Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm fair Dowdy, and today we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about a history mystery. We've gotten a
Speaker 1: lot of requests to talk about the Lewis and Clark expedition,
Speaker 1: but considering that could easily be, oh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: an hour long podcast, We've decided to focus on something
Speaker 1: slightly more tangential but still related, very intriguing story too exactly,
Speaker 1: and that is how did Merryweather Lewis Die? In eight nine,
Speaker 1: Merryweather Lewis died from gunshot wounds on the Wild Matches Trace,
Speaker 1: which was a road that goes from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville,
Speaker 1: and people have been obsessed since then about finding out
Speaker 1: how he died obviously gunshot wounds, but what the story
Speaker 1: was surrounding it. People from all different fields forensics, mental
Speaker 1: health professionals, scholars. Some have constructed lunar cycles to discount
Speaker 1: the witnesses testimony, and some have studied the ballistics and
Speaker 1: analyzed the bullets, and people are just obsessed with this,
Speaker 1: even though it happened two hundred years ago, and the
Speaker 1: question is was it a murder or was it a suicide?
Speaker 1: But before we get into that, let's go back to
Speaker 1: the very beginning, because I hear that's a good place
Speaker 1: to start. Sure as Marywether Lewis was born in August eighteen,
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy four, near Charlottesville, actually really close to Monticello,
Speaker 1: at Thomas Jefferson's home. This will come in later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and his father died serving in the Continental Army, and
Speaker 1: the family relocated to Georgia for a little bit before
Speaker 1: moving back to Virginia and um when when Louis was
Speaker 1: a young man, he joined the Virginia Militia to help
Speaker 1: suppress the Whiskey Rebellion and later enlisted the army. And
Speaker 1: he's got a pretty impressive army career. He advances rapidly
Speaker 1: and gets hooked up with Thomas Jefferson. UM. By eighteen
Speaker 1: oh three, Jefferson has appointed him as the commander of
Speaker 1: an expedition to explore the Louisiana Purchase, So pretty good
Speaker 1: gig for young Merryweather and UM. He prepares for this
Speaker 1: pretty diligently, studying all sorts of astronomy, botany, medicine, zoology,
Speaker 1: something I didn't know about. I'm just imagining him a
Speaker 1: frontiersman explore he did have some medical knowledge and other expeditions,
Speaker 1: really studying up before this big expedition, and enlists his
Speaker 1: friend William Clark to co command. And the Lewis and
Speaker 1: Clark expedition, which is very briefly, covers eight thousand miles,
Speaker 1: takes three years with the core of discovery, and Lewis
Speaker 1: is the field scientist, so he's gathering specimens and keeping
Speaker 1: really detailed journals. And at the end of this massive
Speaker 1: trek he comes home again and he is a national
Speaker 1: hero as his Clark they quote that most people know
Speaker 1: is from Thomas Jefferson. His courage was undaunted, his firmness
Speaker 1: and perseverance yielded to nothing but impossibilities. A rigid disciplinarian,
Speaker 1: yet tender as a father of those committed to his charge. Honest,
Speaker 1: disinterested liberal with a sound understanding and a scrupulous fidelity
Speaker 1: to truth, which is a long winded way of saying
Speaker 1: he was pretty awesome, pretty stand up guy. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: So they were wined and dined, and Louis was named
Speaker 1: the governor of the Upper Louisiana and Territory in eighteen
Speaker 1: o seven, but instead of heading to St. Louis, which
Speaker 1: is where he was supposed to be, he goes to
Speaker 1: Philly to look for a publisher and an illustrator for
Speaker 1: the journals, because that was supposed to be his big priority.
Speaker 1: You get those journals published and let everyone know what
Speaker 1: happened and what they found when they were exploring the purchase.
Speaker 1: Philadelphia society loves him. He's extremely social. He may even
Speaker 1: have proposed to a young lady while he was there.
Speaker 1: But then he goes to Virginia still unmarried, and he
Speaker 1: doesn't make it to St. Louis until a year after
Speaker 1: his appointment, which Thomas Jefferson is not pleased about. And
Speaker 1: he's not the sort of person i'd want to anger.
Speaker 1: He doesn't really love being a governor either, because you
Speaker 1: have to remember he's this, you know, young, outdoorsy frontiersman
Speaker 1: type of guy. So he's just a bit stifled at
Speaker 1: this desk job. Things aren't going well. His friends are
Speaker 1: worried that he has a drinking problem, which they call
Speaker 1: euphemistically his indisposition, and he seems to be depressed. But
Speaker 1: when James Madison is made president in eighteen o nine.
Speaker 1: He replaces Jefferson's cabinet, and the new Secretary of War,
Speaker 1: William Eustace, won't pay Louis back for some very legitimate
Speaker 1: expenses that Lewis had so on the expedition, right, So
Speaker 1: Louis decides he's going to make his way to Washington
Speaker 1: to take care of it. So he leaves St. Louis
Speaker 1: and travels by the Mississippi River, departs the river at
Speaker 1: the Chickasaw Bluffs near Memphis, and sets off on the
Speaker 1: Natchez Trace for Washington, d C. And the Natchez Trace
Speaker 1: at this point is one of the most important roads
Speaker 1: in the United States. Um. It's actually an old Native
Speaker 1: American game path, and like I said earlier, it stretches
Speaker 1: from southern Mississippi all the way to Nashville, and Um
Speaker 1: Jefferson has taken the trouble to expand the road and
Speaker 1: make it a little easier to travel because he wants
Speaker 1: to connect Mississippi and Alabama to the eastern United States
Speaker 1: and really incorporate the new territories into the country. But
Speaker 1: that's not to say it's an easy road to take.
Speaker 1: It's pretty wide. Yeah, it's got cane brakes, and it
Speaker 1: runs by cypress swamps, It crosses rivers and creeks um
Speaker 1: as it's approaching the Eastern hardwood forest, it rises a
Speaker 1: thousand feet, so it's a pretty tough road and it
Speaker 1: hasn't intimidating nickname. It does. It's known as the Devil's Backbone,
Speaker 1: and that's partly because of the geography, but it's mostly
Speaker 1: because bandits are also lurking along the road waiting for travelers,
Speaker 1: mostly people who have traveled down the Mississippi River selling
Speaker 1: supplies to walk back up with all their money. But
Speaker 1: there are a few little stops where you can go
Speaker 1: and stay. A few inns along the way. Yeah, these
Speaker 1: rough and tumble sort of places where you can stop,
Speaker 1: spend the night, buy some new ammunition and supplies and um.
Speaker 1: On October nine, Louis stops at one of these, it's
Speaker 1: called Grinders Stand. It's this little inn in the Tennessee
Speaker 1: Mountains run by a couple Mr. And Mrs Grinder. But Mr.
Speaker 1: Grinder is not in the house. Mrs Grinder is and
Speaker 1: sometime on the night of October tenth, Louis sustains a
Speaker 1: gunshot wound to the head and also to the chest
Speaker 1: and he's dead by sunrise the next morning. As we've
Speaker 1: mentioned before, so again, what is it that happened. The
Speaker 1: first theory is that he committed suicide, and a part
Speaker 1: of the reason we think this is because of the
Speaker 1: testimony of Mrs Grinder. Now, she does give a few
Speaker 1: different testimonies over the years, so let's just clarify that
Speaker 1: at the outset we're going to hear a lot of
Speaker 1: stories from old Mrs Grinder. One part of Mrs Grinder's
Speaker 1: story that we know is true is that Louis shows
Speaker 1: up just with two servants, one his own named Parnia
Speaker 1: and another unnamed servant, and his traveling companion, James Neelye,
Speaker 1: is about a day behind. He's rounding up some stray
Speaker 1: horses before he comes and meets up with Louis. He's
Speaker 1: the one who actually takes care of the body, right, right,
Speaker 1: So Mrs Grinder tells her account to James Neelye, and
Speaker 1: he writes in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, Mrs Grinder
Speaker 1: said that she noticed when Louis came that something was
Speaker 1: just a little bit off. He didn't seem to be
Speaker 1: of found mind. So she gives him the house, but
Speaker 1: make sure she sleeps nearby in case something goes wrong,
Speaker 1: and the servants also sleep nearby in the stable loft.
Speaker 1: Around three am, she hears two pistol shots, so she
Speaker 1: wakes up the servants and they get there and Lewis
Speaker 1: has shot himself in the head and the chest. He
Speaker 1: asks for water and then dies shortly thereafter. And again
Speaker 1: Neelie's not there, so he only hears this later from
Speaker 1: Mrs Grinder, and she doesn't see any of it. She
Speaker 1: just hears it. She's oral witness, right, maybe not the
Speaker 1: best account. Neelie also says in his letter to Jefferson
Speaker 1: the possessions that he has of Lewis's. He's got his rifle,
Speaker 1: his watch, his pistols, his tomahawk. But you have to
Speaker 1: wonder why didn't nearly talk to the servant, Why didn't
Speaker 1: he talk to Mrs Grinder's children, Why didn't he transcribe anything,
Speaker 1: take good record, no even semi official inquest into this
Speaker 1: very suspicious death. Everyone is quick to assume at suicide,
Speaker 1: and this is Grinder gives a different testimony a couple
Speaker 1: of years later to Alexander Wilson, who is an ornithologist
Speaker 1: and was supposed to do the illustrations for the Journals
Speaker 1: of All the Birds, And she tells him that she
Speaker 1: was actually awake all night and she was listening to
Speaker 1: Louis talk to himself this violent discourse. She compared him
Speaker 1: to a lawyerd din h like he was questioning himself
Speaker 1: back and forth. And she hears a shot and a thud,
Speaker 1: and he says, oh Lord, and then there's another shot,
Speaker 1: and he says, oh, Madam, give me some water and
Speaker 1: heal my wounds, but she doesn't and instead watches him
Speaker 1: through spaces between the logs, and the log catch is
Speaker 1: so bizarre, and she says, she's frightened, right, it's not
Speaker 1: the most flattering portrayal of oneself to give. So is
Speaker 1: that or because she didn't want to say that before
Speaker 1: saying that this is what she saw? Or is it
Speaker 1: because she's just making this up as she goes along.
Speaker 1: So she sees a body stagger outside and fall by
Speaker 1: a tree, but he makes it back into his room,
Speaker 1: and she can hear him scraping a bucket of water
Speaker 1: with a gourd because he's still thirsty. And she waits
Speaker 1: two hours before she sends her children to get the servants,
Speaker 1: and this is the grizzly part. They find him with
Speaker 1: his brains exposed. There's not a lot of blood, but
Speaker 1: his forehead is completely gone, and he offers to pay
Speaker 1: the servants to finish the job. So he dies two
Speaker 1: hours later, and she says his last words were, I
Speaker 1: am no coward, but I am so strong. It is
Speaker 1: so hard to die. So in addition to Mrs Grinder's story,
Speaker 1: we also have some contemporary descriptions of Louis's mental state
Speaker 1: at the time, and the main one is Captain Gilbert Russell,
Speaker 1: who was the commander of a fourt where Louis stayed.
Speaker 1: Um wrote to Jefferson about three months after the death
Speaker 1: and said that Louis was unstable and he was keeping
Speaker 1: him there at the four until he seemed better. Um
Speaker 1: and he also thought that liquor was a big part
Speaker 1: of the problem and that Lewis's friend and Neely actually
Speaker 1: encouraged this drinking. We're going to hear more about Neelie
Speaker 1: later on. Nearly is a bit of a sketchy character,
Speaker 1: but Russell makes a public statement two years after the death,
Speaker 1: and again this is something that, much like Mrs Granger's testimony,
Speaker 1: changes the longer time goes on, he calls Louis mentally
Speaker 1: deranged when he arrived at Fort Pickering, and he also
Speaker 1: says that the crew told him Louis had tried to
Speaker 1: kill himself twice. He kept Louis at the ford until
Speaker 1: he was better, but after he left he got worse,
Speaker 1: and then says that he destroyed himself in the most cool,
Speaker 1: desperate and barbarian like manner, And again he places some
Speaker 1: blame on Neelie, who he thinks contributed to his ills.
Speaker 1: And his account also mentions a detail about razors, about
Speaker 1: Louis cutting himself head to foot with razors, which again
Speaker 1: makes no sense. After you shut yourself in the head
Speaker 1: and shot yourself in the chest, why would you be
Speaker 1: cutting yourself from head to foot with a razor. And
Speaker 1: you were saying earlier, I thought this was interesting that
Speaker 1: that sounds like a very different kind of suicide, a
Speaker 1: different kind of person. Self mutilation is much different from
Speaker 1: someone who actually wants to end it. And one scholar,
Speaker 1: Thomas DeNisi, who's a Lewis and Clark scholar, said that
Speaker 1: he thought perhaps Clark had malaria. And in severe cases,
Speaker 1: you can be in a lot of pain and people
Speaker 1: may try to get at that pain in a self
Speaker 1: harming sort of way. So maybe that had something. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't necessarily a suicide but an accident, right. But
Speaker 1: we nevertheless, we have a lot of motives possible motives
Speaker 1: for Merriwether Lewis's suicide, things that could have contributed if
Speaker 1: he was already in a propressed state of mind, financial
Speaker 1: problems here, he is going to d C two explain
Speaker 1: himself basically, Um, he's thought to be unlucky and love.
Speaker 1: Maybe a broken proposal or refused proposal. He's not very
Speaker 1: good at being governor. He's an outdoorsy type and not
Speaker 1: suited to a desk job. One and one that I
Speaker 1: think a writery type of people can empathize with. He
Speaker 1: could not seem to get these that was his main job.
Speaker 1: He had to get them compiled, He had to get
Speaker 1: them illustrated and published. That was why he was there,
Speaker 1: and he couldn't seem to do it. Yeah, the drinking
Speaker 1: problem that too, and then uh. An epidemiologist has suggested
Speaker 1: that Louis has syphilis as well, which can lead to
Speaker 1: dementia and suicide. Um, it can drive you crazy basically,
Speaker 1: and some also have suggested that he may have been
Speaker 1: addicted to laudanum, which again drug addiction can obviously affect
Speaker 1: your mental state. So this makes a pretty good case
Speaker 1: for the suicide camp, and we have some pretty big
Speaker 1: names in that suicide camp. James Neely had told Thomas
Speaker 1: Jefferson that Louis appeared at times deranged in mind. William Clark,
Speaker 1: of course, his good friend, thought that Louis committed suicide
Speaker 1: even before he heard it for real. He'd seen a
Speaker 1: report in the New Paper that he killed himself and said,
Speaker 1: I fear, oh, I fear the weight of his mind
Speaker 1: has overcome him. What will be the consequence? He never
Speaker 1: even questioned that it was suicide, and neither did Thomas
Speaker 1: Jefferson or Molon Dickerson, who were very good friends of Lewis's.
Speaker 1: Stephen Ambrose, who wrote the Lewis biography Undaunted Courage, says
Speaker 1: it was definitely a suicide, as does historian named Paul
Speaker 1: Russell Cutwright. So again we've got some pretty good names
Speaker 1: in the suicide camp. But then there's also a murder
Speaker 1: faction who believe that Merywether Lewis did not take his
Speaker 1: own life, but was in fact murdered. So Lewis's family,
Speaker 1: or at least a lot of them, believe that he
Speaker 1: was murdered. And that's a pretty understandable thing for his
Speaker 1: family to think. Suicide is not you know, he still
Speaker 1: carries a bit of a stigma. Yeah, And um, Lewis's
Speaker 1: mother particularly did not want to believe that her son
Speaker 1: killed himself. Um. Then there's this sort of weird story
Speaker 1: that you'll see presented is fact and a lot of
Speaker 1: sources that there was a Tennessee commission that later studied
Speaker 1: Lewis's remain They had an inquest and issued a report
Speaker 1: saying it was more probable that he died at the
Speaker 1: hands of an assassin, but that this report was very
Speaker 1: flawed and that they didn't give any reason for why
Speaker 1: they came to this conclusion. But the whole thing is
Speaker 1: not you know, we can't find any records that has
Speaker 1: ever happened at all, and in fact found several things
Speaker 1: that said no, this never happened. There were no courthouse
Speaker 1: records that were burned, destroyed. This was just another of
Speaker 1: the wild rumors. But regardless of that, the murder theory
Speaker 1: does pick up some steam, and especially in the eighteen
Speaker 1: forties people start looking into that more. But you said
Speaker 1: that some people believed it was murder right from the start.
Speaker 1: But I like the explanations for um, for why it
Speaker 1: might have been murdered. Some things about it are pretty fishy,
Speaker 1: um one. I mean, the major point is that Lewis
Speaker 1: was a good shot, and why did he carried a
Speaker 1: sixty nine caliber pistol? And how do you shoot yourself
Speaker 1: in the head with a sixty nine caliber pistol and
Speaker 1: lived to shoot yourself again? Um? So that's an interesting point.
Speaker 1: It's not really pointing fingers at any assassin, but it's
Speaker 1: an interesting reason why it might not be a suicide, right,
Speaker 1: And part of it was about the trajectory. Nearly wrote
Speaker 1: in one of his letters, at the second shot had
Speaker 1: entered and passed downward through his body and then came
Speaker 1: out low down near his backbone. And some have said, well,
Speaker 1: that wouldn't make sense if it was a self inflicted wound.
Speaker 1: But we provided some potential motives for the suicide. So
Speaker 1: we've got idea the same for the murder. Who who
Speaker 1: might have murdered marywether Lewis. Well, our first suspect would
Speaker 1: be the traveling companion Neelie who Eldon Swinard, who's the
Speaker 1: authority on the medical history of the whole Lewis and
Speaker 1: Clark expedition. That's who he think is our best culprit,
Speaker 1: and he's the one suggesting that the bullet trajectory is
Speaker 1: off right. And he also says that Louis may have
Speaker 1: found nearly going through his stuff and nearly shot him.
Speaker 1: In general, Neely's a really sketchy character and he doesn't
Speaker 1: come off well by anyone's accounts. He never even gives
Speaker 1: Louis's stuff to his family, and he's not a friend
Speaker 1: of Louis's. He's a government Indian agent that Lewis runs
Speaker 1: into at Fort Pickering during his difficulties and being kept
Speaker 1: there because he's in a such a depressive state, right
Speaker 1: and he's happy to find a traveling companion. Another thing
Speaker 1: that people have pointed out that's strange about his behavior
Speaker 1: is that he sent his servant with Louis and Pernia,
Speaker 1: who was Louis's servant, instead of keeping him to help
Speaker 1: his own mission of finding these stray horses. And why
Speaker 1: would he do that? That doesn't make a lot of sense,
Speaker 1: And also why didn't he get better accounts of Louis's death,
Speaker 1: is it because he had something to hide, So he's
Speaker 1: actually a fairly credible suspect if you're going with a
Speaker 1: murder theory, and so is Lewis's servant, Parniam. Parnia went
Speaker 1: straight to Jefferson after the death, saying it was a suicide.
Speaker 1: Then he goes to the family saying that Louis owes
Speaker 1: the money two forty dollars, and the family thinks that
Speaker 1: he might have been the one who murdered Louis if
Speaker 1: Lewis murder, and he's a somewhat credible person because he
Speaker 1: would have had the opportunity to. Yeah, he dies only
Speaker 1: seven months after Louis though, overdosing on laud in them
Speaker 1: on purpose. They think, so that would be to suicides
Speaker 1: in a row. Some say, and this is one of
Speaker 1: the more insane theories. Get weirder and weirder. We're not
Speaker 1: going to give this one any credence that this was
Speaker 1: a conspiracy involving Thomas Jefferson. That's the account of David
Speaker 1: Leon Chandler, and he says that Jefferson wanted Louis assassinated
Speaker 1: because he knew Thomas Jefferson's deep dark secrets. What these
Speaker 1: secrets are, I don't know, but that's not a very
Speaker 1: incredible idea. Or other wild suspect is Mr Grinder, who
Speaker 1: was tried for murder, except that there are absolutely no
Speaker 1: trial documents to back this up. Um Some people have
Speaker 1: suggested that there was maybe some romantic relationship between Lewis
Speaker 1: and Mrs Grinder and dangerous liaison, but the only the
Speaker 1: only point we should make about the Grinders, though, is
Speaker 1: that they were very poor and shortly after this they
Speaker 1: have enough money to buy land and slaves, so they
Speaker 1: did get something out of this, something, something happened to
Speaker 1: them after the death and Grinder. Mr Grinder is a
Speaker 1: little sketchy too. He um illegally sold whiskey to Indians
Speaker 1: and they were basically just trying to make money anyway
Speaker 1: they could, so we can keep them on the table.
Speaker 1: Unlike another suspect, James Wilkinson, and Wilkinson was involved with
Speaker 1: Aaron Burr. They have a plot with the Spanish government
Speaker 1: to make an entirely separate nation from the Mississippi Valley
Speaker 1: through parts of the Southwest, but wilcomeson betrayed burd to
Speaker 1: hide his own treason, and he ends up in New
Speaker 1: Orleans commanding troops and therefore had the power to keep
Speaker 1: anyone from entering or leaving the mouth of the Mississippi.
Speaker 1: He was also governor of Louisiana before Louis, and he
Speaker 1: was accepting lots of money from Spain. So some have said,
Speaker 1: what if Lewis found out calling his treason and right
Speaker 1: and will be had thatched snuffed? Um And then remember
Speaker 1: we are at a seedy little inn on the Natchez
Speaker 1: trace the devil's backbone, so it might have been a robber. Um.
Speaker 1: There was also a rumor going around at the time
Speaker 1: that Louis had discovered a gold mine and mapped it out,
Speaker 1: and people thought this was true, even though not um,
Speaker 1: So anybody could have been trying to steal this information
Speaker 1: about the gold goonies style yea and our last sort
Speaker 1: of sketchy account from Mrs Grinder. She was interviewed again
Speaker 1: thirty years after Louis's death, and this time she tells
Speaker 1: again a completely different story. It has very little in
Speaker 1: common with the other two. She says that armed men
Speaker 1: had come to the inn and that Louis had challenged
Speaker 1: them to a duel, and she also says that the
Speaker 1: servants stayed with Louis. Well, remember before she said they'd
Speaker 1: stayed in a stable loft. In the middle of the night,
Speaker 1: she hears three shots, and she sees Louis crawling in
Speaker 1: the road on all fours. And when she sees Pernia,
Speaker 1: his servant, he was wearing Louis's clothes, which he then
Speaker 1: quickly said Louis had given to him. And some of
Speaker 1: this account actually makes sense, that some of it's completely ridiculous.
Speaker 1: She says at one point that after he was shot,
Speaker 1: he said, oh Lord, Congress, relieve me, which I don't
Speaker 1: think is the kind of thing when excla And another
Speaker 1: point that we'd like to make is that Merywether Louis Clark,
Speaker 1: who was Clark's son but named for Mary mother Lewis,
Speaker 1: may also have wanted to take away the stigma of
Speaker 1: suicide for Lewis, so stoked this murder right in later years,
Speaker 1: A professor of law and forensic science, James Stars, says
Speaker 1: in that maybe the best way we can find out
Speaker 1: definitively whether it's murder or suicide, as if we exhume
Speaker 1: Marywether Lewis's body and his descendants agree to it they
Speaker 1: all sign off they want to know what happened to
Speaker 1: The National Park Service turned down this request because Louis
Speaker 1: is buried on UH park grounds, but you know, they
Speaker 1: don't want everyone exhuming remains, digging up all the national
Speaker 1: money to see what's under them. But the request has
Speaker 1: been renewed at the urging of his descendants. And there's
Speaker 1: also spin on it that's not so grizzly, not just
Speaker 1: you know, was he murdered or was it a suicide.
Speaker 1: They're also suggesting we could learn a lot about Lewis,
Speaker 1: his physical characteristics, how tall he was, maybe whether he
Speaker 1: had syphilis right when his health was like in general. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we have mitochondrial DNA samples from Lewis's female descendants,
Speaker 1: so we would be able to confirm the body. And
Speaker 1: then we could also test for gunpowder, residue, skull fractures,
Speaker 1: things like that with which um, with our modern knowledge
Speaker 1: of forensics, might help us figure out what happened. So
Speaker 1: let us know what you think. Cast your vote for
Speaker 1: murder or Suicide and email us at History Podcast at
Speaker 1: how staff works dot com. You can still visit the
Speaker 1: grave site and reproduction of Grinder's stand. I've actually been
Speaker 1: to the Natchez Trace twice this past summer. Although I
Speaker 1: missed this I didn't know about it yet still wait
Speaker 1: to rebbin in our faces there thinks along well, that
Speaker 1: about does it for the death of merrywether Lewis that
Speaker 1: we as far as we know now. Maybe we can
Speaker 1: do an update podcast if the National Park Services change
Speaker 1: their mind. And if you're interested in something grizzly like
Speaker 1: exhuming bodies, search for how body Farms work on our
Speaker 1: homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think,
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