15 (30) tww trails end for m. lewis homicide at griners sta eng yeatman

7/29/2019 15 (30) TWW Trails End for M. Lewis Homicide at Griners Sta Eng Yeatman

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TRAIL'S END FOR MERIWETHER LEWIS: HOMICIDE AT GRINER'S STAND"Tennessee is famous for Andrew Jackson, Sam Houston, Davy Crockett, James K. Poland Andrew Johnson, butI hope G16tit has adopted the man who met his death on the morning of October 11,1809."--Richard H. Dillon, "The Search for Meriwether Lewis:From Tillamook to Grinder's Stand," addressing the Peabody Library School atNashville, May 8, 1967"The actual winnd.ng of the west had begun with the Lewis and Clark -experience Tennessee has a unique claim to this party of heroes, for in its soil lie

the bones of its courageous leader, Merhlether Lewis . "--Mary French Caldwell, Tennessee: The Dangerous Example, Watauga to 1849 (1974)

"Some chap ~ murderedE.Ethere. The place is ha'nted,"warned an elderly resident of the Natchez Trace, back in 1905. For a century and half the vicinity of Griner's Inn hasdefinitely been haunted . by the evanescent spectres of spec-ulation that hover still.Speculation about the macabre death of Meriwether Lewis.Lewis was not from Tennessee.But with William Clark,he explored the vast territory of the Louisiana Purchase,

venturing all the way to the Pacific--anticipating all the laterarmed migrations of so many Tennesseans west. That he should

die in bizarre, demeaning circumstances, at an accursed spot,


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9-22-93 TRAIL'S END FOR MERIWETHER LEWIS, p. 2on the wildnerness road that was the Natchez Trace, gives Tennesseea melancholy--but eternal--Western legend.*Suicide or murder??? Such has been the popular questionfor oh, so long. There are plentiful spooky suspects,including Lewis himself. Yet President Jefferson informallyruled "suicide," since he harbored his own qualms about hisunstable protege, Meriwether Lewis.Not for at least a

generation was the enigmatic "murder" verdict advanced.Probably Lewis was killed for his money, runs the theory never mind his overwhelming credit problems, and reliance uponbooze and drugs.(As medical officer fo~ the expedition,Lewis had on-the-job training in Pharmacology)Proponents of the murder explanation believe a Western"hero" could never take his own life. They forget that num-erous bookish, introverted types performed expertly in theWest--such as Lewis, whose intellect so impressed his mentor,Thomas Jefferson. Lewis's reasoned caution would protect

the expedition on the trail, Jefferson hoped where a morecolorful frontier "character" might have endangered the crucialoperation. Jefferson wanted his Louisiana Purchase scoutedby leaders who would corne back alive But this same cerebral, prudent nature of Lewis's--invaluable on the journey--may have been his undoinglater. His tawdry, ambiguous death seems almost predestined.The murder partisans, how~ver, have turned his demise intoa gnawing, insoluable frontier mystery--with a tragic, flawedprotagonist, and a shadowy supporting cast. Their murder

*On the return trip, the expedition stopped at CumberlandGap and took some survey observations. Thus did Lewis & Clark reassess "Walker rsLine" (after Dr. Thomas Walker), which later helped settle the Tennessee-Kentuckyboundary dispute in 1819.


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9-22-93 TRAIL'S END FOR MERIWETHER LEWIS, p. 3"mystery" has a rather German tone to it, like the Gothicromances of Schiller, and his imitators. TenneSS8ans shouldat least be grateful for such gruesome publicity Griner's ("Grinder's"Stand is to Tennessee--and Lewis's death, what the "grassyknoll" and the Book Depository are to Texas--and the killingof John F. Kennedy. This stretch of the Natchez Trace is anear-mythical breeding ground for assassination-conspiracytheories!

Since Meriwether Lewis's death will never die, let us giveboth the suicide and murder options their day in historians'court.(After all, in 1992, George Washington Universityforensics science professor James E. Starrs was trying to crackthe case, with a $1,000 rented radar device, for probing the groundaround the grave."There is no statute of limitations on murder,"remarked District Attorney Joe Baugh of Franklin, Tennessee.)# # # # #

But the suicide theorists point to Lewis's diary, on

his thirty-first birthday (August 18, 1805), when he vowedto "dash from me the gloomy thought," and strive harderin the future.After coming off the expedition, Lewis managed toscuttle his chance to become a major American Western author.A publisher wanted to issue his journals--but Lewis neverdelivered a line of manuscript.And he was named Governor of Upper Louisiana. He showedup for work about eight months late, but helll it wasn't hisfault!Some damned woman had rejected Lewis's affections (atleast one), driving him into heavy drinking. Jefferson looked "/

at his watch (and calendar) and fretted about his protege


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9-24-93 TRAIL'S END FOR MERIWETHER LEWIS, p. 4being so tardy in showing up for his governor duties .Lewis's second-in-command, Frederick Bates, had been undermining his boss'sposition, perhaps justly, considering Lewis's eight-month slackness in sitting doin his chair. Bates, the insubordinate subordinate, chortled aloud thatLewis would soon be replaced by incoming President Madison.He even insulted Lewis once at a public ball. Bates was apal of General James Wilkinson, highest-ranking American officer, and Lewis'spredecessor as Louisiana governor--till he'd been kicked out for incompetence.

Wilkinson was secretly in the pay of Spain, and was the Will Rogers of Americanconspiracies . he never met a subversive intrigue he didn't like.To help earn his Spanish spy-salary, Wilkinson had earlier recommended in writingthat the Spanish waylay Lewis and Clarkand imprison them. "A preposterous document of sedition, hardly conceivable outsiHollywood," wrote historian Bernard de Voto, "but worth hard cash to the despairiSpaniards."Lewis had also known about Wilkinson's plot with Aaron.Burr (a traitor's work is never done), so perhaps Wilkinson wanted Lewis killed.(Reportedly, Lewis was a spectator at the Burr trial.)But Lewis had plentiful problems of his own making.

Bureaucrats in the War Department kept rejecting his official expense vouchers---they didn't like his funding the st. Louis Missouri Fur Company, nor purchasingtobacco and gunpowderfor the Indians. They spurned a draft for $18.70--then in- July, bounced one for$500. Lewis had overspent his own funds as


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9-24-93 TRAIL'S END FOR MERIWETHER LEWIS, p. 5well, so couldn't cover himself. His creditors, scenting blood, swooped down on tover-obligated Governor.So the beleagured Lewis headed for Washington, D.C., with a fourfold purpose: (1)to meet--and woo--the new President Madison, and try to keep his job; (2) to makewar on the War Department, over the expense vouchers; (3) to hustle a cash advancfrom his Phila?elphia publisher for his Journals; and (4) to visit father-figureJefferson, and maybe rekindle some confidence.Sober, he might have achieved all four of the above goals.

On September 11 he wrote his last will and testament.Was he getting ready for suicide? Or protecting his estate, should his enemiesmurder him? Or merely taking a precaution, before a trip into the savagewilderness? With him he carried copies of his bad vouchers, plus his Westernournals--and also two pistols, a dirk, and a fitting symbol of his accomplish-ments: a tomahawk peacepipe.He arrived at Fort Pickering on the Chickasaw Bluffs (today's Memphis) on Septemb15. (Back in 1797, he had served here as an infantry company commander.) Next dayhe wrote to President Madison that he was "exhausted from the heat of the climatebut having taken medicine feel much better ... " Maybe he had malaria--repeatedlyhe wrote that his illness was related to the weather. But post commander Gilbert

Russell labeled Lewis "deranged" from drinking. (As a twenty-year-old army recruiLewis had written enthusiastically about the "oceans


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9-25-93 TRAIL'S END FOR MERIWETHER LEWIS, p. 6of whisky" available; and he would later defeat a court-martial accusation of beingdrunk.) Boat crew members also reported that Lewis twice tried to kill himself (drunprobably). To pull Lewis's head out of the whisky bottle, capt. Russell treated him light wine--in exchange for ,his taking a teetotaler'svow, concerning hard liquor. Russell virtually held Lewis captive till he straightenup, fearful he might lose his valuable papers. Medications were administered--Lewis been steadily taking sedatives ("pills of opium and tartar"), for dysentary and otheills. Thanks to booze, narcotics, possible delerium from malaria, panic over his

personal plight . thisman who--more than any other--had opened the West, had become a human ticking timebomb.Lewis feared war would break out with England, and he might be captured and hispaperwork and priceless journals taken from him. So on September 29, he left Ft.Pickering, choosing to ride inland ... entering the Natchez Trace, destined forNashville. Capt. Russell gave him a farewell blessing of some money (Lewis was askilled money-borrower).With him rode two companions, about which all too littleis known. John Pernia (or Pernier), and Major AlexanderNeelly. Pernia was either Creole, French, Spanish, or Mulatto, and in oneunsubstantiated account, was a waterfront drunk whom Lewis was trying to rehabilitat

Neelly was the government agent to the Chickasaws. Both were creditors: Lewis owedPernia $240 in back wages--and Neelly claimed Lewis owed him, too. (Neely was havinghis vouchers rebuffed by the War Department,


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9-25-93 TRAIL'S END FOR MERIWETHER LEWIS, p. 7as well!)They rode east, and eventually entered the Trace a blazedIndian trail, that by 1800 was a viable commercial route, 600miles long. It linked the river towns of Natchez and Nashville. both of them future city-states of Manifest Destiny (orWestern expansionism). The Trace had been opened and improvedin 1801-02 by the Army, and General Wilkinson--and supervisedby Lieutenant Edmund Pendleton Gaines (future Memphis resident,

and advocate of railroads west).Despite its increased traffic, the Trace was harried byrobbers who would kill a traveller for his purse, his weapons,his horse. Along the trail, about a day's ride apart, werethe wayfarers' inns called "stands." Some of their innkeepersmay have been in league with local brigands, since exciting

tales abound of roadside robbers and multi-murderers, such *as the Harpes, Joseph Hare, and Sam Mason.But the NatchezTrace was probably safer than many big city streets today.At least postal riders passed through safely, if only at the

diplomatic discretion of the bandits.Some of the stands' operators were part Indian, or hadIndian wives. Wrote a traveller in 1810:

*For example--Micajah "Big" Harpe killed his own baby by smashing it dead against tree; and Joseph Hare and his accomplices would stain their faces with berry juicas a kind of Indian disguise before swooping down on travellers; whereas Sam Masowas so nefarious that when two citizens killed and decapitated him, they took hissevered head into a courtroom in orderto collect their reward. The Trace's gore-tnt-lore so intrigued mainstream noveliRobert M. Coates, that he wrotehis most successful book about it, the non-fiction The Outlaw Years (1930) . upa suggestion from critic Malcolm Cowley.


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9-25-93TRAIL'S END FOR MERIWETHER LEWIS, p.SWe were treated respectfully, and some times in their rude manner with cordialhospitality by the Indians with whom we had intercourse The greatest rudenesswe witnessed was in the white men we met at the taverns or stands.At least Lewis and his companions were frontier-tough, andarmed.At one point, Neelly stayed behind, to recapture some es-caped pack horses: Lewis went on alone, his servants following behind.

On October 10, he rode through Maury County near Hickman County,at the edge of the Chickasaw nation. Both counties had beenorganized the previous year. Toward sunset he approached aridge down below in a clearing betw~en the oak trees, he sawtwo cabins. Plus a barn (or stable).Griner's Stand only seventy-two miles away from Nashville.Greeting Lewis was Mrs. Robert Griner (not Grinder*).Her husband was gone, she told Lewis, but with her were twoblack servants and two children. She welcomed Lewis, as wellas Pernia and Neelly's servant, when they arrived.Griner's inn had only just opened, on January 18 ofthe previous year (1808), and was probably designed to

be a tavern. One traveller observed:*She may be "Grinder" in most Lewis sources--including some contemporary--but HickmanCounty records (including tombstones) make it Griner.. There is a Tennessee branchof the family that is Grinder. The-site' of the inn is called Grinder's Stand withinMeriwether Lewis Park, on Tennessee Highway 40, in Lewis County. And on Robert Grinelandwas eventually built the railroad swj.tch-off known as Grinder's Switch (popularizedGrand Ole Op~y cOE2dienne, Minnie Pearl).


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9-25-93 TRAIL'S END FOR MERIWETHER LEWIS, p, 9The Indian hotels are made of small poles, just high enough for you to standstraight in, with a dirt floor, no bedding of any kind, except a bearskin, and nothat in some of their huts. You feel blank and disappointed when you walk in andfind a cold dirt floor, naked walls, and no fire. Camping out is far better thansuch accomodations.So what happened next? Only Mrs. Griner knew, and someof her recollections were embellished over the years. Lewiswas one bizarre guest! He asked for gunpowder; he starteddrinking; he would walk up to Mrs. Griner, then suddenly turn!away. After supper, he left the table talking loudly to himself.His hostess gave him a room to himself--and the servants wentto the stable, to sleep in the hayloft. Mrs. Griner made herbed in the kitchen but how could she sleep? Her weird guest~was pacing up and down, talking to himself "like a lawyer, " probablyrehearsing his face-down with his bureaucrat-foes at the WarDepartment. One version has him grumbling: "They are tellinglies and trying to ruin me!"Two shots rang out .Soon Lewis was sobbing at Mrs. Griner's door for water

--gunshot wounds cause intense thirst--but the terrifiedinnkeeper didn't answer. Finally, Lewis staggered into theyard, pathetically scraping at an outside water bucket.But it was empty.Only in the morning did Mrs. Griner summon Lewis's servant,and Neelly's Lewis was still alive, a large wound in his side,his brain exposed from a shot in the head "I am no coward,"he gasped, "but I am so strong .. so hard~ to die .. "(Earlier,he had used some of this exact phrasing to describe a wounded


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9-25-93 TRAIL'S END FOR MERIWEI'HER LEWIS, p, 10grizzly--which upholds Mrs. Griner's credibility.)The sun was coming up as the West's greatest explorerwas going down .. some distance from the inn. His corpse wasprobably discovered by a mail-carrier named Robert Smith.Mere hours later, Neelly rode up .. and helped the Griners(Robert had apparently returned) bury Lewis in a rude grave.Neelly rode on to Nashville, where he wrote a letter toThomas Jefferson on October 18:SIR, it is with extreme pain that I have to inform you of the death of HisExcellency Meriwether Lewis, Governor of Upper Louisiana who died on the morning the 11th Instant ..Neelly repeated Mrs. Griner's version--though he said she wasin the second cabin, having given the main house over to Lewis.After shooting himself in the head, and in the breast, a satis-fied Lewis said to one of her servants: "I have done thebusiness, my good Servant. Give me water . "Captain John Brahan (2nd Regiment, U.S. Infantry) alsowrote to Thomas Jefferson, that same day from Nashville, sayinghe was sending Pernia forth to Monticello with Lewis's effects.

He said he gave the servant very little money, fearing he woulddrink it up.Neelly sent Lewis's trunks full of papers and jour-nals to Jefferson--while probably keeping his weapons (maybefor monies owed him). When Major Russell heard about it,he angrily denounced Neelly in a letter to Jefferson.The Nashville Clarion (October 20, 1809) said Lewishad shot a ball that grazed the top of his head and another through his intestineand out his neck, arm and ham [back of a thigh] with a razor .


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-Zi-93 TRAIL'S END FORMERIWEI'HER LEWIS, p. 11

The reporter urged that the journals soon be published,of the man whose explorations "echoed glad tidings thro'the civilized world."Pernia headed to Monticello on Lewis's horse, where hemet Jefferson, and probably surrendered Lewis's posessions.He died of a laudenum overdose next year--Lewis's mother alwayssuspected him of murdering her son.Years later (August 13,

1813) Jefferson wrote from Monticello that "Lewis had, fromearly life, been subject to hypochondriac affections" whichhad afflicted "all the nearer branches of the family and wasmore immediately inherited by him from his father."

tr

1,

In 1810, orinthologist Arthur Wilson rode down the NatchezTrace, scouting not for birds but for subscribers to hisexpensive set of bird books. Lewis had been his friend--sohe paid the Griners to build a fence around his grave "to shelterit from the hogs and wolves," exacting their written promise

to do so ... "I left this place in a very melancholy mood, whichwas not much allayed by the prospect of the gloomy and savagewilderness which I was just entering alone."So much for Lewis. No need for an investigation; hisbungling of the Louisiana governorship was an embarassment,soon forgotten; his estate was quickly devoured by hiscreditors; his raw-form journal manuscripts were not publishedin his liftetime (though a popular distillation was).But finally, Tennessee honored the man who (with WilliamClark) had extended the boundaries of the nation to the Pacific.(Ultimately, the Louisiana Purchase constituted sixteen states in the Union.


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9-25-93 TRAIL'S END FOR MERIWETHER LEWIS, p. 12

"ManifestDestiny" to an extent was born in Tennessee; itsbiggest exemplar until Andrew Jackson, died there.In 1843,

the legislature lopped off portions of Hickman and Maury County, *to form Lewis County.In 1848 the State exhumed, then reburied,Lewis's remains, rearing the memorial plinth which still stands.

"It seems more probable that he died by the hands of an assas-sin," adjudged the General Assembly "The place at which hewas killed is even yet a lonely spot.It was wild and solitary,and on the border of the Indian nation." They quoted a wildaccusation of Clark's son that Lewis "was murdered by hisservant, a Frenchman, who stole his money and horses, returnedto Natchez, and was never afterwards heard of."Thus had Meriwether Lewis's body been laid to rest and memorialized .. even ahis death itself had been dug up by thelegislators, and given official life. Around thirty yearsafter his demise, in 1839, Mrs. Griner had already added two

quaint touches to the evolving mythos. She remembered how, onthat calamitous night, (1) two other travellers had ridden up ..but that Lewis pulled his pistols and sent them riding, and (2) thatLewis had later grumbled (no doubt about his political foes), "Ifthey prove anything on me, they will have to do it by letter."Then in 1880, if not earlier, erupted the explosive newsof a Coroner's Jury. One Grif Whiteside claimed thathis grandfather Sam Whiteside had staged an inquest--and thatRobert Griner had been exonerated--but that moccasin tracksand a rifle print had been noticed in the dust, 100 yards from

*

Thus did Tennessee forge its own link with the Pacific Northwest --which hasnumerous counties, towns, rivers, colleges and other sites and landmarks named foLewis, for Clark, for Lewis & Clark.


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9-26-93 TRAIL'S ENDFOR MERIWEI 'HERLEWIS, p. 13the house by a corn crib. Now (in a reverse analogy to theKennedy assassination), there was talk of bullets coming frombehind.And the rifle print supposedly matched a uniqueweapon owned by a disreputable, terrifying neighbor namedRunnions.In a parody of Volunteer state pride, descendants of purported jurymembers began volunteering that their ancestors had voted "suicide"

when it was really murder . and covered up the killing of the West'snoblest explorer.Then a talkative old innkeeper named Christina Anthony made her notorious d~but as afolk-oracle, on the subjectof Lewis's death, in 1882. In a published interview sheclaimed to have known in her youth a servant girl of theGriners--who told her that Robert Griner "was missing the nextday and was arrested on Cane Creek brot back tried and gotclear." She herself was supposed to have a grudge againstthe Griners, one of whom ran off with her daughter (or niece).Then (who can believe this?), in 1890 Anthony was herself arrested for merely murdering a guest in her hotel who was re-

ported missing. She beat the charge . so did her co-conspir-ator named (incredibly) ... William Grinder (or Griner).The conscientuous Mrs. Anthony added even more hot sauceto the already over-spiced murder dish.In 1891 she publiclyaccused Robert Griner of murdering Lewis--she said he suddenlyhad enough money after the tragedy to buy slaves and more land.

*Supposed jury members: R. M. Cooper, George Vincent, [?] Sharpe (or Sharp., or Shippand someone named Carroll, and Johnson.


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TRAIL I S END FOR MERIWEI'HER""""Tc:'

~(~...L,-,.,

? 14Once "oral tradition" starts to gather momentum, it is mandatoryto make each installment more shocking than the last. SouthernMagazine in 1894 revealed that while Robert Griner orchestratedthe murder, his son Joshua did the actual homicidal honors.Since nearly all Griner descendants had moved way, Mr.

and Mrs. Griner of the Stand were fair game. Even a nieceof Robert Griner's daughter-in-law claimed Robert had stashedLewis's gold in the chimney, and that God had punished thefamily with insanity and suicide (two Griners did hangthemselves, years later). But if Lewis did have gold, whycouldn't he pay his debts? A true example of "chimney corner" history.In 1904, to help celebrate the Louisiana PurchaseCentenary, loyal Tennessee newspapers (such as the NashvilleBanner) filled columns with excited and sinister speculationsabout Lewis's death. At the Tennessee State Library andArchives reposes a hallowed red scrapbook filled with lovingly-pasted-in clippings, from the 1890s to circa 1904--with murder

- .

glarnorously triumphing over suicide ...A kill-joy attorney from Hickman County (since 1865),John H. Moore, tried to slam the brakes on the murder juggernaut.In a scholarly article in 1904, he recalled that the Grinerswere respectable and successful folks (he had known many ofthem), and he even interviewed a surviving black slave, probablypresent on the fatal night.SHe said two of Lewis's sisters evenstayed six ~eeks with the Griners the following year. Moore dismissed Mrs.Anthony as "garralous and sensational," out to smear the Griners.He also invoked the opinion of Elijah Wilson, a circuit courtudge before the Civil War, who after much deliberation,


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9-28-93SR~IL'3 END FOR MERIWETHER LEWI~, p. 15decided it was suicide.Meanwhile, the murder theory reached a national audience in 1905, via Everybody'~Magazine. Next year, Octavia Zollicoffer Bond (daughter of Confederate general,Felix K. Zollicoffer) asserted in Old Tales Retold that Robert Grinerhad been tried, acquitted, and "Singular to relate, the evidence in the trial wastorn from the record by an unknown hand in later years." Bond said Griner's half-breed son probably slew Lewis. (Her book has often been reprinted, and is widely

available.)But to the charge of missing pages, Tennessee historian Jill K. Garrett snorted i1973: "Here I get angry. Nonsense! Let's stop this foolishness right now. Nothinghas been torn from any records for this period." Had the inquest been recorded,Garrett said it would have been in at least eight places, requiring at least eightear-outs, had anyone wanted to excise the evidence.The phantom jury docket book was mentioned in the 1890s, by young Betsy Whitesidegrand-daughter of Samuel Whiteside. She said the culprit was that un-neighborlyneighbor, Tom Runnions, but that the nervous jury had ruled "suicide." Jill K.Garrett said in 1988 that Whiteside descendant Ashley Pogue, who died in recentyears, possessed the docket book. But most docket books from that period didn't

record verdicts, only operating facts like fees paid to jurors.The docket book has never surfaced. Like the mythical missing pages of John WilkeBooth's diary, its fanciful


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9-28-93 TRAIL'S END FOR MERIWETHER LEWIS, p. 16"lost" pages enjoy an enchanting immortality.Western novelist Emerson Hough (The Virginian) visitedLewis's grave in October of 1916--accompanied by fellow writerand State Librarian, John Trotwood Moore.An old-timercheerfully told Hough that some spiritualists up north had toldhim there was gold thereabouts, "left by a murdered man." So hehad dug in the ground for "the gold of Meriwether Lewis, which

he was known to have carried in his traveling portmanteau."Hough also talked with Wid Griner, last of the clan to livein the area ("lots of newspapermen take my picture," Wid beamed).In a magazine article Hough sneered at the Trace-folk asbeing "simple and more or less ignorant people." Then in hisnovel The Magnificent Adventure (1916), he had Aaron Burr'sdaughter, Theodosia Burr Alston, throw herself after Lewis(which drew considerable mail from the Burr, Alston, and Lewisfamilies--and it wasn't fan mail).By 1921, Mrs. Griner plummeted to new nadirs of notoriety.A columnist for the Lewis County Democrat (using a pseudonym)

published an interview with an unnamed woman, supposedly atMrs. Griner's deathbed:She confessed to some of the horrible crimes that had. been committed in the housThere were dark blood stains on the floor for many years but they never could getsufficient proof to convict the proprietess. [The friend] said she advised her toask forgiveness of God, but she shook her head and replied: "No use. I have beenguilty of too many horrible crimes" and the last word she ever uttered was: "I hadone too much."And in 1924 Cooper Frierson told John Trotwood Moore that,when hewas a teenager., he had heard that the Griners--or theservants--had killed Lewis, and the Whiteside jury had been


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9-28-93 TRAIL'S END FOR MERIWEI'HER LEWIS, P.17all "cowards & were afraid to bring a verdict of Murder Someone said themurderers had Indian blood in their Veins, & they were afraid they would meet asimilar fate."The zealous Moore had long yearned for the gravesite to become a national monumen ever since 1905, when he and President Theodore Roosevelt had first discussedit out at Andrew Jackson's Hermitge. Moore gave speeches, and went toWashington to lobby President Coolidge--who officially pro claimed it on February6, 1925. Congress tossed in $71,500

to maintain the grave and the grounds.~Then on August 18, 1925 (Lewis's 145th birthday) a crowdof over 500 rallied at the gravesite. John Trotwood Moore-president of theMeriwether Lewis Memorial Association--introduced a ten-year old girl, who read a

ballad written by her father, J. H. Pickard, a physician from nearby Hohenwald(seven miles away). The poem highlighted Lewis's life, then damned that oldscapegoatess, Mrs. Griner, for not aiding the dying Lewis, asking darkly: "whostole the jewels and the purse?"New heights of hokum were scaled in 1934 by Charles Morrow Wilson's MeriwetherLewis of Lewis and Clark. He parroted the Lewis-Theodosia Burr liaison as if itwere fact. He said Robert Griner was hauled before a Savannah, Tennessee grand ju

for murder--then released for want of evidence. But Savannah didn't exist in 1809and wasn't the seat of justice till 1830 (Hardin County had no courts till 1820)Wilson's chief "source" was "Statutes, Commonwealth of Tennessee, Vol. 23, pp.1174-78." Since Tennessee was never a "commonwealth," searching for this


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9-'=3-03 'J:'RAIL'S END FOR MERlhETIIER LEWIS,P'18ghost-book was an "utter waste of time" grumbled a statelibrarian in 1961."The most slovenly mess of misstatements thathas ever appeared in a professedly serious book," uttered one awed critic. But atleast Wilson spells "Griner" right, and takes seriously J. H. Moore's assessment the family's credibility.And the memoir Persimmon Hill (1848), an oral-history transcript, from WilliamClark's nephew, William Clark Kennerly,

asserts that "the Grinders [sic] and many other persons were jailed and tried butnothing was ever proved." (One pictures a veritable police round-up on the Trace,with an armed posse bringing in a gang of shackled suspects.)The tour de force of the murder cult, however, has tobe Vardis Fisher's Suicide or Murder? The Strange Death of Governor MeriwetherLewis (1962). Like a lawyer with a doubtful client, Fisher prosecutes theprosecution, even attacking Capt. Russell and Thomas Jefferson. The petulant Fishhas been said to write not as an historian, but as a detective, suspecting everyobut formally accusing no one. His book is fact-packed and thrill-packed, though hcan't seemto spell "Griner" correctly.

The story conti~ues -to improve. When Western historian and novelist Dee Brownvisited the death-site in 1986, he was told Robert Griner had killed Lewis.:.notfor his gold, but beca.use he had caught him in bed with Mrs. Griner!

The burden of proof continues to rest upon the murder advocates. No contemporaryevidence, whatever, exists for murder.There is no proof that Robert Griner was anywhere near


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9-28-93 TRAIL'S END FOR M ... .((IWETHER LEWIS, P.1'9.

his Stand. His name appears on tax and other records, including assessments formaintaining his fair share of the Trace. He'saccu _ad by latterday sceptics' of having "sold whisky to theIndians," which being a tavern keeper, was his right andobligation. Perhaps an ad hoc jury did assemble, and interview him perfunctorily.Griner was a successful landowner, so perhaps a jealousgossiper, . rn(".~e the most of this non-event, leaving an "oral history" legacy

for future generations to inflatep

Mrs. Griner is disbelieved, except when she said somethingthat can be used against her, such as failing to supply Lewis with a cup of waterWell, she had a three-month-old baby.How many free-lance writers, away from home at a literary conference, would wanttheir wife to endanger their baby, in orderto aid a well-armed drunk adventurer in the next room trying to kill himself--orwhom someone was trying to kill? If Mrs. Grinerdid try to cover up a murder, why didn't she lie and say she triedto help Lewis? Qn~ of the slave girls, interviewed years later, said they were alterrified, and kept the door barred. Mrs. Griner's accusers seldom get her lastname right, and usually miss her first name (Priscilla) though "She did have a

first name," laughs historian Garrett.Anyway, why would an innkeeper and/or his wife kill a national hero--a territoriagovernorl--and risk the wrath of a government investigation?Nor does servant Pernia sound calculating enough toknock over his boss, then proceed to Washington and Monticello as he did, visitinJefferson. He even filed a claim against Lewis's estate, riling his already-chagrined family as they


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coped with his bankrupt fiscal aflairs. There's a legendof Lewis's sister confronting Perno in New Orleans (or Mobile), as he sportedLewis's gold watch and carrying his rifle--at odds with the facts. To attack MajoNeelly seems evenmore strained--in the same Nashville paper carrying Lewis's obituary was a signedstatement by Neelly on another matter:he was an assertive, probably conscientuous official.A more exciting suspect is Tom Runnions--a land pirate, desperado, and half-breed

kin of the Griners. He was the villain of the Whiteside girl's essay ... though a1904 statement n~-. d Pernia as the murderer ... yet all such papers have dis-appeared. These rumors, plus all the libeling of the Griners (who in theirlifetimes had no blotches on their reputations), tend to cancel each other out.Some writers, after rounding up the usual horde of murdersuspec~s, are frustrated there is no one to indict, lee a_8~2convict. So they recruthose trusty ba2dits of the Trace ... the reliable, anonymous murderers, who areavailable to ride into any exciting story. Though no one seems to have the nerve accuse Jefferson, for silencing a colleague who had outlivedhis usefulness, and who might have implicated Gen. Wilkinson in the Burr scandalThe sentimentalists believe that Lewis still had much to live for, so wouldn't hakilled himself--forgetting that suicide, like

murder, need not be "first-degree" or premeditated. Lewis had a divided soul, andsplit-second's rashness is all a split-personality needs. There's nothing like thsurefire, alcohol-and-gunpowder prescription for inner turmoil. Though Lewis'sidolators aredoubtless embarassed that their mighty hero was seemingly so ineptat performing such a simple, self-help procedure as suicide.


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9-28-93 TRAIL'S END FOR MERIWETHER LEWIS,p.21Meanwhile, numerous academic and scholarly papers have supportedthe suicide likelihood, from Howard I. Kushner's psychoanalytical analysis,to Paul Russell Cutright's devastating refutation of the murder-mongers(for the Lewis & Clark Trail Heritage Association).

Former Vanderbilt "Fugitivellpoet (and later English professor)Robert Penn Warren has the ghost of Lewis confronting Jeffersonin his Brother to Dragons (1953) epic poem: "I am the man you did give the bulletto," though he means it figuratively. (Jeffersonraised Lewis's hopes too high, a~d when his career collapsed, indirectly causedLewis to kill himselfYStill, there is hope for the murderophiles. Someone needsto buy an old, empty ledger book in an antique store, and forge

those missing jury minutes, writing in the w or d "murder 1"thencrossing it out, and inking in "suicide" above it. Or, maybeLewis wasn't killed on the Trace--maybe someone else was killedin his place, so he could assume a new identity and start afresh career. Like Jesse James (see Ch., John WilkesBooth (see Ch. ), or Elvis Presley, perhaps he outlived his

official death. Most likely he went to Texas, probably died

at the Alamo, and any time now, some Crockett-Lewis diary pages are bound to surface in some archive in Mexico City ...But truly, the best~ay to resolve the Lewis homicide case, once and for all, is terect a tourist-trap playhouse at MeriwetherLewis Park (designated by the Federal government in 1961 )--andstage a mystery drama for the summer visitors.In the UnitedStates, at least, history is better subjected to the democratic


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10-2-93TRAIL'S END FOR MERIWETHER LEWIS, p. 22process than to the scholarly. At some point the action shouldbe halted--and the audience forced to vote upon the solution--and then the winning explanation should be immediately enacted.Such an event could become a perpetual, passion-play pageant,like the Ozarks' The Shepard of the Hills ("dinner-theater

* history," Ted P. Yeatman dubs this novel genre).# # # #But who cares how Meriwether Lewis died? At least those sixteenred morocco volumes of his journals, with metal clasps, survived,even if their author did not.

*Charles Dickens' unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, has been dramatized ithis way, in a Joe Papps production performed with great success in New York's CentrPark.

15 (30) tww trails end for m. lewis homicide at griners sta eng yeatman

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