Muskets only fire once....................u have to pack the gun powder and reload them...........odd that a suicide would involve two shots.............

Circumstances[edit]

According to a lost October 18, 1809 letter to Thomas Jefferson, Lewis stopped at an inn on the Natchez Trace called Grinder's Stand, about 70 miles (110 km) southwest of Nashville on October 10, 1809. After dinner, he retired to his one-room cabin. In the predawn hours of October 11, the innkeeper's wife (Priscilla Griner) heard gunshots. Servants found Lewis badly injured from multiple gunshot wounds, one each to the head and gut. He bled out on his buffalo hide robe and died shortly after sunrise. The Nashville Democratic Clarion published the account, which newspapers across the country repeated and embellished. The Nashville newspaper also reported that Lewis's throat was cut.^[24] Money that Lewis had borrowed from Major Gilbert Russell at Fort Pickering to complete the journey was missing.

While Lewis's friend Thomas Jefferson and some modern historians have generally accepted Lewis's death as a suicide, debate continues, as discussed below. No one reported seeing Lewis shoot himself. Three inconsistent somewhat contemporary accounts are attributed to Mrs. Griner, who left no written account or testimony—some thus believe her testimony was fabricated, while others point to it as proof of suicide.^[25] Mrs. Griner claimed Lewis acted strangely the night before his death: standing and pacing during dinner and talking to himself in the way one would speak to a lawyer, with face flushed as if it had come on him in a fit. She continued to hear him talking to himself after he retired, and then at some point in the night, she heard multiple gunshots, a scuffle, and someone calling for help. She claimed to be able to see Lewis through the slit in the door crawling back to his room. However, she never explained why she never investigated further at the time, but only the next morning sent her children to look for Lewis's servants. Another account claimed the servants found Lewis in the cabin, wounded and bloody, with part of his skull gone, but he lived for several hours. In the last account attributed to Mrs. Griner, three men followed Lewis up the Natchez Trace, and he pulled his pistols and challenged them to a duel. In that account, Mrs. Griner said that she heard voices and gunfire in Lewis's cabin about 1 a.m. She found the cabin empty and a large amount of gunpowder on the floor. Thus, in this account, Lewis's body was found outside the cabin.

Lewis's mother and relatives always contended it was murder. A coroner's jury held an inquest immediately after Lewis's death as provided by local law; however, they did not charge anyone with murdering Lewis.^[26] The jury foreman kept a pocket diary of the proceedings, which disappeared in the early 1900s.^{[citation needed]}

When William Clark and Thomas Jefferson were informed of Lewis' death, both accepted the conclusion of suicide. Based on their positions and the never-found Lewis letter of mid-September 1809, historian Stephen Ambrose dismisses the murder theory as "not convincing".^[8]

Later analyses[edit]

The only doctor to examine Lewis's body did not do so until 40 years later, in 1848.^[25] The Tennessee State Commission, including Dr. Samuel B. Moore, charged with locating Lewis's grave and erecting a monument over it, opened Lewis's grave. The commission wrote in its official report that though the impression had long prevailed that Lewis died by his own hand, "it seems to be more probable that he died by the hands of an assassin."^[27]

In the book The History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, first printed in 1893, the editor Elliott Coues expressed doubt about Thomas Jefferson's conclusion that Lewis committed suicide, despite including the former President's Memoir of Meriwether Lewis in his book.^[28]

From 1993–2010, about 200 of Lewis's kin (through his sister Jane, as he had no children) sought to have the body exhumed for forensic analysis, to try to determine whether the death was a suicide. A Tennessee coroner's jury in 1996 recommended exhumation. However, since Lewis's gravesite is in a national park, the National Park Service must approve. The agency refused the request in 1998, citing possible disturbance to the bodies of more than 100 pioneers buried nearby. In 2008, the Department of the Interior approved the exhumation, but rescinded that decision in 2010 after the change in administrations, stating that decision is final.^{[citation needed]} It is nonetheless improving the grave site and visitor facility.^[29]

Historian Paul Russell Cutright wrote a detailed refutation of the murder/robbery theory, concluding that it "lacks legs to stand on".^[30] He stressed Lewis's debts, heavy drinking, and possible morphine/opium use, failure to prepare the expedition's journals for publication, repeated failure to find a wife, and the deterioration of his friendship with Thomas Jefferson.^[8][30]