established a winter camp near her home in a Hidatsa-Mandan settlement of South Dakota in late 1804, the explorers determined to take along both Charbonneau and his pregnant wife as interpreters.

Sacagawea displayed a keen foraging ability and poise under pressureīorn into the Lemhi-Shoshone tribe of modern-day Idaho, Sacagawea had been abducted by the enemy Hidatsa tribe as an adolescent before marrying French Canadian fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau. Lewis’s sudden interest in the topic of sexually transmitted diseases is made manifest in his journal entry of August 13, 1805: “I was anxious to learn whether these people had the venereal, and made inquiry through the interpreter and his wife.Meriwether Lewis and William Clark unveiled many of the mysteries of the uncharted western frontier by leading the Corps of Discovery to the Pacific Ocean and back east in the early 1800s.Īnd, thanks to the recollections of the arduous trek from their invaluable journals, the third most famous name to endure from the adventure was that of Sacagawea, the Native American teenager who fulfilled a crucial role despite speaking no English and being accompanied by her infant son for the entirety of her 16 months on the journey. Ravenholt puts forward a night in August 1805 as the likely time Lewis was infected. Among his eleven points of evidence: “sexual intercourse with women of the tribes by Corps members was frequently urged by the Indians and was commonplace” and “several Corps members (probably at least eight) did develop syphilis.” Ravenholt points to the mental and physiological ravages of syphilis, which he argues Lewis picked up on the expedition west. It was all quite a comedown from the heroic expedition, during which, to add to his woes, he had been accidentally shot in the buttocks. In Ravenholt’s view, the preceding two years of Lewis’s “increasingly strange behavior,” including an earlier suicide attempt on the final journey to Washington, culminated in the desperate act in a remote country inn.īankrupt and in debt, unmarried, his journals of the expedition unpublished, Lewis’s life was a shambles. Epidemiologist Reimert Thorolf Ravenholt sees the clues as pointing to an “ underlying cause” of neurosyphilis paresis, or late-stage syphilis, which can lead to dementia and paralysis. Then there was also the ongoing spat with Bates.īut most historians believe the suicide theory, even as they admit there’s not enough evidence to be definitive. General James Wilkinson, the first governor of the territory, was an agent of Spain, or perhaps a double agent, and may or may not also have been conspiring with Vice President Aaron Burr.

The rough politics of the territorial frontier created fierce enmities. Others have more conspiratorial explanations. Some believers in the murder theory blame bandits-the Natchez Trace was not the safest route. In the fall of 1809, he was making his way to Washington, D.C., to press his case for reimbursement for expenditures and to defend himself against his territorial secretary, Frederick Bates, who complained vociferously about Lewis to Washington. He seems to have been an uneven administrator. Others have more conspiratorial explanations.Īfter the Lewis and Clark expedition, Lewis had been appointed the second Governor of Louisiana Territory in 1807. Some believers in the murder theory blame bandits.

Lewis and clark safebox