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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm fair Dowdy, and today we're

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Speaker 1: gonna be talking about a history mystery. We've gotten a

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Speaker 1: lot of requests to talk about the Lewis and Clark expedition,

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Speaker 1: but considering that could easily be, oh, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: an hour long podcast, We've decided to focus on something

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Speaker 1: slightly more tangential but still related, very intriguing story too exactly,

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Speaker 1: and that is how did Merryweather Lewis Die? In eight nine,

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Speaker 1: Merryweather Lewis died from gunshot wounds on the Wild Matches Trace,

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Speaker 1: which was a road that goes from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville,

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Speaker 1: and people have been obsessed since then about finding out

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Speaker 1: how he died obviously gunshot wounds, but what the story

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Speaker 1: was surrounding it. People from all different fields forensics, mental

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Speaker 1: health professionals, scholars. Some have constructed lunar cycles to discount

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Speaker 1: the witnesses testimony, and some have studied the ballistics and

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Speaker 1: analyzed the bullets, and people are just obsessed with this,

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Speaker 1: even though it happened two hundred years ago, and the

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Speaker 1: question is was it a murder or was it a suicide?

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Speaker 1: But before we get into that, let's go back to

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Speaker 1: the very beginning, because I hear that's a good place

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Speaker 1: to start. Sure as Marywether Lewis was born in August eighteen,

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Speaker 1: seventeen seventy four, near Charlottesville, actually really close to Monticello,

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Speaker 1: at Thomas Jefferson's home. This will come in later. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and his father died serving in the Continental Army, and

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Speaker 1: the family relocated to Georgia for a little bit before

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Speaker 1: moving back to Virginia and um when when Louis was

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Speaker 1: a young man, he joined the Virginia Militia to help

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Speaker 1: suppress the Whiskey Rebellion and later enlisted the army. And

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Speaker 1: he's got a pretty impressive army career. He advances rapidly

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Speaker 1: and gets hooked up with Thomas Jefferson. UM. By eighteen

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Speaker 1: oh three, Jefferson has appointed him as the commander of

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Speaker 1: an expedition to explore the Louisiana Purchase, So pretty good

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Speaker 1: gig for young Merryweather and UM. He prepares for this

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Speaker 1: pretty diligently, studying all sorts of astronomy, botany, medicine, zoology,

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Speaker 1: something I didn't know about. I'm just imagining him a

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Speaker 1: frontiersman explore he did have some medical knowledge and other expeditions,

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Speaker 1: really studying up before this big expedition, and enlists his

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Speaker 1: friend William Clark to co command. And the Lewis and

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Speaker 1: Clark expedition, which is very briefly, covers eight thousand miles,

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Speaker 1: takes three years with the core of discovery, and Lewis

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Speaker 1: is the field scientist, so he's gathering specimens and keeping

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Speaker 1: really detailed journals. And at the end of this massive

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Speaker 1: trek he comes home again and he is a national

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Speaker 1: hero as his Clark they quote that most people know

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Speaker 1: is from Thomas Jefferson. His courage was undaunted, his firmness

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Speaker 1: and perseverance yielded to nothing but impossibilities. A rigid disciplinarian,

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Speaker 1: yet tender as a father of those committed to his charge. Honest,

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Speaker 1: disinterested liberal with a sound understanding and a scrupulous fidelity

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Speaker 1: to truth, which is a long winded way of saying

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Speaker 1: he was pretty awesome, pretty stand up guy. Oh yeah.

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Speaker 1: So they were wined and dined, and Louis was named

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Speaker 1: the governor of the Upper Louisiana and Territory in eighteen

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Speaker 1: o seven, but instead of heading to St. Louis, which

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Speaker 1: is where he was supposed to be, he goes to

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Speaker 1: Philly to look for a publisher and an illustrator for

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Speaker 1: the journals, because that was supposed to be his big priority.

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Speaker 1: You get those journals published and let everyone know what

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Speaker 1: happened and what they found when they were exploring the purchase.

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Speaker 1: Philadelphia society loves him. He's extremely social. He may even

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Speaker 1: have proposed to a young lady while he was there.

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Speaker 1: But then he goes to Virginia still unmarried, and he

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Speaker 1: doesn't make it to St. Louis until a year after

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Speaker 1: his appointment, which Thomas Jefferson is not pleased about. And

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Speaker 1: he's not the sort of person i'd want to anger.

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Speaker 1: He doesn't really love being a governor either, because you

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Speaker 1: have to remember he's this, you know, young, outdoorsy frontiersman

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Speaker 1: type of guy. So he's just a bit stifled at

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Speaker 1: this desk job. Things aren't going well. His friends are

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Speaker 1: worried that he has a drinking problem, which they call

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Speaker 1: euphemistically his indisposition, and he seems to be depressed. But

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Speaker 1: when James Madison is made president in eighteen o nine.

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Speaker 1: He replaces Jefferson's cabinet, and the new Secretary of War,

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Speaker 1: William Eustace, won't pay Louis back for some very legitimate

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Speaker 1: expenses that Lewis had so on the expedition, right, So

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Speaker 1: Louis decides he's going to make his way to Washington

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Speaker 1: to take care of it. So he leaves St. Louis

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Speaker 1: and travels by the Mississippi River, departs the river at

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Speaker 1: the Chickasaw Bluffs near Memphis, and sets off on the

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Speaker 1: Natchez Trace for Washington, d C. And the Natchez Trace

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Speaker 1: at this point is one of the most important roads

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Speaker 1: in the United States. Um. It's actually an old Native

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Speaker 1: American game path, and like I said earlier, it stretches

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Speaker 1: from southern Mississippi all the way to Nashville, and Um

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Speaker 1: Jefferson has taken the trouble to expand the road and

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Speaker 1: make it a little easier to travel because he wants

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Speaker 1: to connect Mississippi and Alabama to the eastern United States

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Speaker 1: and really incorporate the new territories into the country. But

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Speaker 1: that's not to say it's an easy road to take.

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Speaker 1: It's pretty wide. Yeah, it's got cane brakes, and it

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Speaker 1: runs by cypress swamps, It crosses rivers and creeks um

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Speaker 1: as it's approaching the Eastern hardwood forest, it rises a

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Speaker 1: thousand feet, so it's a pretty tough road and it

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Speaker 1: hasn't intimidating nickname. It does. It's known as the Devil's Backbone,

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Speaker 1: and that's partly because of the geography, but it's mostly

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Speaker 1: because bandits are also lurking along the road waiting for travelers,

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Speaker 1: mostly people who have traveled down the Mississippi River selling

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Speaker 1: supplies to walk back up with all their money. But

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Speaker 1: there are a few little stops where you can go

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Speaker 1: and stay. A few inns along the way. Yeah, these

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Speaker 1: rough and tumble sort of places where you can stop,

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Speaker 1: spend the night, buy some new ammunition and supplies and um.

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Speaker 1: On October nine, Louis stops at one of these, it's

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Speaker 1: called Grinders Stand. It's this little inn in the Tennessee

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Speaker 1: Mountains run by a couple Mr. And Mrs Grinder. But Mr.

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Speaker 1: Grinder is not in the house. Mrs Grinder is and

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Speaker 1: sometime on the night of October tenth, Louis sustains a

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Speaker 1: gunshot wound to the head and also to the chest

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Speaker 1: and he's dead by sunrise the next morning. As we've

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Speaker 1: mentioned before, so again, what is it that happened. The

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Speaker 1: first theory is that he committed suicide, and a part

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Speaker 1: of the reason we think this is because of the

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Speaker 1: testimony of Mrs Grinder. Now, she does give a few

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Speaker 1: different testimonies over the years, so let's just clarify that

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Speaker 1: at the outset we're going to hear a lot of

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Speaker 1: stories from old Mrs Grinder. One part of Mrs Grinder's

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Speaker 1: story that we know is true is that Louis shows

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Speaker 1: up just with two servants, one his own named Parnia

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Speaker 1: and another unnamed servant, and his traveling companion, James Neelye,

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Speaker 1: is about a day behind. He's rounding up some stray

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Speaker 1: horses before he comes and meets up with Louis. He's

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Speaker 1: the one who actually takes care of the body, right, right,

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Speaker 1: So Mrs Grinder tells her account to James Neelye, and

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Speaker 1: he writes in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, Mrs Grinder

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Speaker 1: said that she noticed when Louis came that something was

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Speaker 1: just a little bit off. He didn't seem to be

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Speaker 1: of found mind. So she gives him the house, but

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Speaker 1: make sure she sleeps nearby in case something goes wrong,

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Speaker 1: and the servants also sleep nearby in the stable loft.

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Speaker 1: Around three am, she hears two pistol shots, so she

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Speaker 1: wakes up the servants and they get there and Lewis

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Speaker 1: has shot himself in the head and the chest. He

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Speaker 1: asks for water and then dies shortly thereafter. And again

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Speaker 1: Neelie's not there, so he only hears this later from

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Speaker 1: Mrs Grinder, and she doesn't see any of it. She

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Speaker 1: just hears it. She's oral witness, right, maybe not the

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Speaker 1: best account. Neelie also says in his letter to Jefferson

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Speaker 1: the possessions that he has of Lewis's. He's got his rifle,

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Speaker 1: his watch, his pistols, his tomahawk. But you have to

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Speaker 1: wonder why didn't nearly talk to the servant, Why didn't

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Speaker 1: he talk to Mrs Grinder's children, Why didn't he transcribe anything,

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Speaker 1: take good record, no even semi official inquest into this

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Speaker 1: very suspicious death. Everyone is quick to assume at suicide,

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Speaker 1: and this is Grinder gives a different testimony a couple

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Speaker 1: of years later to Alexander Wilson, who is an ornithologist

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Speaker 1: and was supposed to do the illustrations for the Journals

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Speaker 1: of All the Birds, And she tells him that she

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Speaker 1: was actually awake all night and she was listening to

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Speaker 1: Louis talk to himself this violent discourse. She compared him

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Speaker 1: to a lawyerd din h like he was questioning himself

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Speaker 1: back and forth. And she hears a shot and a thud,

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Speaker 1: and he says, oh Lord, and then there's another shot,

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Speaker 1: and he says, oh, Madam, give me some water and

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Speaker 1: heal my wounds, but she doesn't and instead watches him

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Speaker 1: through spaces between the logs, and the log catch is

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Speaker 1: so bizarre, and she says, she's frightened, right, it's not

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Speaker 1: the most flattering portrayal of oneself to give. So is

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Speaker 1: that or because she didn't want to say that before

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Speaker 1: saying that this is what she saw? Or is it

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Speaker 1: because she's just making this up as she goes along.

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Speaker 1: So she sees a body stagger outside and fall by

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Speaker 1: a tree, but he makes it back into his room,

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Speaker 1: and she can hear him scraping a bucket of water

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Speaker 1: with a gourd because he's still thirsty. And she waits

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Speaker 1: two hours before she sends her children to get the servants,

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Speaker 1: and this is the grizzly part. They find him with

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Speaker 1: his brains exposed. There's not a lot of blood, but

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Speaker 1: his forehead is completely gone, and he offers to pay

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Speaker 1: the servants to finish the job. So he dies two

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Speaker 1: hours later, and she says his last words were, I

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Speaker 1: am no coward, but I am so strong. It is

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Speaker 1: so hard to die. So in addition to Mrs Grinder's story,

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Speaker 1: we also have some contemporary descriptions of Louis's mental state

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Speaker 1: at the time, and the main one is Captain Gilbert Russell,

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Speaker 1: who was the commander of a fourt where Louis stayed.

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Speaker 1: Um wrote to Jefferson about three months after the death

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Speaker 1: and said that Louis was unstable and he was keeping

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Speaker 1: him there at the four until he seemed better. Um

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Speaker 1: and he also thought that liquor was a big part

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Speaker 1: of the problem and that Lewis's friend and Neely actually

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Speaker 1: encouraged this drinking. We're going to hear more about Neelie

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Speaker 1: later on. Nearly is a bit of a sketchy character,

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Speaker 1: but Russell makes a public statement two years after the death,

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Speaker 1: and again this is something that, much like Mrs Granger's testimony,

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Speaker 1: changes the longer time goes on, he calls Louis mentally

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Speaker 1: deranged when he arrived at Fort Pickering, and he also

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Speaker 1: says that the crew told him Louis had tried to

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Speaker 1: kill himself twice. He kept Louis at the ford until

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Speaker 1: he was better, but after he left he got worse,

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Speaker 1: and then says that he destroyed himself in the most cool,

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Speaker 1: desperate and barbarian like manner, And again he places some

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Speaker 1: blame on Neelie, who he thinks contributed to his ills.

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Speaker 1: And his account also mentions a detail about razors, about

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Speaker 1: Louis cutting himself head to foot with razors, which again

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Speaker 1: makes no sense. After you shut yourself in the head

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Speaker 1: and shot yourself in the chest, why would you be

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Speaker 1: cutting yourself from head to foot with a razor. And

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Speaker 1: you were saying earlier, I thought this was interesting that

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Speaker 1: that sounds like a very different kind of suicide, a

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Speaker 1: different kind of person. Self mutilation is much different from

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Speaker 1: someone who actually wants to end it. And one scholar,

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Speaker 1: Thomas DeNisi, who's a Lewis and Clark scholar, said that

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Speaker 1: he thought perhaps Clark had malaria. And in severe cases,

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Speaker 1: you can be in a lot of pain and people

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Speaker 1: may try to get at that pain in a self

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Speaker 1: harming sort of way. So maybe that had something. So

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Speaker 1: it wasn't necessarily a suicide but an accident, right. But

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Speaker 1: we nevertheless, we have a lot of motives possible motives

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Speaker 1: for Merriwether Lewis's suicide, things that could have contributed if

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Speaker 1: he was already in a propressed state of mind, financial

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Speaker 1: problems here, he is going to d C two explain

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Speaker 1: himself basically, Um, he's thought to be unlucky and love.

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Speaker 1: Maybe a broken proposal or refused proposal. He's not very

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Speaker 1: good at being governor. He's an outdoorsy type and not

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Speaker 1: suited to a desk job. One and one that I

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Speaker 1: think a writery type of people can empathize with. He

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Speaker 1: could not seem to get these that was his main job.

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Speaker 1: He had to get them compiled, He had to get

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Speaker 1: them illustrated and published. That was why he was there,

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Speaker 1: and he couldn't seem to do it. Yeah, the drinking

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Speaker 1: problem that too, and then uh. An epidemiologist has suggested

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Speaker 1: that Louis has syphilis as well, which can lead to

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Speaker 1: dementia and suicide. Um, it can drive you crazy basically,

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Speaker 1: and some also have suggested that he may have been

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Speaker 1: addicted to laudanum, which again drug addiction can obviously affect

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Speaker 1: your mental state. So this makes a pretty good case

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Speaker 1: for the suicide camp, and we have some pretty big

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Speaker 1: names in that suicide camp. James Neely had told Thomas

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Speaker 1: Jefferson that Louis appeared at times deranged in mind. William Clark,

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Speaker 1: of course, his good friend, thought that Louis committed suicide

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Speaker 1: even before he heard it for real. He'd seen a

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Speaker 1: report in the New Paper that he killed himself and said,

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Speaker 1: I fear, oh, I fear the weight of his mind

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Speaker 1: has overcome him. What will be the consequence? He never

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Speaker 1: even questioned that it was suicide, and neither did Thomas

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Speaker 1: Jefferson or Molon Dickerson, who were very good friends of Lewis's.

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Speaker 1: Stephen Ambrose, who wrote the Lewis biography Undaunted Courage, says

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Speaker 1: it was definitely a suicide, as does historian named Paul

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Speaker 1: Russell Cutwright. So again we've got some pretty good names

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Speaker 1: in the suicide camp. But then there's also a murder

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Speaker 1: faction who believe that Merywether Lewis did not take his

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Speaker 1: own life, but was in fact murdered. So Lewis's family,

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Speaker 1: or at least a lot of them, believe that he

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Speaker 1: was murdered. And that's a pretty understandable thing for his

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Speaker 1: family to think. Suicide is not you know, he still

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Speaker 1: carries a bit of a stigma. Yeah, And um, Lewis's

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Speaker 1: mother particularly did not want to believe that her son

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Speaker 1: killed himself. Um. Then there's this sort of weird story

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Speaker 1: that you'll see presented is fact and a lot of

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Speaker 1: sources that there was a Tennessee commission that later studied

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Speaker 1: Lewis's remain They had an inquest and issued a report

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Speaker 1: saying it was more probable that he died at the

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Speaker 1: hands of an assassin, but that this report was very

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Speaker 1: flawed and that they didn't give any reason for why

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Speaker 1: they came to this conclusion. But the whole thing is

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Speaker 1: not you know, we can't find any records that has

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Speaker 1: ever happened at all, and in fact found several things

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Speaker 1: that said no, this never happened. There were no courthouse

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Speaker 1: records that were burned, destroyed. This was just another of

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Speaker 1: the wild rumors. But regardless of that, the murder theory

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Speaker 1: does pick up some steam, and especially in the eighteen

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Speaker 1: forties people start looking into that more. But you said

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Speaker 1: that some people believed it was murder right from the start.

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Speaker 1: But I like the explanations for um, for why it

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Speaker 1: might have been murdered. Some things about it are pretty fishy,

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Speaker 1: um one. I mean, the major point is that Lewis

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Speaker 1: was a good shot, and why did he carried a

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Speaker 1: sixty nine caliber pistol? And how do you shoot yourself

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Speaker 1: in the head with a sixty nine caliber pistol and

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Speaker 1: lived to shoot yourself again? Um? So that's an interesting point.

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Speaker 1: It's not really pointing fingers at any assassin, but it's

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Speaker 1: an interesting reason why it might not be a suicide, right,

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Speaker 1: And part of it was about the trajectory. Nearly wrote

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Speaker 1: in one of his letters, at the second shot had

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Speaker 1: entered and passed downward through his body and then came

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Speaker 1: out low down near his backbone. And some have said, well,

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Speaker 1: that wouldn't make sense if it was a self inflicted wound.

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Speaker 1: But we provided some potential motives for the suicide. So

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Speaker 1: we've got idea the same for the murder. Who who

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Speaker 1: might have murdered marywether Lewis. Well, our first suspect would

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Speaker 1: be the traveling companion Neelie who Eldon Swinard, who's the

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Speaker 1: authority on the medical history of the whole Lewis and

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Speaker 1: Clark expedition. That's who he think is our best culprit,

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Speaker 1: and he's the one suggesting that the bullet trajectory is

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Speaker 1: off right. And he also says that Louis may have

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Speaker 1: found nearly going through his stuff and nearly shot him.

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Speaker 1: In general, Neely's a really sketchy character and he doesn't

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Speaker 1: come off well by anyone's accounts. He never even gives

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Speaker 1: Louis's stuff to his family, and he's not a friend

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Speaker 1: of Louis's. He's a government Indian agent that Lewis runs

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Speaker 1: into at Fort Pickering during his difficulties and being kept

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Speaker 1: there because he's in a such a depressive state, right

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Speaker 1: and he's happy to find a traveling companion. Another thing

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Speaker 1: that people have pointed out that's strange about his behavior

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Speaker 1: is that he sent his servant with Louis and Pernia,

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Speaker 1: who was Louis's servant, instead of keeping him to help

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Speaker 1: his own mission of finding these stray horses. And why

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Speaker 1: would he do that? That doesn't make a lot of sense,

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Speaker 1: And also why didn't he get better accounts of Louis's death,

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Speaker 1: is it because he had something to hide, So he's

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Speaker 1: actually a fairly credible suspect if you're going with a

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Speaker 1: murder theory, and so is Lewis's servant, Parniam. Parnia went

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Speaker 1: straight to Jefferson after the death, saying it was a suicide.

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Speaker 1: Then he goes to the family saying that Louis owes

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Speaker 1: the money two forty dollars, and the family thinks that

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Speaker 1: he might have been the one who murdered Louis if

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Speaker 1: Lewis murder, and he's a somewhat credible person because he

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Speaker 1: would have had the opportunity to. Yeah, he dies only

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Speaker 1: seven months after Louis though, overdosing on laud in them

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Speaker 1: on purpose. They think, so that would be to suicides

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Speaker 1: in a row. Some say, and this is one of

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Speaker 1: the more insane theories. Get weirder and weirder. We're not

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Speaker 1: going to give this one any credence that this was

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Speaker 1: a conspiracy involving Thomas Jefferson. That's the account of David

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Speaker 1: Leon Chandler, and he says that Jefferson wanted Louis assassinated

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Speaker 1: because he knew Thomas Jefferson's deep dark secrets. What these

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Speaker 1: secrets are, I don't know, but that's not a very

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Speaker 1: incredible idea. Or other wild suspect is Mr Grinder, who

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Speaker 1: was tried for murder, except that there are absolutely no

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Speaker 1: trial documents to back this up. Um Some people have

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Speaker 1: suggested that there was maybe some romantic relationship between Lewis

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Speaker 1: and Mrs Grinder and dangerous liaison, but the only the

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Speaker 1: only point we should make about the Grinders, though, is

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Speaker 1: that they were very poor and shortly after this they

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Speaker 1: have enough money to buy land and slaves, so they

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Speaker 1: did get something out of this, something, something happened to

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Speaker 1: them after the death and Grinder. Mr Grinder is a

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Speaker 1: little sketchy too. He um illegally sold whiskey to Indians

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Speaker 1: and they were basically just trying to make money anyway

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Speaker 1: they could, so we can keep them on the table.

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Speaker 1: Unlike another suspect, James Wilkinson, and Wilkinson was involved with

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Speaker 1: Aaron Burr. They have a plot with the Spanish government

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Speaker 1: to make an entirely separate nation from the Mississippi Valley

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Speaker 1: through parts of the Southwest, but wilcomeson betrayed burd to

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Speaker 1: hide his own treason, and he ends up in New

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Speaker 1: Orleans commanding troops and therefore had the power to keep

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Speaker 1: anyone from entering or leaving the mouth of the Mississippi.

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Speaker 1: He was also governor of Louisiana before Louis, and he

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Speaker 1: was accepting lots of money from Spain. So some have said,

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Speaker 1: what if Lewis found out calling his treason and right

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Speaker 1: and will be had thatched snuffed? Um And then remember

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Speaker 1: we are at a seedy little inn on the Natchez

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Speaker 1: trace the devil's backbone, so it might have been a robber. Um.

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Speaker 1: There was also a rumor going around at the time

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Speaker 1: that Louis had discovered a gold mine and mapped it out,

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Speaker 1: and people thought this was true, even though not um,

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Speaker 1: So anybody could have been trying to steal this information

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Speaker 1: about the gold goonies style yea and our last sort

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Speaker 1: of sketchy account from Mrs Grinder. She was interviewed again

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Speaker 1: thirty years after Louis's death, and this time she tells

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Speaker 1: again a completely different story. It has very little in

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Speaker 1: common with the other two. She says that armed men

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Speaker 1: had come to the inn and that Louis had challenged

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Speaker 1: them to a duel, and she also says that the

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Speaker 1: servants stayed with Louis. Well, remember before she said they'd

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Speaker 1: stayed in a stable loft. In the middle of the night,

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Speaker 1: she hears three shots, and she sees Louis crawling in

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Speaker 1: the road on all fours. And when she sees Pernia,

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Speaker 1: his servant, he was wearing Louis's clothes, which he then

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Speaker 1: quickly said Louis had given to him. And some of

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Speaker 1: this account actually makes sense, that some of it's completely ridiculous.

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Speaker 1: She says at one point that after he was shot,

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Speaker 1: he said, oh Lord, Congress, relieve me, which I don't

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Speaker 1: think is the kind of thing when excla And another

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Speaker 1: point that we'd like to make is that Merywether Louis Clark,

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Speaker 1: who was Clark's son but named for Mary mother Lewis,

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Speaker 1: may also have wanted to take away the stigma of

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Speaker 1: suicide for Lewis, so stoked this murder right in later years,

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Speaker 1: A professor of law and forensic science, James Stars, says

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Speaker 1: in that maybe the best way we can find out

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Speaker 1: definitively whether it's murder or suicide, as if we exhume

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Speaker 1: Marywether Lewis's body and his descendants agree to it they

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Speaker 1: all sign off they want to know what happened to

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Speaker 1: The National Park Service turned down this request because Louis

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Speaker 1: is buried on UH park grounds, but you know, they

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Speaker 1: don't want everyone exhuming remains, digging up all the national

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Speaker 1: money to see what's under them. But the request has

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Speaker 1: been renewed at the urging of his descendants. And there's

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Speaker 1: also spin on it that's not so grizzly, not just

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00:22:56,160 --> 00:22:58,240
Speaker 1: you know, was he murdered or was it a suicide.

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Speaker 1: They're also suggesting we could learn a lot about Lewis,

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Speaker 1: his physical characteristics, how tall he was, maybe whether he

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Speaker 1: had syphilis right when his health was like in general. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and we have mitochondrial DNA samples from Lewis's female descendants,

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Speaker 1: so we would be able to confirm the body. And

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Speaker 1: then we could also test for gunpowder, residue, skull fractures,

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00:23:22,760 --> 00:23:28,160
Speaker 1: things like that with which um, with our modern knowledge

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Speaker 1: of forensics, might help us figure out what happened. So

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Speaker 1: let us know what you think. Cast your vote for

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Speaker 1: murder or Suicide and email us at History Podcast at

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00:23:38,520 --> 00:23:41,719
Speaker 1: how staff works dot com. You can still visit the

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Speaker 1: grave site and reproduction of Grinder's stand. I've actually been

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Speaker 1: to the Natchez Trace twice this past summer. Although I

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Speaker 1: missed this I didn't know about it yet still wait

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Speaker 1: to rebbin in our faces there thinks along well, that

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Speaker 1: about does it for the death of merrywether Lewis that

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Speaker 1: we as far as we know now. Maybe we can

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Speaker 1: do an update podcast if the National Park Services change

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00:24:05,160 --> 00:24:09,119
Speaker 1: their mind. And if you're interested in something grizzly like

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00:24:09,320 --> 00:24:13,119
Speaker 1: exhuming bodies, search for how body Farms work on our

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00:24:13,160 --> 00:24:18,240
Speaker 1: homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com. For

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00:24:18,400 --> 00:24:20,919
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how

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00:24:20,960 --> 00:24:24,000
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think,

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00:24:24,280 --> 00:24:27,760
Speaker 1: Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com,

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00:24:27,800 --> 00:24:29,480
Speaker 1: and be sure to check out the stuff you missed

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Speaker 1: in history Class blog on the how stuff works dot

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Speaker 1: com homepage