Lewis by Charles Willson Peale (1741- 1827)
August 18, 1774 – Meriwether Lewis
I live very close to the Lewis and Clark Trail and in walking distance of one of the campsites used by William Clark and Meriwether Lewis on their return trip in 1806. It is near today’s Cathedral Park and the St. Johns Bridge in Portland.
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, the Lewis and Clark Expedition story was especially important. I attended Sacajawea Junior High and my husband went to Lewis and Clark High School. It is a fascinating, if troubled, part of American history.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition was officially named “The Corps of Discovery”. Their mission was to explore the territory gained by the Louisiana Purchase, establish trade with, and sovereignty over Native-Americans, and claim the Pacific Northwest and Oregon Country for the United States before European nations. They also collected scientific data, and information on the indigenous nations. The two-year exploration by Lewis and Clark was the first transcontinental expedition to the Pacific Coast by the United States.
When they returned to Washington DC, they had an immense amount of information, plus plant and animal specimens. They demonstrated that it was possible to travel overland to the Pacific Ocean. The success of their journeyed strengthened the American concept of “Manifest destiny”, the idea that the USA was destined to reach all the way across North America from Atlantic to Pacific.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition by Thomas Burnham circa 1850, Whitney Western Art Museum Collection
Of course, the textbooks de-gayed most parts of American history, even though it now seems clear that many important figures from the first two centuries of this nation were queer.
Alexander Hamilton had a boyfriend, John Laurens, when they were young men during the American Revolution. Their love letters were suppressed until this century. Later in his life, Hamilton was married, but he continued to have affairs with both men and women. Hamilton’s constant risk-taking in his sex life was part of his personality, yet it jeopardized everything he had achieved.
Abraham Lincoln had an especially close friendship with Joshua Speed, with whom he shared a bed in his younger days and even during his stormy marriage to Mary Todd. Same-sex bed sharing was common on the frontier in those days, but so were intense romantic friendships. In that time, sex was almost never talked about, and many people in polite society didn’t even know that gay people existed. This mindset made it easy for people to have very close friendships with members of your own sex. Lincoln often publicly introduced Speed as a man he had slept with, which he would not have done if he were worried about a scandal.
Meriwether Lewis seems to have been stereotypically gay, at least by my modern standards. When he worked as Thomas Jefferson‘s secretary, he was a noted dandy who wore the latest fashions and hair style; very metrosexual. He was also kind of ”queenie”: gossipy, edgy, excitable, temperamental. One day, when the Corps of Discovery was pulverized by a hailstorm, Lewis gathered up the hail stones and made punch for the other boys.
Lewis in Indian Dress (1807) by Balthazar J. F. Saint Memin, Missouri History Museum Photograph and Print Collection
Lewis was never married or showed any interest in women. He was well-built, handsome, and a genuine American hero, but he preferred the company of men. Something about his personality sent women screaming in the other direction. At 35-years-old, he described himself as a ”musty, fusty, rusty old bachelor”. ”Bachelor” being a code word even in the early 19th century.
Lewis’s letters and journals reveal a man profoundly uncomfortable with women. When writing about Native-American women, Lewis seems positively repulsed, especially by the naked Clatsop women on the Pacific Coast:
”…who exposed their bubbies and battery of Venus for the world to see.”
Lewis wrote detailed observations of the Nez Perce men, noting that they were ”hardy, strong, athletic and active”. That’s four glowing adjectives!
In the historical novel, I Should Be Extremely Happy In Your Company (2003), Brian Hall uses the premise that Lewis was gay and had unrequited love for Clark. Lewis’s suicide in 1809 adds to the conjecture. Many queer people have experienced the haunting loneliness that comes with certain social ostracism if their gayness would become known. What better explanation of Lewis’s tragic death?
Lewis’s enemies, especially the gossipy, jealous and destructive Frederick Bates, used Lewis’s gay behavior to try and bring him down. Jefferson had already decided on Lewis as governor of the huge new Louisiana Territory, which approximately equaled the size of the existing United States. Bates preceded Lewis’s return to St. Louis after the expedition and became a powerful political force in the new territory and was determined to become governor.
Along with more the 31 enlisted men and officers, the Corps of Discovery also included Clark’s personal slave, York. The tall York was a hit with the native tribes; most had never seen a person with dark skin. The Arikara people of North Dakota speculated that he had spiritual powers. Though not an official member of the Corps of Discovery, York made the entire journey from St. Louis to the Pacific and back and became a valued, skilled member of the expedition. When the corps voted on where to place their winter camp in 1805, he and Sacajawea were both allowed to participate. This simple show of hands may be the first time in American history a black man and a woman were given a vote.
Unlike Clark, Lewis did not have a personal slave. Although Lewis attempted to supervise slaves while running his mother’s plantation in Virginia before the expedition. Lewis hired a free African-American man as his valet, John Pernia. After Lewis’ death, Pernia traveled to Monticello and asked Jefferson to pay $240 that was owed him, but Jefferson refused. Pernia later committed suicide.
On September 3, 1809, Lewis set out for Washington, D.C., where he hoped to resolve issues regarding the denied payment of drafts he had drawn against the War Department while serving as governor of the Louisiana Territory, leaving him in ruinous debt. After the expedition, he had started to drink heavily and use opium.
Lewis carried his journals with him for delivery to his publisher. He intended to travel by ship from New Orleans but changed his plans while floating down the Mississippi River from St. Louis. He disembarked and decided to make the overland journey via the Natchez Trace, the old pioneer road. Lewis had written his will right before this journey. He had attempted suicide while with the Corps of Discovery but had been restrained.
Lewis stopped at an inn on the Natchez Trace about 70 miles from Nashville on October 10, 1809. In the early morning of October 11, the innkeeper’s wife heard gunshots. Servants found Lewis badly injured from multiple gunshot wounds to his head and stomach. He bled out on his buffalo hide robe and died shortly after sunrise.
Lewis may have committed suicide that morning because Clark had gotten married. Lewis was already severely depressed after their trip and never fully readjusted to life back in civilization. Three years after, he still slept on the floor with his buffalo skins because he claimed that he was no longer comfortable sleeping in a bed. A couple of days before his suicide, Lewis had become convinced that Clark was trying to catch up with him, coming to his “relief.”
There are intriguing hints in his journals that Lewis had a much more intense feeling of comradeship for Clark than Clark did for him. Many historians claim that there is no evidence that Lewis was gay. Lewis may never have described Clark in his journals as a total hottie, but they triggered my gaydar. Plus, his name was “Meriwether”.
When Jefferson asked him to lead the expedition, Lewis wrote to Clark:
“Believe me there is no man on earth with whom I should feel equal pleasure in sharing them as with yourself. I should be extremely happy in your company and will furnish you with every aid for your return from any point you might wish it.”
