Lewis and Clark Travel

Meriwether Lewis's letters from St. Louis took two to three times longer to reach Washington than letters written by other government and military officials in St. Louis! Thomas Danisi announced this startling fact at the annual meeting of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation held in Olive Branch, Mississippi on October 3-7, 2009. The meeting commemorated the death of Meriwether Lewis 200 years ago on October 11, 1809 on the Natchez Trace.

Danisi, co-author of Meriwether Lewis (1), has assembled a spreadsheet database for the years 1806-1810 tracking correspondence sent from St. Louis to the federal capitol. In a footnote to an article published in the August, 2009 issue of We Proceeded On, the quarterly publication of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation , Danisi stated: "I compiled a spreadsheet to track the delivery time of letters that Lewis, Clark, Bates and military personnel at Belle Fontaine wrote from St. Louis to Washington. Delivery time averaged 30 days. Curiously, Bates's letters arrived sooner than Lewis's or Clark's. Lewis's letters were the slowest to arrive, and one important letter took 100 days. Some of his bills of exchange took even longer,132 days. The evidence from the data suggests than an adversary might have intentionally delayed Lewis's correspondence. The database will eventually be available for sale, probably through a website." (2)

The most obvious suspect for delaying his mail is the postmaster of Cahokia, the town across the river from St. Louis in present day Illinois. John Hay, a respected territorial official, was the postmaster of Cahokia from 1801-1814. He was indeed a close personal friend of Meriwether Lewis's. No one has indicated any suspicions of John Hay's allegiances before this.

However, John Hay's father, Jehu Hay, was second in command under the famous "hair-buyer" general, Henry Hamilton during George Rogers Clark's capture of Fort Sackville in Vincennes, Indiana in February, 1779. Both Hamilton and Hay were treated as common war criminals during the three years they spent in American prisons.George Rogers Clark was the older brother of William Clark and is known as the "Conqueror of the Old Northwest" for his military victories during the American Revolution. When Hay was released from prison he went to England with Hamilton, returning to Detroit in 1782 to become Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada. He died in 1785. While serving as Commissioner of Indian Trade in Detroit Jehu Hay rented a home for 500£ ($100,000 in 1767), indicating that he was a very wealthy man. His son John Hay was born in 1770, and thus was witness to the changing fortunes of his father, and orphaned at the age of fifteen. Perhaps this may explain his treacherous behavior towards Meriwether Lewis.

Lewis stayed as a guest at Hay's home in Cahokia during the winter of 1803-04. Lewis and Clark relied heavily on John Hay for advice and help, including translating documents and interpreting during meetings with French officials. It should be noted that Meriwether Lewis complained to Secretary of War William Eustis in his August 18, 1809 letter from St. Louis: "I have reason to believe that sundry of my letters have been lost, as there remain several important Subjects on which I have not yet received an Answer." (5) So in assessing Danisi's account of letters received, it must also be remembered that an unknown number of letters most likely were never delivered. Danisi and Jackson plan to publish more about John Hay in We Proceeded On. I look forward to reading it.

(1) Meriwether Lewis by Thomas C. Danisi and John C. Jackson (Prometheus Books, 2009)

(2) "Observations and Remarks from Lewis to Dearborn in 1807" We Proceeded On, 35:3, p. 38, n. 1

( 3) Opening New Markets: The British Army and the Old Northwest by Walter S. Dunn, Jr.; p. 60 (Praeger Publishers, 2002)

(4) Lewis and Clark in the Illinois Country by Robert E. Hartley; pp.124-143 (Sniktau Publications, 2002)

( 5) This quotation comes from the file copy in the Grace Lewis Miller Archives at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St Louis. The phrase "I have reason to believe that sundry of my letters have been lost" is omitted in the Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition by Donald Jackson (University of Illinois Press, 19621st ed./1978 2nd ed.). The entire quotation is found in Territorial Papers of the United States,Louisiana-Missouri Territory, 1806-1814 by Clarence E. Carter, Vol. XIV;pp. 290-293 (US Govt. Printing Office, 1949)

SUPPORT THIS WEBSITE: Stay in touch with the latest developments regarding the Lewis family's application to exhume the remains of Meriwether Lewis to determine the cause of his death, by visiting our website at deathofmeriwetherlewis.com. You may receive We Proceeded On by joining the foundation at lewisandclark.org. You may purchase The Death of Meriwether Lewis: A Historic Crime Scene Investigation by James E. Starrs and Kira Gale and Meriwether Lewis by Thomas C. Danisi and John Jackson at the website's Amazon affiliate bookstore

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Meriwether Lewis betrayed by Cahokia postmaster John Hay

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