Doomed to Fail - Ep 75 - Frontier Chronicles: Lewis and Clark's Quest for the West

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

Welcome explorers!! Today, let's go west with Lewis and Clark (and everyone they brought, including the child bride & new mom, Sacagawea). We'll start with Thomas Jefferson's big idea and end with Meriweather Lewis's suicide upon his return. Did you know that the story of Lewis and Clark was mainly forgotten until the 1970s? Now, every schoolchild in America knows them!Put on your adventure caps and join us! Source - Amazon.com: Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American WestLewis and Clark Expedition - Wikipedia Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Orenthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. There you go. They missed all that amazing banter we just had. It's too late to replicate it. So we're going to have to...

Too late. The moment's passed. The moment's passed already, unfortunately. Hi, Taylor. How are you? Good. Happy Sunday. Happy first full week of the new year.

Hopefully it's getting off to a pretty decent start for you guys over there. Yeah, things are good. I've had my first week off tomorrow. Next week is my next week off and then I start my new job. But yeah, I know it's been great. I've been doing a ton of painting. I've been painting the inside of closet. So I just painted the inside of my closet, like bright pink.

It looks awesome. I saw on Instagram. It looks amazing. You're doing a really good job. It's very fun. You have one more week of rest and relaxation. and then it's off to being back in the political sphere again. Yeah.

Yeah, excited. You're rejoining us. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And at a very troubling time, probably, but still, it'll be, I'm sure it'll be interesting and bring back some fond memories. When isn't it a troubling time? Yeah. Totally.

Totally. Yeah. So, yeah, we can go ahead and kick things off. We are doomed to. This is our first full year. Actually, you know what? I think next week will be the first full year we've been doing this. And we are going to cover two stories, one historic, one true prime.

But, you know, all the logic around that has been shifting. And so we'll see what the New Year brings us. Again, if you all have any recommendations, suggestions for things that you want to hear, first off, thanks for all the support for everybody who's been listening. Oh, my God, so much. Thank you. One year of this has been incredible. And so if you have anything you want to suggest,

about topics you want to hear about please do write to us at doom to fail pod at gmail.com false on all the socials at dovail pod um and so yeah we'll go ahead and kick things off tiller if my memory serves me right you should be going first today correct i go first my memory has served me right um all right i am going to take a picture because i have this thing okay of us can you just smile this is my drink can you see it yes guess what this is guess what this is I'm holding it up. Piss. It's not Pets.

It's whiskey, obviously. But guess how much it is? It's a very small pour. So I'm going to guess it's Pappy Van Winkle, so probably $45 a pork. No. It is a dram of whiskey. This is a very small amount of whiskey. It's a teaspoon of whiskey.

And if you are on, let's say, an expedition across uncharted lands, and you can only carry a finite amount of whiskey. you might be given a dram of whiskey a night to keep warm. Oh, fun. It's like what the same we're not? No, same one's not done bringing that, do they? I think they bring you, like, bandages and I didn't bring you whiskey. Probably more.

You think you deserve more than a dram? Yeah, probably, probably. Can you think of an expedition where you go across a bunch of uncharted land? Lewis and Clark. Yep. There we go. Well, I drank my dram and it was delicious. And I warmed out because it is cold.

But yeah, let's talk about Lewis and Clark. Lovely. Yep, I'm into it. Cool. So let's go west via the Missouri River. I read a book called Undaunted Courage, Mary Weather Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the opening of the American West.

It's from 1997, which I guess is a long time ago. I was like, it's a long ago. I know. Like, it is a long time ago. And it's very, like, apologetic about some of the things that they did that are objectively bad. Like, they were all, like, slave owners. He definitely, in the book, the author is like, yeah, you know, there's that rumor about Thomas Jefferson and his slave, but that's, like, unsubstantiated.

And you're like, no, that's true. Like, what, what? So there's a little bit of that. And he's also like, Mary Weather Lewis was the greatest man of all time. And you're like, he's fine. You know, he's not like the greatest man that ever lived, though. I don't know anything about him. So I can't tell you if I think he's.

the greatest fan has ever lives. He's not. I mean, no one is. But, you know, but anyway, you know, if not, then who, you know, who else would have done it if these guys didn't? So let me tell you a little bit about them and what they were, what they were going to do when they walked across the country. So I didn't realize how much Thomas Jefferson was involved in this. All I knew was like they walked across the country. They met a bunch of Indians.

Sakajua was there. you know, you see that like picture of like Lewis and Clark and Sacagia in a canoe. You know, can't picture that? Yeah. And like in like a native museum, you know, just like the three of them. But it was not just the three of them. Definitely a lot more. But I will tell you a little bit more about everybody else.

So the Lewis and Clark expedition was also known as the core of discovery expedition. It was the first American expedition to cross the western portion of the United States. The two people that were the leaders were Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark. Lewis had recommended that Clark also be a captain, but they didn't give him that title, but they treated each other as equals. They're both in charge. So Maryweather Lewis, his name was Maryweather. That's his mom's maiden name. That's where that kind of random name comes from. He was born on August 18th, 1774. He loved his mom a lot. He loved his family. He was a big, like, family guy. He really wanted to be educated, but it was hard during this time.

like it was hard to find a school that just weren't schools sorry what year 1774 oh god yeah okay yeah so like he needed to like you know try to find tutor and like try to get someone to like live with to like learn a little bit um and he ended up joining um joining the military and he was involved in the whiskey rebellion which was about taxes and um you know the government wanting to tax people making whiskey And I think actually, now that I say that, we talked about this. It's like, you know, later, but we talked about the Hatfields and McCoys. Like they had all that bootleg whiskey. And the bootleg thing really was that they weren't getting taxed on it.

Yeah, of course. You know? So he was in the Whiskey Rebellion, obviously, like, I'm a government side. And that's when he met William Clark and they became friends. They were both in the army together. He also then Lewis became the personal secretary to Thomas Jefferson. So he was with him for two. years. Just the two of them together, like writing and while Thomas Jefferson was president. So he spent

so much time with him. He lived with him. And in the book I read, it's like, they spent all his time alone together. You're like, sure, they like, we're in a house together, but it was also full of enslaved people. You know, it wasn't just them. They both had like, obviously atrocious ideas about slavery. Thomas Jefferson, you know, he always was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, we definitely shouldn't do it, but we can't do it now because. I wouldn't have any money, essentially, you know. A little perverse incentive there. You probably shouldn't be the one making that decision.

Yeah. You're like, well, yeah. You're not going to have as much money as you have now when you pay people. That's the way that. Unique concept. So, yeah. So that's, you know, they had that. They did think that Indians could be brought into society.

And there was a lot of like, oh, we promise everything's going to be okay. And you're going to be a part of this great land of America. And we all know that that was not true. that they said at all. So Thomas Jefferson, it's president, he wants someone to run an expedition to the West. He wants to see what's out there. He really, really wants a direct river across the country. That would have been great.

That didn't happen. There is not one, but it would have been great. It would have been really easy to do a lot more trading. The really big thing that people were trading on at this time was fur. So you would like... trap a beaver bars and you would sell it to a someone in like on the Mississippi River for a dollar and then they would take that beaver pelt and they would sell it to someone in New York for four dollars and then they would take it on a boat to Europe and sell it some in Europe for

ten dollars you know like it was really like if you're on the end of it you're making a shit ton of money makes sense so that was actually the basic thing that they found they didn't do a lot of geology. So they weren't looking for gold, but they should have because there actually was gold in them hills. But they, you know, that came later. But anyway. So wait, the starting point here is Philadelphia, right? No, it's actually St. Louis. Got it. Okay. I will tell you, Bob, I'll get to that in one sec. So one thing that Thomas Jefferson needed someone who was super smart, super loyal to run this expedition. So he actually helped Lewis get more education and spend a lot of time with scientists,

with botanists, to be able to really like meticulously capture the stuff he was seeing. So he would like dry plant specimens. He could tell latitude and longitude, all the kind of things that you need to do if you're on that kind of mission with the goal to report back. Right. So William Clark, the other captain, was born on August for 1770. he's a little just like a couple years older he fought in a whole bunch of indian wars his older brothers fought in a revolutionary war he was more of a frontiersman and explorer than like a like a more of a gentry guy but they really each other they became really good friends and so they ended up you know doing this together they were also both freemasons i was then too yeah makes sense all the white dudes so it's eighteen o three how much jefferson is president he acquires a louisiana territory from who rush uh Napoleon.

Damn it. Alaska was Russia. I think so, yeah. I don't mean, I'm not even sure. But actually, I'm going to talk about Russia in a second because, so Napoleon had gotten Louisiana. And that isn't just like the state of Louisiana. That's like the middle of America, kind of from the Spanish.

And they were on their way to the French, were on their way. But Napoleon was like, I don't really have time to do this. Remember, he was busy? And so like, he'd never been. he'd never been here so he was happy to sell it because he was like oh i just sold something that i was never really going to do anything with anyway so he was happy with it so a lot of our people that we've talked about before are in this story there was someone who tried to navigate that alaskan way like through like going up through Alaska like into russia trying to

get across that passage and katherine the gray rested him and sent him back to poland he was Polish. So, like, sometimes that thought that was funny. Louis XVIth is sending people to, like, be a candidate, try to find this route. Captain Cook and his people are, you know, going around the bottom of South America. So a lot of people try to figure out this, you know, connecting the world for the first time. And then, of course, people already live there, you know? I know. At first I was like, oh, it's like, yeah, of course I'll be a huge deal. I'm sure a lot of countries wanted to do that because it's unsettled land. I was like, wait a minute, it was settled land. yes exactly so people live there for thousands of years and lewis and clark weren't even the first white people to do this and of course the first white people to do this were the people looking for like the fur trade you know and like looking for money and looking for ways that they can exploit the area and exploit the people and all the things and people are like slowly moving west and like getting these like land grants but you're like no one owns this land but all of a sudden is yours like you know all the ridiculous things that happen and

they're going to encounter a lot of the native tribes on their way and like you know bring disease and all those all those things those stories that we've heard before um they also recorded seeing passenger pigeons which we also talked about before and that was fun expedition officially began on may 14th eighteen o four and they departed from st louis missouri so as part of the preparations lewis got clark involved he had to like mail him a letter and be like will you please join me and it took like a month and a half to get a reply which is infuriating i can't even imagine how long you you have to wait for the mail to get answers for things. You know, it's like, by time, by time you get your response, like, I forgot about this. Yeah. He could be like on his way, but it could be over. Like, who knows? You know, it's just bananas. But everything's so slow, but he's buying a ton of supplies.

And he has an unlimited amount of money. So Lewis's salary for being secretary to Thomas Jefferson was $500 a year. And in like one day in St. Louis buying supplies, he spent. $2,000. Like, could you imagine spending four times your salary on supplies? Well, okay, I would do that under the circumstance that I'm going somewhere that I've never been. I have no idea what's there. There's a better than 70% chance I'll never come back. So creditors can't do anything about it. So yeah, sure, spend all the money. That's fair. That totally makes sense. Yeah. And there's no like, you have a letter from Thomas Jefferson that says that you're good

for it and he like would buy a bunch of stuff for that letter also yeah but i would also assume at that point like we galvanized uh thomas jefferson and like the founding fathers at that point did people really care he was i mean he was currently president but who but president of what like seven thousand people that lived here at that time like is it really that big of a deal yes what because like is it that big of a deal to be thomas jefferson I'm saying back then now, yes, reflecting back on it. Back then. I think still yes. I'm going to get so much. We're going to get so much hate mail. I have a confident yes on this for anyone about to write hate mail. I think it was still a big deal. I stand corrected. And also, he had to get more people, about 30 people went on the trip altogether, which is not. I feel like what you think is just like a couple of guys. guys, but it was about 30 people. There was a enslaved man named York who went as well, and he was just as helpful as everybody else, and he was a part of the team. And later, when everybody got paid, of course, York did not get paid or even set free. And he probably was enslaved for the rest of his life, we're not 100% sure, which is bullshit. So I'm just going to list some interesting things that happened and kind of tell you to get an idea of what this trip was like. So they did a lot for

science, they were the first to record many animals. So, like, obviously people had been seeing these animals for thousands of years, you know, but they were the first people to, like, scientifically write it down, like, for white people. But even though that's, like, annoying, because they were, like, saying that they discovered these things that had already been discovered, it still sounds real fun, you know? Like, imagine, like, seeing a coyote for the first time and you've never seen, you've never seen one before. You see birds that you've never heard of before. They look like aliens, you know? like that's cool but then you got to come up with all the names I mean how many different ways can you describe a coyote versus a fox versus a wolf versus a gray wolf versus like a dog yeah yeah no they definitely name well they named like of course they named like all the rivers and mountains like after their friends and you know yeah that's you're right you know how that goes um of course they are all had names but so they take samples of trees and plants like try new vegetables try new things which i think it's super fun like going into someplace for you there's

potentially something you've never seen before. Thomas Jefferson was pretty sure they were going to see a mastodon. They did not. They did not say mastodon, but he thought that they might. So Lewis would write all the time in his field journals. He would tell the longitude by calculating the sun and Greenwich Mean Time somehow. So he would have everything in his journal. Kind of like a funny bit is that they really couldn't spell anything.

They just, it is like spelling wasn't that important then and it was just like harder. So like the journals were like kind of hard to read this felt things like different every time they wrote it down. But sometimes also the journals would be have big spaces between the entries because Lewis was probably a manic depressive and he would get in like a way where he didn't want to write anything down and he was, you know, having a hard time like moving forward. And that happened pretty often during the trip. So there's also some health things. So they did a lot of hunting. hunting, obviously. So they ate, you know, buffalo and beavers and deer. And they actually ate dogs a lot as well. And that was like something they would eat all the time. And they would

like bury supplies along the road and like cook food and like have it lasts a little bit longer, that kind of thing. But you know, you can't just eat meat. Like you need other things as well. And did you ever watch that show alone? People are like in the wilderness? No. It's like people, that's it. They're alone in the wilderness and then they have to like outlast everybody else. But one, I watched one season and where a guy killed a moose, but he was like starving because the moose was like very lean meat and it's just like not enough.

Like you can't just, you can't live on that. Yeah. So they would like, you know what I mean? So they would like consume like 12 pounds of like deer meat a day but still be hungry because they didn't have like the right nutrients. And they didn't really like know a lot about nutrients anyway. you know, these, like, kind of knew what made them feel better and what didn't. So they would eat, like, when there was fruit, they would eat fruit, but they were sick a lot.

There was lots of, like, diarrhea trying to, like, get their bodies to adjust. Obviously, they just, like, were drinking whatever water they could find. So, like, that wasn't always the best water. They would, a lot of the cures and, like, the medicine was, you know, made of mercury. That's what, of course it was. And there was a doctor named Dr. Rush, and he sold these pills. that were Dr. Rush's biolus pills

or also called Rush's thunderbolts and they just made you poop like nobody's business as like mercury and like other poisons and that made most things better

as it does yeah just like weird food poisoning and stuff there were also a shit ton of mosquitoes and this is before they knew

that mosquitoes caused malaria or you know yellow fever or any of those like really bad diseases so they would you know

some of the guys did get malaria one guy died. I think it was of malaria, but only one person died of the group, which I think is pretty impressive. And so they had that. They also would meet with Indian tribes along the way. And they would, you know, sleep with all the Indian women, obviously. Right. In the book I read, it was like, the Indian women thought it was an honor that they could, like, get their bravery from having sex with them. And I was like, I don't know. Whatever. I'm like, I'm not sold on that. But, um, but, um, that they were, like, excited about it. Yeah, there was definitely other reasoning. Right. But because of that, guess what else they had? Children.

Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. No, they had syphilis. Like, so much syphilis. They were riddled with STDs, just like everyone in history is. So. . . . . . . . . did we get syphilis from the Native Americans? No, we gave it to them. And then, like, they had it. And, like, the French, like, oh, it was, like, a whole thing, you know.

I'm sure they had, like, their own STDs. but anyway new ones more everyone like everyone had syphilis during this time also in the book i read they were like louis and clark did not partake in in sleep with any women i'm like of course they did don't be dumb but whatever i know you got you got to preserve whatever you know it's so human yeah yeah um so they also did a lot of like little side travels where they'd be like okay i'm going to walk east for two days then i'll meet you guys somewhere else and they would find each other which i think is crazy because I feel like if you and I were like at the mall I can lose you for a day and

half you know like yeah but at the same time they're out in the middle of nowhere so you could just like shout and probably like hear them probably oh another animal they met was a grizzly bear for the first time at first they were like it seems like no big deal and then like later on they're like ah because it was like really fucking hard to kill them like way harder than they thought it was going to be which is great for the bear they also you know obviously like huge herds of buffalo and all the stuff that, like, you think of when you think of, like, an empty American West. So also, you know, there's 30 people, it's a couple of years.

It takes, it takes about two years to finish the whole expedition. So sometimes men would, you know, do something wrong. They would, like, drink too much whiskey. They would, you know, try to leave, things like that. So they would have, like, little trials within the group. And then the punishment was usually, like, lashings, like 100 lashings. And then the person would have to be, like, cool with it. and be back on the team, which seems crazy.

They also made contact with over 70 Native American tribes, and they described over 200 new plants and animals. Lewis was on a mission from Thomas Jefferson to tell everybody about him. So he would like, this is so stupid, he would, like, go to these chiefs of these tribes, and he didn't speak their language. He had some people who did speak languages that were, like, close. So things would be have to be translated, like, four times, you know, between. a bunch of different people.

A lot of times it was just sign languages as well. It wasn't even like, you know, it was even harder to translate. So he would go and say, do you remember, like yesterday when the Spanish were in charge and then the French for a minute and the Indians were like, what? You know, okay. Leave us out of this. Yeah. And then he would put on like a nice military outfit and he would say, congratulations.

You have a new great father in the East, meaning Thomas Jefferson. you leave them alone oh god leave them alone insane and he would so then he would you know and then he'd give them like medals and certificates that were like this is from your new great father blah blah blah and they were kind of like

do you have any whiskey and guns you know they're like we don't want this thing so some of the problems that they would have is like the Indian tribes would be like why would we help you you're not giving us anything you know like we're having our own like wars with other tribes around here anyway like we need more than just like this dumb certificate from this

another white man, you know? Yeah. So, oh, also his speech would be like four hours long too. Could you imagine watching someone speaking in a language you didn't understand wearing a silly jacket and hat and telling you that you have a new father? It's like the worst graduation ceremony in the country. What are you talking about?

So they met a lot of different tribes. They met the, they met the banden and the Hadassah, the Chinook, the Sioux. The blackfeet, this is, the black feet were the most dangerous of the tribes that they met. They actually, this is where they killed, they admitted at least to killing a, a blackfoot Indian as, because he was attacking them. So they were the most aggressive, but they were always like the threat of, you know, being attacked by, by an Indian tribe. They met the Shoshone, and that's where they met Sakaduia.

So Sakajua, poor fucking girl, she was married to a French-Canadian. named Tucson Charbonneau. And, like, when I tell you about him a little bit, he's the worst, but I'll put a picture of him on social media because there's like one painting of him and he looks hilarious and kind of awesome. But he's not. The painting's fun.

But he either bought her or won her in a gambling thing when she was 13 years old and took her away to be his wife. And he also had another wife who was also a child. So he had two child brides. The other one was, was just called Otter Woman.

She didn't even have a name. Otter, O-T-T-E-R. Yeah, like the animal. I mean, he does, he does look pretty cool. I know, but, but he has two child brides, that's not great.

So he had the otter, the otter girl stay home during this, but he was like, we'll come with you because, you know, we can help you with translations. You know, we know a lot about the different routes. So they joined after they met with the Shoshio,

the Shoshone. So Chakujia was pregnant when they set off on the journey and joined them and started going. They went like over the Rockies and like all the way to to the west coast. And she had the baby on the trail. And she was like a long, slow birth. She was in a lot of pain. They made her a drink on a rattlesnake rattler. They like pounded it up and like made a drink out of it. And that was supposed to make her feel better. You're like, it's just so happy that I had. have my baby's in a hospital. Yes. It's unfucking unbelievably awful.

But so then she had this baby, and I feel like that's something that we also know about her is that she carried an infant the whole entire time. And it reminds me of, you know, the saying that, like, everything that Fred Astaire did, Ginger Rogers did backwards in and heels. You know what I mean? I don't know who Ginger Rogers is, and I don't really know much of Fred Astaire either.

So Fred and Strait of Georgia Rogers are like, you know, like the best dancing couple ever, you know? And like, yeah, what he did was impressive, but everything she did, she did the same thing backwards and wearing heels because she'd like do it with him. You know what I mean? It's like it was just harder for second to be than everybody else. Got it. Because she had a baby. And she was a child herself. And so they also, they called her Janie.

And her son was named Jean Baptiste. He ended up being adopted by Clark later in life. and he was he went to Europe he spent some time there so he had a pretty fun go of it her son had a good kind of fun frontier's been life but saccajua helped with with translation and navigation when they met with one of the tribes on the way west she saw her brother and was like super emotional and like crying because in you know she had been sold to this like French guy and somehow found her brother again in all of America so that was like super emotional for her but she died in 1812 so a couple years later after the exhibition was over and it's unknown how she died she probably just like had a disease and died like people did then and she was also never paid they paid her husband but they did not pay her obviously for her help she didn't get to be on that on that dollar that dollar coin so so the population in the 1700s of all of north america was 250,000 yeah wait no I read this wrong sorry it was 9005,000 I'm just saying that it was like not that many people so like running into people and you know that's my points are relevant let's keep going but the space is still big you know okay yeah that's true that's true that's what I mean yeah I mean yeah I mean not that not that like you know sure you'll see the people over and over and there's less people but like how are you going to find them in like the Rocky Mountains you know right fair fair point So, oh, another thing, this is one of the worst things I've ever read, read this last night. So one of the, one of the tribes that they met with and were really helpful to them, a really peaceful tribe was called the Nez Peres. And they were, they helped them get across the Rockies.

They gave them guides. They were super helpful. Clark probably had a child with one of them. So, but Nez Peres means nose piercing in French. The French had named them that. and they having your nose pierce was not a thing that the tribe did the french just named them that wait so why is that the worst thing wait but okay i want to make sure you still there so because their name in their native language i'm never is going to be terrible but it was nimi ipu which means we

the people which is a beautiful name that's very peaceful and nice but instead they have this like dumb nose pierce game from the french when they weren't even a tribe that necessarily early had their nose pierced and they'd lived in the Pacific Northwest for almost 12,000 years. Isn't we the people also like something American now? Yeah. Okay. So anyway, I just thought that was shitty. So they're meeting all these tribes and they make it.

The route that they took was, you know, from St. Louis. They went up Iowa up to like up to the kind of the top of America right below Canada. and they ended up going over the Rockies at the top and into the Pacific Northwest. They, you know, they did the thing where they walked over and they saw the Rocky Mountains and they were like, all right, let's do it. And then they, you know, went on the way across the Rocky Mountains. Sometimes they have to stop for months at camp when it was really snowy or they'd have to stay with like an Indian tribe if they were stuck because of the weather or whatever

because their horses were sick. All sorts of the stuff happened. But they made it. They made it to the ocean, which is super exciting. And then they made it all. all the way back. And while they were gone, no one knew if they were okay, like you were saying with the creditors. Like, you just

didn't know. They would see white people every once in a while and be like, if you see someone, tell them that we're here, you know, but barely. So, wait, they lived? Yeah, they came back. I thought they were eaten by cannibals. I think they were

a party that ate each other. Hold on. I need to figure this out. Exfid. No, they lived. We've been silent for like 10 minutes. Oh, maybe it was a, okay, maybe it was a Franklin expedition in the Arctic that ended in cannibalism. Oh, didn't where I talked about that. Let me just keep going.

Okay, sorry, I'm derailing everything again. Okay. So they got to the Pacific Ocean on November 15th, 1805. So remember that they left on May 14th, 1804. So it was about a year and a half. to get to the Pacific Ocean then they turned around with all their stuff.

Some of the stuff got ruined on the way. They had berries some of their things and they pulled them up toward the end. They were like almost out of food, almost out of like gifts for the Indians. They did end up stealing a canoe from one of the tribes

and they probably did more of that as well without it. But they made it back to St. Louis on September 23rd, 1806. So they were gone for for May 1804 to September 1806. While they were gone, Thomas Jefferson had been reelected president and Aaron Burr had killed Alexander Hamilton. So like they didn't know what was going on, you know, like in the in America or in the world. There was like finding out these things as they started to see people. And they were like feeling so obviously very excited and they had been very homesick. They had no idea what was going on. They were just totally separate. They were also had been also sending Indian chiefs to Washington to Washington to meet with the president to start. to like discuss sovereignty, sovereignty and all those things.

And some of them made it. Some of those guys died, which was a bummer for peace talks, obviously. But that was happening too. But their families were okay. The woman that Clark had been in love with when he left was still around, still available. They got married, had a bunch of kids. William Clark ended up doing more adventures.

He became the governor of the Missouri Territory and the superintendent of Indian Affairs, and he died at age 68. So he had a pretty successful life. he adopted Saka Julia's kids. He, you know, had five kids of his own and then his wife died and then he had three more kids with another lady. So he had a really, like, big life after this was over. So out of all those people, 29 survived? Yeah.

Wow, that's incredible. Isn't that incredible? Like, yeah, I mean, it was hard, but they did it. I mean, because my thought, my thought process was that's why I was like, okay, just buy whatever you want because who cares that I'm going to find your body anyways. It's like, if you twist an ankle, you're kind of dead like it's pretty it is a miracle so they had like malaria they had syphilis at one point toward the very very end someone accidentally shoots clark in the butt and it like goes through his butt cheek and through his thigh and

he lives and like i'm sure it was just like a disgusting wound forever but like he didn't die which it seems like he would have should have died from like sepsis or something but he didn't so um that's you know yeah no they they came back and so the next step so clark you know he went off and and did his own adventures the men dispersed they got paid so they had to get like the government to give them like extra you know money for their bravery all those things but they didn't end up getting paid and the next thing was that um lewis needed to write everything down he had his journals he had everything that he had done but it was very unorganized obviously it was like written on the road He needed to get an editor and he needed to publish it because that's what he had told Thomas Jefferson that he would do.

Thomas Jefferson told him he could have the rights to it so he could like sell it and make a ton of money. So he also had stopped some of the other men from selling their memoirs. So he had like bought their memoirs. So he was like able to, you know, be the only person to to sell the story. But what happened is he didn't. He should have done all of these things and he just procrastinated. He was probably in one of his like depressive state. But he didn't write to Thomas Jefferson for a while.

Thomas Jefferson would write him letters and be like, super bummed, you're not writing me back. What's going on? And he just like didn't answer. And he was also given the job of being the governor of Louisiana territory, which is a big deal. But he wasn't doing that job either. He was, he stayed in St. Louis. And instead of working on the book that he had promised all these people, and instead of going to the Louisiana territory and governing, he just kind of stayed. He didn't write much.

He was in debt in, like, a bunch of weird ways. He was spending a lot of his money on, on booze. He was, like, drinking all the time. He wasn't talking to anyone. He's also probably riddled with STDs, like, all these things. And everybody's just waiting. And people started to kind of, like, forget and not even remember that he was supposed to publish this.

It took him a while. And then, so this is Lewis, on, decided to go west back to the Louisiana territory if you could actually do his job as governor who's getting paid for it but he was never there. October 19th, 1809, he stopped at an inn called the Grinders Stand, which was 70 miles southwest of Nashville, so like around there. And actually, I'm sorry, it was October 10th. And after dinner, he was acting kind of weird and he went to his room and the owner's wife, her name was Priscilla Grenier. She was like, he's acting really weird. I don't know what's going on. And so she went to his room as she heard gunshots. He had shot himself in the head, but he had not died. And he shot himself again. And he still hadn't died. And when they opened the door, he was cutting himself. Just like trying to die by suicide as fast as he could. They tried to save him, but it was it was too late. So Mary Weather Lewis died by suicide in 1809. He was super young. He had just come.

back from this big thing, but he didn't have it in him to like finish the job. And he was overtaken by mental illness, probably also some PTSD because like being on the road for, you know, a year and a half, sometimes two and a half years and I'm starving, always wondering if someone's going to come and scalp you, you know, all those things. So he just, he was unable to continue. And so he didn't even publish his works. It took a long time for someone to actually publish it and for it actually to be out there. They weren't actually published in full until 2004. And people forgot about it up for the most part until people started thinking about big exploration back in the 70s. And by the time it was the 80s and we were in school, it was like

a big deal you learned about it all the time. But it took a long time for people to like remember and come back to it because he didn't, he didn't get to publishing all the stuff that he did. So Lewis, I looked it up. He was 35 years old when he died. So the idea was that he was basically traumatized or PTSDing it or something? Yeah, I think it was a little bit of everything. So, like, he was a little bit traumatized. He was also, I think, a little bit overwhelmed with the responsibility of, like, writing it all down now, kind of like finishing it up. He wasn't able to get that done. And he was also, you know, he had, he was most likely manic depressive and he was probably in, like, a depressive state at this point and just, like, unable to complete

the task and unable to do the couple of things that he had to do. So, But it sounds like on the way to Louisiana to actually work on his job as being governor of that of that territory, he tried to die by suicide a couple times. And then they people stopped him. And then he finally was able. He succeeded, you know, eventually. And, yeah, and died before he was able to publish anything or any of that. So it sounds like he was troubled in just in general and that there was some like depression in his family. So people who like knew his family, they weren't surprised.

So what was the point of all this just to find the Pacific Ocean? Yeah, like they knew, obviously they knew it was there. And they wanted a, they wanted that trade route between the east and the west. And they had hoped that it would be just like the Missouri River all the way through. But they ended up not being that. But that was what they wanted to see if you could do it, how long it would take, you know, where it would take you. And like they went, you know, north. There's an entire different landscape south, obviously, if they would have like gone this way.

But yeah, they wanted to see they could do it. And then also, you know, meet with the, you have tribes, you know, get them on their side. They just had acquired all this land and they were going to, you know, people were already moving there. They were going to start sending Americans there, you know, soon, all of that. So just kind of let us know what's out there. Let us know what you find. And then more people can do it later, you know. So what's your take on it?

I think it's like, I'm half like, it's super fun. Like they were able to be like, you know, we're the first people that. hold an election this side of them to be, you know, when they were like putting on things and you're like, not really because like obviously there were people living there for thousands of years. But, you know, it's fun to at least have the idea of walking into the unknown. I think is something that, you know, I guess unless we like went to the bottom of the ocean or space, just don't have that really. So I think that's really exciting. I mean, someone was going to do it eventually. So I think that this was like, you know, a good team to do it. It's remarkable that they all survived. it is crazy that they all survived yeah it's remarkable that we know what we know about the trip you know they were great record keepers when they were keeping records you know some of the stuff their specimens are like still around we know what happened all that stuff is really you know interesting and fun because you're like you know these people were they walked into the nothing for two and a half years and they came back with some like fun stories they'd met a lot of people you know all that stuff so i think

it's pretty fun i'm glad that you know i'm glad that we know about it and have as many records of it as we do, even though, you know, obviously, I'm sure, like, the book of you really was very apologetic about, like, you really wanted to make peace with the Indians. You're like, no, they didn't. Yeah, yeah. They did not. That did not happen. That might be a little revisionist.

Yeah, it's a little revisionist, but still. But yeah, I think it's super interesting. And more than I knew, I thought that it was, you know, you have this idea when you're kids and it's like three people on a canoe, but it was actually a pretty big production for the time. and interesting that you can just like keep yourself alive walking across the country. So I just obviously last podcast covered the Uruguayan rugby team recently. And then as of like last Thursday, Society of the Stone came out on Netflix.

Did you see that? No, I don't watch it yet. Oh, God. Please watch it. You have to watch it. But like it obviously very different situation. Those who had no clothing, no gear, nothing like that. And they had to walk, like, 31 miles to get to civilization again.

So vastly different in terms of, like, their experiences. But it just showed, like, how the slightest issues that you encounter on these totally unpredictable tracks can just completely derail you. And, I mean, basically be a death sentence. So the fact that 29 out of 30 survived is just, like, remarkable. Yeah. No, it's pretty great. Good for them. Yeah.

And I also kind of get the fact that they didn't write anything down because once I'm done with a project, I'm like, you leave me alone. Yeah, I can't get that too. You're like, what? I don't want to do like a post-mortem on this. I just want to do my next thing. Yeah, I just finished walking 4,000 miles. Like, can we just move this up a couple of decades and I'll just cover it up from dead? Yeah, totally. They're like, I'm not going to write a whole sound. Yeah. Yeah, it was a lot. That's a lot. It was a big deal. And then it's interesting that people forgot about it for a while and then it's back. then they came back and now it's like a classic hail American bravery ingenuity yeah fun it's fun too how did you come up with this one I was just thinking about I don't know I was

thinking about expiration in general and then I was just wondering I thought there's not I didn't know much about the details of this one so I figured I'd look it up obviously I didn't either I thought they died up being eaten by Native Americans which obviously didn't happen Um, cool. Okay, very fun. Um, anything you want to shout out as we wrap things up. Yeah. Well, speaking of, um, the alive guys, um, have you heard all the crazy stuff that happens on planes this week? Lindsay, I guess Lindsay texted me about this, but like that, well, in Japan, that plane that exploded on the runway, it was just like in Hennarife. Yep, yep, you send me that too. And everyone, the people, there was like, a little bit. smaller plane and a bigger plane.

In the small plane, I think it was their fault. Some people did die. But the big plane, everybody survived. And the article that Lindsay sent me that I was reading is like, because everyone followed the rules and no one took their luggage, they got out fast enough. Like if everyone would have panicked, so it would have been in America, they would have been then. Yeah, I was going to say.

Like, that is a uniquely non-American trait to like actually look out for the collective and not for yourself. Yes. So amazing. A super miracle that everyone survived that. But then also that Alaska airline plane where the door blew off. Did you see that one? Crazy.

Yeah. Oh, my God. And no one died then either because the one was stayed next to the door. So it just blew off. Yeah. And they landed it. And then I heard that somebody punched a stewardess in the face. On that one?

On a different flight. I forgot what airline, maybe it was Delta that somebody actually hit a stewardess in the face because they were like asking them to do something or not do something. And then he got pissed off and they had to deviate the flight over to Dallas and land there to kick the guy off. Oh, my gosh. It's so annoying. How mad would you be? I know.

I'd be so mad. Seriously. So a lot of fun playing stuff going on these days. Yeah, it's wild. I'm going to play next week, though. It'll be fine. Where you on? Oakland.

But yeah, no, it's probably fine. I don't say next to the window anyway, and now I definitely feel like justified and not say next to me kind of doors or anything. I think your best bet is to be over the wings, because I feel like the wings are the part that's like the most reinforced. Mm-hmm. I feel like that, too, but I, but, you know, who knows? I mean, yeah, whatever happens, you know, who the hell knows.

No, you'll be fine. You'll do great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. So, yeah, as I kind of sort of this podcast out, this episode, please do write to us. We always love to get feedback. Demitifelpott.g.org.com. Falls on all the socials.

We're excited to start year two of doing this and see where that takes us. Boo! Thanks for us. Awesome. Thanks, Taylor. We'll go ahead and cut this off.