Trego's Mountain Ear

For years, I couldn’t figure out a reason for Meriwether Lewis to commit suicide-yet the historical record shows that on October 11, 1809 he did.  Only 3 years after he returned to St. Louis after leading the Corps of Discovery expedition across the continent and back.

Lewis is not just an historic figure and explorer of note – his apron is one of the Masonic lodge artifacts in Helena, attesting to his conducting the first lodge sessions in Montana.  At the time of his death, he could well have been on track to become President.  He was territorial governor of Louisiana. 

 NPShistory.com  show why this young man, just turned 35, would see suicide as his only alternative.  Dr. Ravenholt, reading Lewis’ journals, diagnosed him as suffering from neurosyphilis, and wrote that the disease, plus the use of mercury as a cure, was affecting Lewis’ mental health.

“ Venereal disease was already widespread in Indian country, especially in those communities regularly visited by European traders. Lewis and Clark knew the dangers that awaited their contingent of fit young men, but they also knew that two years of abstinence was too much to ask. Expedition members had sex with Indian women early and often. Indian women often were eager to have sex with the men of the expedition, although for reasons that the men could barely fathom. The sexual exploits of Clark’s black slave, York, became legendary. Sacagawea, inscribed on the dollar coin as a national heroine, seems almost certainly to have had a gonorrheal infection, contracted most likely from her husband Toussaint Charbonneau. Many, perhaps all, of the men received mercury treatment—the common prescription for syphilis—during the expedition. Lewis and Clark were extremely circumspect about their own sexual activities along the trail, but the stories about babies fathered by Clark in Indian communities and the mystery surrounding Lewis’ death are suggestive.” 

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/219490

“How could it be that nobody has put this (the syphilis theory) together?” asked Ravenholt. Sanitized accounts of the Lewis and Clark expedition, efforts to protect Lewis’ reputation and unfamiliarity by historians with the symptoms of syphilis have led scholars to overlook obvious clues, he said. “Clearly Thomas Jefferson and William Clark did their best to put this under the rug.”

“The biggest (health) trouble Lewis and Clark experienced was venereal disease,” Ravenholt noted, a point backed up by the explorers’ own journals. These mention treating the illness in their men at Fort Clatsop on the coast with doses of mercury, but do not explain the source of Lewis’ illness in late 1805.

Venereal disease is a possible cause of Lewis’ problems, said John Findlay, a professor of Pacific Northwest history at the University of Washington. Sexual relations between Indians and fur trappers were common before Lewis and Clark arrived.

Sexual relations between the “Corps of Discovery” and Native Americans were routine. Indians regarded it as a gesture of hospitality and a way to acquire some of the visitors’ power, while Lewis and Clark knew it helped cement relations with tribes and kept up the morale of their men, historians have written.”

Did Syphilis Lead To Darkening Despair That Caused Explorer Lewis To End His Life? | The Seattle Times

It’s an answer that makes sense – most of us know that smallpox was particularly rough on the native American population.  Fewer realize that measles was nearly as bad.  In our era, where antibiotics are prevalent and available, we tend to overlook how serious bacterial infections were in the 19th and early 20th century.

Ravenholt described Lewis’ suicide as “we can truly empathize with him and fully admire his ultimate courage in facing the facts squarely and doing what had to be done to protect his reputation, his family and his friends.”

Hopefully, this article can get the reader to click the links and read the original researchers views.