AMERICAN MURDER Part Eight

 

I said at the beginning that I don't believe Priscilla Grinder. She claims that about 3:00am  (or “the middle of the night”) she heard a shot. She heard a man call, “Oh, Lord”. Then she heard a second shot. Then, sometime later she heard a scratching at the door of the kitchen cabin, where she and her two little girls were sleeping. Then she heard her guest Meriwether Lewis pleading for water. She said she did not open the door, but she knew it was Lewis because she peeked through the open chinks in the wall and saw him wandering between the cabins.

According to the U.S. Naval Observatory, on the night of 10/11 October, 1809,  there was a new moon. This meant there was no light to illuminate Lewis for Priscilla Grinder to see him. Was Lewis carrying a candle or a lamp? If so Priscilla did not mention it. And any light inside the cabin would have blinded her to anyone moving around outside in the dark.

Worse was the improved version Priscilla told thirty years later, in 1839. This time, she said, "About dark two or three other men rode up and called for lodging. Mr. Lewis immediately drew a brace of pistols, stepped towards them and challenged them to fight a duel. They,. not liking this salutation, rode on to the next house, five miles." Now why would Lewis pick a fight when outnumbered? And why did neither servant in the barn cabin hear this confrontation? 

The only thing we know with any certainty  is that someone shot Governor Meriwether Lewis that night, allegedly once in the head and once in the side, and the pool of suspects is pretty shallow.

Major General Wilkinson might have dispatched agents to murder Governor Lewis. But why not waylay him while he was camped in the wilderness?  And how could they expect to recognize him in an age before photographs?  Also, remember, Grinder's Stand was suffering a loss of business because of the toll road by-pass. How would an assassin even know Lewis had stopped at Grinder's Stand?  

There were also  highwaymen men along The Trace - whites and Indians. They would have been interested in the five or six horses Lewis' party rode on - worth about $25 each - about $2,000 today.  But come the dawn, the none of the hobbled horses were missing.

If we eliminate, at least for the time being, these unlikely suspects, we are left with the four adults who were at Grinder's Stand that night - Priscilla Grinder, Lewis' servant John Pernier and James Neeley's servant, and Lewis himself. There was also Priscilla's husband Robert, but if he had been present why did neither John Prenier or Neeley's servant mention him, then or later? No, Robert Grinder also fails as a suspect. 

Now, John Pernier was described as a “free mulatto”, meaning he had “negro blood”. Given the racism of the age, and the elitism of Lewis' Virginia heritage, no one asked Pernier to write down his version of what happened that night.   

But Pernier did share his story of that night with Meriwether Lewis' mother Lucy Marks (above),  and her reaction was to accuse him of killing her son. And Pernier cannot be ruled out as the shooter. But he died just 5 months later, in April of 1810, of an apparent suicide through an overdose of Laudlum. But  he neither said nor left any indication he killed himself because of guilt about killing Lewis.  More likely he felt guilty because of his failure to save Louis.     

As to Jame's Neeley's servant, we don't know his name or age or his version of events. However I suspect that James Neeley's letter detailing Lewis' death to President Thomas Jefferson was based in part  on what this man or boy  told him about that night.  And it seems likely we can eliminate both servants as possible shooters because either one could have easily implicated the other, but neither did.

Priscilla Grinder must have had at least one weapon to defend herself and her daughters, else her husband would never have left her alone.  Her weapon was probably a blunderbuss (above), also called a “coach gun”,  a muzzle loading shotgun with a short barrel and relatively lite in weight. They were a superb weapon for intimidation and required no marksmanship. They fired a hand full of lead balls, but could also be loaded with whatever metal or stones were within reach. 

Priscilla was probably proficient as well with a musket or her own pistol. Self defense is one of the skills required for running a small business in a rough neighborhood. 

We know that Governor Lewis himself (above) had four weapons. He had a hunting knife and a smooth bore flintlock musket. The size of the long gun ( about 5') makes it impossible that Lewis shot himself in the head with this gun, then reloaded and shot himself a second time.

But Lewis also had a “brace” of pistols, meaning two. The ones he was most likely carrying were called “horse pistols” because they were too large (9 inches long) and too heavy (three pounds each) to wear in your belt. These fired the same .69 caliber lead ball as the long rifle, with a muzzle velocities of about 600 feet per second. If Governor Lewis shot himself, he used the horse pistols, which would account for the two shots Priscilla supposedly heard. Of all the possible assassins of Meriwether Lewis, the most likely was Meriwether Lewis.

According to modern multi-cultural studies, although suicide can affect anyone, those at the greatest risk are single white males from an affluent background who are moderate alcoholics and/or drug abusers, with few friends, and who are also dealing with a health problem while suffering from a diagnosable mental-health disorder such as depression. Emile Durkheim, the Frenchman who established the field of Sociology, described this condition as “excessive individuation”. Applying this description, Meriwether Lewis was the poster child for suicide.

I wish we had John Prenier's version of events that night. I wish experts could exhume Governor Lewis' body, to determine exactly what his wounds were. But honestly, I do not think either of those missing pieces of evidence are likely to ever be supplied. So we are left with the death of a man who was far from perfect even when judged by the standards of his own time, but who was still more than an American hero. Meriwether Lewis was an American Archetype, even in his mode of death - self murder.

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AMERICAN MURDER Part Seven

 

I must say the last two weeks of Meriwether Lewis' life were very hard. On Friday Morning, 6 October 1809, the Governor and Indian agent James Neeley, along with their two servants, left the primary Chickasaw village before dawn, heading north along the Natchez Trace. They reached Bear Creek that first day. On the next day they reached the Tennessee River, at Corbert's Ferry.

George Colbert was described by the whites who had to deal with him as both “shrewd, talented and wicked” and as an artful and a designing river pirate. This half-Scot, half-Chickasaw Indian had a monopoly on crossing the wide Tennessee River for fifty miles in either direction. And he charged for his ferry accordingly – usually fifty cents per man or horse, (a dollar for a man on a horse) and whenever possible, more.

His two story wood frame home (above), which stood above the ferry, was described as a “country palace” by travelers used to a hut or a lean-too. It was also known in the environs as the Buzzard's Roost. From this house, George oversaw the 100 slaves who worked his plantation. George Colbert explained his worldview this way, “Indians never know how to steal until white man learned them...We are free and we intend to keep so.”

The standard tale is that having paid their fees for a ten minute boat ride across the river, Lewis and Neeley (et al) stumbled on to camp that night along the Sweet Water Branch of Rock Creek. They awoke on Monday, 9 October and returned to the trail, described as a “snake-infested, mosquito-beset, robber-haunted, Indian-pestered forest path." At the end of the day they reached the attractively titled Dogwood Mud-hole and camped out for another chilly fall night. Sometime after midnight a rain storm rumbled through and the campers were soaked. 

When the men climbed out from under their wet blankets on the morning of Tuesday, 10 October, it was still raining and colder. And, they discovered,  said Neeley, that two of their horses had wandered off during the night. So while the servants and Neeley stayed behind to recapture the horses, Lewis continued up the trail alone. But I have a few questions about all of that.

If you believe what Neeley wrote later to Thomas Jefferson, he stayed behind on the morning of ten October  to help search for the missing horses. But both servants showed up later that day with the those horses, while Neeley was still unaccounted for.  And according to court records from Franklin, Tennessee, on 11 October, 1809, James Neely was in a courtroom, signing a promissory note to repay a loan. That courtroom was at least three days travel from Lewis' campsite on the morning of the tenth. The only conclusion I can come to, is that James Neeley was not with Governor Meriwether Lewis on that Tuesday morning.

It seems to me that the lex parsimonoae - AKA Occam's Razor - of the situation is that shortly after the party crossed the Tennessee River on the afternoon of Sunday, 8 October, James Neeley rode ahead on his own, racing to meet his court date, leaving his own servant behind to help Lewis. But I suspect that Neeley did not want President Thomas Jefferson to know that he was being sued over a debt, nor did he want the President to know he had abandoned the ailing Meriwether Lewis on the Trace, after assuring Captain Russell at Fort Pickering that he would keep a close watch over Lewis. This little scrap of dirty linen seems embarrassing enough to have inspired Neeley's lies about where he was on the night of the 10/11 October,  particularly considering future events.

This is a much simpler explanation than any of the convoluted conspiracy threads that some have weaved around the last 24 hours of Meriwether Lewis' life. This simple explanation requires only that people act like people you know, that they lie for small and petty reasons a lot more often than they lie for big complicated ones. And they disguise their small lies much more badly. But. of course, this explanation also leads us to a few more questions.

Sometime around 5:30 on the evening of 10 October, 1809 Priscilla Grinder saw a lone rider approaching the three split rail, un-chinked and un-plastered cabins of "Grinder's Stand".  She immediately sent her two daughters to the kitchen cabin, a few steps behind the others. And only then did she step outside to greet the traveler.

He was a tall and athletic man who wore a blue and white striped and faded “duster”, and he was accompanied by a dog. Their first meeting, as were most meetings along The Trace, was wary.  Each party inspected the other for mutilations, cropped ears, missing fingers or branded flesh. It was common practice at the time for suspected thieves to be so marked as a warning for potential future victims. But as far as we know, Priscilla bore no such marks. And we know Lewis did not. But both of them would have been armed.

Meriwether asked if he could receive an evening's lodging and a meal. Priscilla said yes, and asked if he were traveling alone. Lewis explained his servants would be arriving shortly. There was no mention of Neeley in her story. He dismounted and removed his saddle. He hobbled his horse, and carried the saddle inside the cabin. 

He asked for a drink, but did not seem interested in it after he was served. It is possible that the beverage, probably the same corn mash Priscilla's husband was selling to the Chickasaw, had little appeal for a man who had tasted wine at Thomas Jefferson's table.

A few minutes later two more men rode up. Lewis identified them as his servants, even though only one, John Pernier, actually was. The other was Neeley's man. Lewis asked Pernier to fetch some gunpowder, saying he had a canister of it somewhere in his luggage. Priscilla did not hear the reply, as she had to go out to the kitchen cabin to begin preparing the meal for the three men. Still, there is no indication that Lewis identified himself to his host.

After the meal had been served, Pernier and Neeley's man took the horses off to the other cabin, used as a barn. All three men would bed there for the night. Priscilla said later that as she gathered up the dishes, Lewis began to intensely pace up and down the room. According to her, “Sometimes he would seem as if he were walking up to me, and would suddenly wheel round, and walk back as fast as he could.” Then he stopped, produced his pipe and lighted it, pulled a chair close to the front door of the cabin and announced, “What a sweet evening it is.”

It smacks me as an unlikely comment from a man who had been soaked to the skin for the last twelve hours. But then as I said at the very beginning, I don't trust the stories this lady has to tell about the last night of Meriwether Lewis' life. 

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AMERICAN MURDER Part One

 

I won't call the lady a liar, but I don't believe any of the stories Priscilla Grinder told about the two gunshots shattering the early morning darkness, no that she heard her guest begging for help and never peeked out her door. So maybe it was murder.

Grinder's Stand, as it was called, stood along the ridge route called the Natchez Trace or “The Devil's Backbone”. The road - to give it a generous title - began where the first high ground above New Orleans, touched the Mississippi River, at a human den of inequity called Natchez. 

Following ancient buffalo trails "The Trace" then meandered through a dense macabre forests 445 miles, twenty days by horse and foot, to Nashville, Tennessee, where it joined Daniel Boone's Wilderness Road heading to the east. Under the progressive President Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. Army was set to work clearing the trace to 8 feet wide and removing all tree stumps above 16 inches tall, so "The Trace" could be used by high riding Conestoga wagons. But each stream and river still had to be forded, even if the traveler could afford to pay a toll along those short parallel sections improved even more by local entrepreneurs.

In 1802, when Louisiana was still French territory, the customs house in Natchez reported a million dollars worth of tobacco, flower, hemp, cider and whiskey on its way down the Mississippi to New Orleans. By 1804, after the Louisiana Purchase, "The Trace" saw as many as 1,000 travelers a year -  the crews of flatboats and rafts which had floated down stream, returning home on foot with their profits. 

Where there are profits, there are those who would steal them. Each ominous river and stream crossing on "The Trace" was reputed to be the unmarked graves of boatmen who had been set upon by gangs of “Land Pirates”. There was no law on "The Trace".  And while the level of violence never approached the legends, meeting a group of strangers at an isolated ford or forest clearing, or blind turning in the trail, was still an unnerving experience.

Robert Evans Grinder and Priscilla Knight were each born within sight of Moore's knob (above, BG)), the 1,700 foot high granite mountain that looms over Stokes county, North Carolina. As teenagers they ran away together, and in 1799 were married in Nashville, about the time their daughter, Parthenia, was born. They were living examples of the new nation, young, illiterate, hard working and hungry to succeed.

So as the soldiers hacked and sawed their way south along "The Trace", the Grinder's followed. And in 1807 they came to the Tennessee “Barins”, high ground between the Duck and Tennessee Rivers, sixty miles southwest of Nashville. Here the Grinders enlarged and hacked out a couple of clearings amidst the oaks and dogwoods. Back in the woods they planted corn and rye. And in a clearing along the trace they built a small one room cabin, and an adjoining barn with a small stable. 

The cabin and barn stood at right angles to each other, their front doors opening on a common space.  A third building close by served as the detached kitchen. In 1807 these three structures served as Grinder's Stand, one of only seven such “Stands” or way stations along The Trace, where for thirty cents you could rent a bed or part of a bed or just a roof for the night. 

For a few cents more Priscilla could supply a bowl of warm gruel. And it was a successful business, until a toll road by-pass opened, and the Grinder's income dropped off. So the Grinders depended on their fallback industry, selling corn mash whiskey to the Chickasaw Indians, whose nation's border lay just a few yards beyond Grinder's Stand's front door.

In the rainy dusk of 10 October, 1809, this failing wilderness hostel was unexpectedly confronted by a tall, gaunt man who materialized out of the woods.  Priscilla Grinder, alone with her children,  must have greeted him warily. Why was this man in an expensive blue and white stripped duster, traveling alone? Why had he not taken the bypass when he could obviously afford it?  

According to Priscilla, he tried to set her mind at ease by telling her that his two servants should be arriving shortly with pack animals. But that only added to the mystery. And if she had known her weary visitor was Merriweather Lewis (above), Governor of Upper Louisiana Territory  and one of the most famous men in North America, it likely would not have eased her mind .  In God's name, why was such a man stopping at her door, seeking the sad comforts which she could offer?  It was a question still waiting for an answer, 300 years later.

                                  - 30 -  

AMERICAN MURDER Part Eight

 

I said at the beginning that I don't believe Priscilla Grinder. She claims that about 3:00am  (or “the middle of the night”) she heard a shot. She heard a man call, “Oh, Lord”. Then she heard a second shot. Then, sometime later she heard a scratching at the door of the kitchen cabin, where she and her two little girls were sleeping. Then she heard her guest Meriwether Lewis pleading for water. She said she did not open the door, but she knew it was Lewis because she peeked through the open chinks in the wall and saw him wandering between the cabins.

According to the U.S. Naval Observatory, on the night of 10/11 October, 1809,  there was a new moon. This meant there was no light to illuminate Lewis for Priscilla Grinder to see him. Was Lewis carrying a candle or a lamp? If so Priscilla did not mention it. And any light inside the cabin would have blinded her to anyone moving around outside in the dark.

Worse was the improved version Priscilla told thirty years later, in 1839. This time, she said, "About dark two or three other men rode up and called for lodging. Mr. Lewis immediately drew a brace of pistols, stepped towards them and challenged them to fight a duel. They,. not liking this salutation, rode on to the next house, five miles." Now why would Lewis pick a fight when outnumbered? And why did neither servant in the barn cabin hear this confrontation? 

The only thing we know with any certainty  is that someone shot Governor Meriwether Lewis that night, allegedly once in the head and once in the side, and the pool of suspects is pretty shallow.

Major General Wilkinson might have dispatched agents to murder Governor Lewis. But why not waylay him while he was camped in the wilderness?  And how could they expect to recognize him in an age before photographs?  Also, remember, Grinder's Stand was suffering a loss of business because of the toll road by-pass. How would an assassin even know Lewis had stopped at Grinder's Stand?  

There were also  highwaymen men along The Trace - whites and Indians. They would have been interested in the five or six horses Lewis' party rode on - worth about $25 each - about $2,000 today.  But come the dawn, the none of the hobbled horses were missing.

If we eliminate, at least for the time being, these unlikely suspects, we are left with the four adults who were at Grinder's Stand that night - Priscilla Grinder, Lewis' servant John Pernier and James Neeley's servant, and Lewis himself. There was also Priscilla's husband Robert, but if he had been present why did neither John Prenier or Neeley's servant mention him, then or later? No, Robert Grinder also fails as a suspect. 

Now, John Pernier was described as a “free mulatto”, meaning he had “negro blood”. Given the racism of the age, and the elitism of Lewis' Virginia heritage, no one asked Pernier to write down his version of what happened that night.   

But Pernier did share his story of that night with Meriwether Lewis' mother Lucy Marks (above),  and her reaction was to accuse him of killing her son. And Pernier cannot be ruled out as the shooter. But he died just 5 months later, in April of 1810, of an apparent suicide through an overdose of Laudlum. But  he neither said nor left any indication he killed himself because of guilt about killing Lewis.  More likely he felt guilty because of his failure to save Louis.     

As to Jame's Neeley's servant, we don't know his name or age or his version of events. However I suspect that James Neeley's letter detailing Lewis' death to President Thomas Jefferson was based in part  on what this man or boy  told him about that night.  And it seems likely we can eliminate both servants as possible shooters because either one could have easily implicated the other, but neither did.

Priscilla Grinder must have had at least one weapon to defend herself and her daughters, else her husband would never have left her alone.  Her weapon was probably a blunderbuss (above), also called a “coach gun”,  a muzzle loading shotgun with a short barrel and relatively lite in weight. They were a superb weapon for intimidation and required no marksmanship. They fired a hand full of lead balls, but could also be loaded with whatever metal or stones were within reach. 

Priscilla was probably proficient as well with a musket or her own pistol. Self defense is one of the skills required for running a small business in a rough neighborhood. 

We know that Governor Lewis himself (above) had four weapons. He had a hunting knife and a smooth bore flintlock musket. The size of the long gun ( about 5') makes it impossible that Lewis shot himself in the head with this gun, then reloaded and shot himself a second time.

But Lewis also had a “brace” of pistols, meaning two. The ones he was most likely carrying were called “horse pistols” because they were too large (9 inches long) and too heavy (three pounds each) to wear in your belt. These fired the same .69 caliber lead ball as the long rifle, with a muzzle velocities of about 600 feet per second. If Governor Lewis shot himself, he used the horse pistols, which would account for the two shots Priscilla supposedly heard. Of all the possible assassins of Meriwether Lewis, the most likely was Meriwether Lewis.

According to modern multi-cultural studies, although suicide can affect anyone, those at the greatest risk are single white males from an affluent background who are moderate alcoholics and/or drug abusers, with few friends, and who are also dealing with a health problem while suffering from a diagnosable mental-health disorder such as depression. Emile Durkheim, the Frenchman who established the field of Sociology, described this condition as “excessive individuation”. Applying this description, Meriwether Lewis was the poster child for suicide.

I wish we had John Prenier's version of events that night. I wish experts could exhume Governor Lewis' body, to determine exactly what his wounds were. But honestly, I do not think either of those missing pieces of evidence are likely to ever be supplied. So we are left with the death of a man who was far from perfect even when judged by the standards of his own time, but who was still more than an American hero. Meriwether Lewis was an American Archetype, even in his mode of death - self murder.

- 30 -