The Character of Meriwether Lewis

On the eve of the bicentennial, Captain Meriwether Lewis remains an enigma. Lewis was handpicked by President Thomas Jefferson due to his “undaunted courage” to lead the 1803 Lewis & Clark Expedition. Yet, three years after successfully leading a group of men (including a woman and a child) across the untamed continent and back, he killed himself. He had returned a hero. But he could not find a route through his changed soul to reunite with American life. What happened during those 28 months of searching for the waterway to the Pacific?

Humanities scholar Clay S. Jenkinson in The Character of Meriwether Lewis: “Completely Metamorphosed” in the American West probes “the delights, the oddities, the quirks and even the dark sides of [Lewis’s] character.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said, “A word is the skin of a thought.” To this end, Jenkinson capitalizes on one of Lewis’s prominent public failures—his inability to edit his field notes for publication. He uses Lewis’s undigested words to lead us through the mystery and the unraveling of Meriwether Lewis’s life.

“We have the insights of a man [Jenkinson] who has walked many miles in the moccasins of Meriwether Lewis and ultimately, much to our benefit, managed to get inside his head as well as his extra sensitive heart.”
-Stephen E. Ambrose
Author Undaunted Courage

“This very important book deserves a wide and enthusiastic audience.”

-James P. Ronda
Barnard Professor of Western American History, The University of Tulsa
Author of Lewis and Clark Among the Indians

Available only in Paperback.