Great Plains Studies, Center for

 

Authors

J. I. Merritt

Date of this Version

Fall 2010

Document Type

Article

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly 30:4 (Fall 2010).

Comments

Copyright © 2010 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.

Abstract

With the possible exception of Aaron Burr, perhaps no figure from the early history of the Republic remains more enigmatic than Meriwether Lewis, who with fellow Army officer William Clark led one of the most celebrated expeditions in the history of exploration. Lewis and Clark's twenty-eight-month "tour," which took them to the Pacific Ocean and back via the Missouri and Columbia drainages, gave the young nation a wealth of knowledge about the Louisiana Territory and Pacific Northwest. Lewis was just thirty-two years old when the Corps of Discovery banked its canoes in St. Louis in September 1806. Yet the young man lionized as a national hero would die-almost certainly by his own hand-barely three years later in a lonely cabin in backwoods Tennessee.

Share

COinS