Plains Folk: The Lewis and Clark ‘X Files’

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

Contemplating the upcoming hoopla over the bicentennial of the Corps of Discovery, I resolved to leave serious inquiry on the matter to serious scholars. Other writers' tomes have wrestled with the ramifications of Euro-native contact, lyricized the pristine Missouri River environment, lionized Lewis and Clark, and laid claim to Sakakawea as cultural icon.

My Plains Folk columns, on the other hand, have treated what I call the X Files of the Corps of Discovery--burning questions like, Who were the Welsh Indians? What ever happened to President Jefferson's Salt Mountain? And why the heck did Lewis bring along that big Newfoundland dog?

Now comes the greatest X File of them all, courtesy of the assiduous Harry F. Thomson, a historian at Augustana College. In an article published in the current number of North Dakota History, Thompson explores the documented claims that Meriwether Lewis fathered a child with a Yankton or Teton woman--that he had a mixed-blood son, Joseph DeSomit Lewis (spelling varies in different sources).

The key piece of evidence is the Baptismal Register of the Yankton Mission kept by an Episcopal minister, Reverend Joseph W. Cook. Cook recorded the adult baptism of Joseph Desomit Lewis, along with other family members, on 18 June 1872. He noted Lewis's age as 68 and, to avoid any confusion, listed the baptized's father as "Capt. Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis & Clarke's Exp.)." The register reposes in the collections of the Center for Western Studies, Augustana College.

In St. Alban's Cemetery, on the Lower Brule Reservation, is a stone grave marker that reads, "Joseph Lewis, ‘DeSmet,' 1805-1889, son of Meriwether Lewis of the Famed Lewis & Clark Expedition." A published county history, too, accepts the local Lewis lineage as tracing back to the Corps of Discovery.

Thompson asks, rightly, why has this matter been ignored by biographers and historians? And what does this say about our regard for documentary evidence? Joseph Desomit Lewis was an accomplished individual, irrespective of ancestry. He was a hunter, guide, and map-maker for surveyors of the region, also a trader and freighter.

As to the issue of paternity, Thompson searches the journals of Lewis and Clark for clues, and finds the evidence ambivalent. Lewis was an intermittent journalist, so that long stretches of time during which his alleged intimate contact might have taken place are unaccounted for in his writings. Clark was a more faithful recorder. He recounts several instances of he and Lewis being offered opportunities of sexual favors, but insists--in suspiciously inept language--that such offers were declined.

How might the question be resolved? Thompson notes that an attorney has brought suit to exhume the body of Meriwether Lewis so as to determine whether he was murdered or committed suicide. The National Park Service, in charge of the burial site in Tennessee, opposes exhumation, but if the body were to be examined, this also might facilitate DNA analysis and settle the paternity question, in the same way that such evidence confirmed President Jefferson's paternity of a child by his slave, Sally Hemings.

Should the dead rest in peace? Perhaps, but Meriwether Lewis is not some obscure individual. He is a historical celebrity, and now that the Joseph DeSomit Lewis story has been brought to public attention, I'm betting we will have answers before long.

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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2941, isern@plainsfolk.com 
Editor: Gary Moran, (701) 231-7865, gmoran@ndsuext.nodak.edu 

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