Snowbound and Eclipse (70 page)

I knew that Mrs. Marks, even in her grief, was aglow with pride. “You do him honor,” she said gently.

“The world will always do Meriwether Lewis honor,” I said, “because he earned it.”

“Yes, both of you,” she replied. “You together.”

AUTHOR'S NOTES

The mystery of Meriwether Lewis's death probably will never be solved. The evidence is too tangled, too contradictory, and too old. For generations there were two opposed theories: he died of suicide induced by depression, or he was murdered.

The suicide theorists argued that he had twice tried to kill himself en route to New Orleans and had made a will, and was depressed by his debts. They cite Jefferson's observation that melancholia ran in Lewis's family. The murder theorists argued that a suicide doesn't shoot himself twice, and there were plenty of people with plenty of reason to kill him, and Lewis showed no sign of manic-depressive disorder or any sort of depression.

A few years ago a Seattle epidemiologist, Reimert Thorolf Ravenholt, M.D., examined the journals and other material and concluded that Lewis had contracted syphilis during his 1805 contact with the Shoshones, and by 1809 the result was paresis, the mental deterioration induced by virulent third-stage syphilis, which led him to his death. Dr. Ravenholt pursued this thesis in three brilliantly argued papers that can be downloaded at his Web site,
Ravenholt.com
. I recommend in particular “Trail's End for Meriwether Lewis,” presented to the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in 1997.

This is not the place to debate the issue. Suffice it to say that I found Dr. Ravenholt's analysis the most persuasive and the only one that adequately explains events and fits much of the evidence. But the other theories are plausible and have serious advocates, and must not be dismissed, though the murder theory seems weakest to me. There is too little known, and too many contradictions, to come to firm conclusions. Of all the mysteries of American history, this one invites the most caution.

We might learn something if Lewis's remains are exhumed and tested for mercury and evidence of syphilis, a disease that can affect bones. They might also offer clues as to the direction the two shots took, the size of the ball, and so on, and thus throw light on the question of murder.

I chose to construct the novel around Dr. Ravenholt's superb historical and medical analysis, and also upon a penetrating monograph called
The Character of Meriwether Lewis,
by Jeffersonian scholar Clay Straus Jenkinson, who brilliantly examines every facet of the complex, troubled, courageous, and sometimes repellent man who died on the Natchez Trace in 1809.

I believe that Meriwether Lewis took his life at Grinder's Stand, not because he was depressive by nature (I doubt that he was depressive at all), but because he was desperate and hopeless and fearful that his scandalous disease could no longer be concealed from the public. He feared that the national hero would soon be the national disgrace. By killing himself, he might yet preserve honor, not only his own but that of the entire Corps of Discovery.

Had he not killed himself, he might have lived years longer, even though his syphilis, probably complicated by malaria, was steadily destroying him. He knew he would soon become the demented, degenerate husk of the magnificent man he once was, and that was more than a man of his pride
and sensibility could endure. Desperate circumstances father desperate acts.

As I examined the question of Lewis's disease, I found myself discarding the murder theory, and also abandoning the much-publicized idea that Lewis was depressed. Lewis was trapped. He was a courageous young man who was caught in a vise that was steadily squeezing him to death. He could not arrest the course of the disease or halt the decline of his reputation. He turned to one remedy after another, but nothing would heal him. He probably overdosed the mercury and further addled himself. In the space of only three years after his return, his health and spirits were ruined.

And so this novel was born. I came to share Lewis's horror and despair as I walked beside him. I admired and pitied him. Here was a good man, a greathearted American hero, desperately struggling against an insidious disease that was destroying not only his body but his very person. Here was a Homeric story worth telling. I resolved to tell it as a stark chronicle of decline. Lewis never surrendered. His suicide was a last act of defiance of the disease that was robbing him of his soul.

There are no full-scale biographies of William Clark, but his life can be pieced together from various sources, including
Lewis and Clark, Partners in Discovery,
by John Bakeless, and
William Clark, Jeffersonian Man on the Frontier,
by Jerome O. Steffen.

Other useful works include
Meriwether Lewis,
by Richard Dillon,
Undaunted Courage,
by Stephen E. Ambrose, and
A History of the Lewis and Clark Journals,
by Paul Russell Cutright.

There is a vast Lewis and Clark literature, too extensive to be listed here, as well as several excellent editions of the Lewis and Clark Journals, including the majestic and exhaustive new one by Gary Moulton.

A novelist dramatizing history must sometimes depict events for which there is no historical record. The funeral of John Shields, in this story, is such a scene, and there are others. I have also arbitrarily chosen among various spellings and decided which of the many conflicting accounts to use in the novel.

I am indebted to my editor, Dale L. Walker, for awakening in me a fascination with the Lewis question, and offering shrewd and thoroughly researched insights into the various possibilities as well as research material. And I am grateful to archivists at the Missouri Historical Society for pointing me toward various sources about William Clark.

R
ICHARD
S. W
HEELER

N
OVEMBER
2001

Richard S. Wheeler
has written over fifty novels and several short stories. He has won four Spur Awards and the Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement in the field of western literature. He lives in the literary and film community of Livingston, Montana, and is married to Professor Sue Hart, of Montana State University-Billings. Before turning to fiction he was a newsman and book editor. He has raised horses and been a wrangler at an Arizona dude ranch. Wheeler is the author of The Witness series, the Skye's West series, and many other novels. You can sign up for author updates
here
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