no coward, but I am so strong, so hard to die.’ He may have lost consciousness after an hour or so, and they listened to his labored breathing. After another hour, just as the sun was rising above the trees, the brilliant but moody Lewis breathed his last. Almost two centuries later, historians still debate whether Lewis killed himself or was murdered.

As Manuel Lisa’s trapping party made its way up the Missouri River in the summer of 1807, the men saw a solitary boatman paddling toward them near present Omaha, Nebraska. When the small canoe came closer, the expedition veterans with Lisa recognized John Colter, a first-rate hunter who had received William Clark’s permission to leave the expedition at Fort Mandan and return west with two trappers. Colter had wintered in the wild and was returning to St. Louis. Right on the spot, Lisa offered Colter a job. Although he had a land grant and back pay waiting for him in St. Louis, Colter accepted the offer and turned back, on his way to one of the most incredible adventures in the history of the West.

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