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!
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!
Lewis and Clark Expedition - Wikipedia
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
a matter of the people of the State of California versus orthal James Simpson case number ba09 and so my fellow
Americans ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your
country I was not recording they missed all that amazing banter we just had and
it's too late to replicate it we're too late the moment's passed the moment's passed already unfortunately um hi
Taylor how are you good happy uh 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 have I've had my
first week off tomorrow next week's my next week off and then I start my new job but yeah know it's been great I've
been doing a ton of painting I've been painting the inside of closets so I just painted the inside of my closet like bright pink it looks awesome I saw on
instag it looks amazing you're doing a really good job um and you 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 us um in in a very troubling time probably but still it'll
be I'm sure 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 uh yeah so yeah we we can go ahead and kick
things off um we are doomed to fail 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 um we are going to cover two stories one
historic one true crie but you know all the logic around that has been shifting
and so we'll see what the new year brings us um again if yall have any recommendations suggestions for things that you want to hear first off thanks
for all the support for everybody who's been listening so oh my God so much thank you one year of this has been
incredible um and so if you have anything you want to suggest about topics you want to hear about please do write to us at Doom dopod gmail.com
follow also on the socials at Doom dood 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 great 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 this
guess what this is I'm holding it up piss it's not piss it's whiskey obviously whiske but guess guess how
much it is uh it's a very small por so I'm gonna guess it's papy Van Winkle so probably
$45 a por no it is a dram of whiskey this is um 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 um and you can only carry a finite amount of whiskey you might be given a dram of whiskey at
night to keep warm oh fun it's like what the St no ST don't bring you that do they I think they bring you like
bandages and USC 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 um and I'm warmed up cuz it is cold but yeah let's talk about
Louis and Clark lovely yep I'm into it um cool so
let's go west via the Missouri River um I read
a book called undaunted courage Maryweather 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 long 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 um they def 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 um and he's also like
Maryweather Lewis was the greatest man of all time and you're like he's fine you know he's not like the Great man
that ever lived though but I don't know anything about him so I can't tell you if I think he's the greatest F who's
ever lived he's not I mean no it is but you know but anyway um 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 um across the country so I didn't realize how much
Thomas Jefferson was involved in this um all I knew was like they
walked across the country they met a bunch of Indians Sakia was there you know you see that like picture of like
Louis and Clark and Sakia and a canoe you know can you picture that yeah can
and like in like Museum you know just like the three of them um but it was not just a three of them definitely a lot
more um but I will tell you a little bit more about everybody else so the Louis 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
um the two people that were the leaders were Captain Maryweather 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 so
they're both in charge so Maryweather Lewis his name was Mary weather 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 did but it was hard during
this time like it was hard to find a school there just weren't schools s year
1774 oh God yeah okay yeah so like he needed to like you know try to find
tutors 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 wh 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 problem you know course so
um so he was in the Whiskey Rebellion uh obviously like on the government side
and that's when he met William Clark and they became friends they were both in 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 the book I
read it's like they spent all his time alone together you're like sure they like were 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 about
slavery they 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 little perverse incentive there you probably shouldn't be the one making that decision yeah you're like well yeah
you're not gonna have as much money as you have now when you pay people that's the way
that um so yeah so that's you know so they you know they had that they did think that Indians could be brought into
society and there's 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 right 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 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
trapa 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 $4
and then they would take it on a boat to Europe and sell it someone in Europe for $10 you know like it was really like if
you're on the end of it you're making a [ __ ] ton of money makes sense so that was actually the Bas thing that they
found they didn't do a 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 so wait
the starting point here is Phil Philadelphia right uh no it's actually St Louis got it okay um but I will tell you
I'll get to that in one sec so one thing that Thomas Jefferson
needed someone who was super smart super loyal to run his 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 calc um 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 1st 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 the Revolutionary War he was more of a
Frontiersman and Explorer than like a a like a more of a Gentry guy but they
really liked each other they became really good friends and so they ended up you know doing this together they were also both Freemasons I like everybody
was then too yeah makes sense all all the white dudes so it's 1803 Thomas
Jefferson is President he acquires a Louisiana Territory from who
Russia Napoleon damn it um last was Russia um I
think so yeah I don't mean I I'm not even sure but there actually am GNA talk about Russia in a second because so
Napoleon had gotten Louisiana and that 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 so like he never
been he' never been here so he was happy to sell it cuz 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 um and Katherine the greaty arrested him and sent him back to Poland he was polish so like sometimes that
thought that was funny Louis the 16th is sending people to like be a candidate
try to find this route Captain Cook and his people are going around the bottom of ofth South America so a lot of people
trying 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 again of course that'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 lived
there for thousands of years and Louis and Clark weren't even the first white people to do that 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 it's yours
like you know all the ridiculous things that happen and they they're going to encounter a lot of the native tribes on
their way and like you know bring disease and 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 that was fun the Expedition
officially began on May 14th 1804 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 well you please join me it took like a month and a half to get a reply which is infuriating I can't
even imagine how long you have to wait for the mail get answers for things you know
it's like by the time by the time you get your response like I I forgot about this yeah project 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 spends $2,000 like could you imagine spending four times your salary on
something 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 he and there's no like like you have like 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 very yeah but I would also assume that at that point
like we galvanized uh Thomas Jefferson and like the founding fathers at that point did people really care he was mean
he was currently president but who but president of what like 7,000 people that
lived here at that time like is it really that big of a deal yes what because
like no because is it that big of a deal to be Thomas Jefferson yes I'm saying
back then now yes reflecting back on it back then I think still yes I'm gonna
get we're gonna get so much hate mail I have a confident yes on this for anyone about to write hate mail fine I think it
was still a big deal I stand corrected so um and also he had get more
people about 30 people went on the trip altogether which is not I feel like what you think it's just like a couple guys
but 30 people and there was a enslaved man named York who went as well and he
was just as helpful as everybody else and he was you know 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 wasn't slave for
the rest of his life we're not 100% sure which is [ __ ] so I'm just going to
list some interesting things that happened and kind of tell you to get an idea of like 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 CU they were like saying they discovered these things that had already been discovered still sounds real fun
you know like imagine like seeing a coyote for the first time and you've never se you 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 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 gy wolf versus a like
no they definitely named well they named like of course they named like all the rivers and mountains like after their friends and you know yeah that's right
you know how that goes um of course they already all had names but so they would take samples of trees and plants like
try new vegetables try new things which I think is is super fun like going into some place where you there's potentially
something you've never seen before thas Jefferson was pretty sure they were gonna see a Mastadon they did not they
did not see Mastadon but he thought they might so Lewis would write all the time
in his field journals he would tell the longitude by calculating the Sun and grenwich meantime 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
just like spelling wasn't that important then and it was like harder so like the
journals were like kind of hard to read because they spelled things like different every time they they wrote it down but sometimes also the journals
would be have big spaces between um the entries because Lewis was probably a
manic depressive and he would get in uh an 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 they did a lot of 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 eat all the time and they
would like bury supplies along the road and like cook food and like have it last a little bit longer that kind of thing
but you know you can't just eat meat you need other things as well and did you
ever watch the 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 mousse 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 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 they like kind of knew what made them feel better and what didn't so they would eat like when when there was
fruit they would eat fruit um 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 it of course it was and there
was um a doctor named Dr rush and he sold these pills that were Dr Rush's
biolis pills or also called Rush's Thunderbolts and they just made you poop like nobody's business it was like
Mercury and like other poisons and that made um most things better it probably
as it does yeah just like weird food poisoning and stuff there were also a [ __ ] ton of
mosquitoes this is before they knew that mosquitoes cause malaria or you know yellow fever or any of those like really
bad diseases so they would you know a lot some of the guys did get malaria one guy died I think it was of malaria but
only one person died of 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 and they would you know sleep with all
the Indian women obviously right and the book 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 like I'm not sold
on that 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 um no they had syphilis like so so much syphilis um
they were riddled with STDs just like everyone in history is so wait 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 it was
like a whole thing you know I'm sure they had like their own SCS but anyway new ones more everyone
like everyone had civilist during this time um also in the book I read they were like Louis and Clark did not
partake in in sleep with Indian women I'm like of course they did don't be dumb but whatever I know you got to you
got to preserve whatever you know it's still human yeah yeah um so they also
did a lot of like little side travels where they'd be like okay I'm GNA Walk East for two days and then I'll 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 could lose you for a day and a half you know 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 were like ah it was like really [ __ ] 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 saw like huge herds of
Buffalo and all the stuff that like you think of when you think of like a empty American West so also you know the it's
30 people it's a couple 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 um kind of like try to leave
things like that so they had would have like little trials within the group and then the punishment was usually um like
lashings like 100 lashings U 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 Mission from tomr 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
have to be translated like four times you know between yeah 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 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 e leave them alone love 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 the 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 we don't want those things 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 like
could you imagine watching someone speak in a language you didn't stand wearing a silly jacket and hat and telling you that you have a new father be like it's
like the worst graduation ceremony in history what are you talking about so
they met a lot of different tribes they met they met the Bandon and the hadasa
the chinuk the sue the black feet this is the black feet were the most dangerous of the tribes that they met
actually this is where um they killed um they admitted at least to killing a a
Blackfoot Indian as um cuz 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 Shon and that's where they met Sakia so
Sakia poor [ __ ] girl she was married to a French Canadian named Tucson
charbono and like want to tell you about him a little bit he's 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 CH child Brides the other one was just called Otter woman
she didn't have a name otter o t t r yeah like the animal I mean he does he
does look pretty cool I know but but he
but he has two child Brides so it's not great so he had the Otter Otter girl stay home during this but he went 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 Roots so they joined after
they met with the the shason so sakaia was pregnant when they set off on the
journey and joined them and started going they went like over the Rockies like all the way to to the um 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 out of rattlesnake um Rattler they
like pound grounded up and like made a drink out of it and that was supposed to make her feel better you're like just so happy that I have my babies in a
[Laughter] hospital unfuckingbelievable awful but so then she had this baby and
that's what 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 um the
saying that like everything that um Fred stare did Ginger Rogers did backwards
and heels you know I mean I don't know who Ginger Rogers is and I don't really know much pred St either so Fred Ser
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 Zakia than everybody else got
it she and she was a child herself and so they they also they called her Janie
and her son was named um Jean Baptist he ended up um being adopted by Clark later
in life and he was uh he went to Europe he spent some time there so he had a
pretty fun go of it her her son had a good kind of a fun Frontiersman life but zaka helped with trans 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 and 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 um but she died in
1812 so a couple years later after the exibition was over and it's unknown how she died she probably just like had a
disease and died like people did then um and she was also never paid they paid her husband but they did not pay her
obviously for her that's Fring but she didn't get to be on that on that dollar
that dollar coin so T the population in the 1700s of all
of North America was 250,000 yeah wait no I read this wrong sorry it
was 95,000 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 right but the space is still big
you know okay yeah that's true that's true what I mean yeah I mean not that not that like you know sure you'll see
same people over and over again there's less people but like how are you going to find them in like the Rocky Mountains you know right Fair Point um
so oh another thing oh 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 and were really helpful to them a really peaceful Tribe Called was called the nesis and
they were they helped them get across the Rockies they gave them guides they they were super helpful Clark probably
had a child with one of them um so but nees Pierce means nose piercing in French so 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 make sure you're still there so because
their name in their native language I'm never this going to be terrible but it was nimu which means we the people
people which is a beautiful name that's very peaceful and nice but instead they have this like dumb nose pierce name
from the French when they weren't even a tribe that necessarily 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 um
so so they're meeting all these tribes and they make it the route that they
hook um was you know from St Louis they went up Iowa up to like up to the um
kind of the top of America right below Canada and then 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 found the way across the Rocky Mountain 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 um because of the weather or whatever because they were their horses were sick
all sorts of stuff happened but they made it they made it to the ocean which is super exciting and then they made it
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 like 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 wait so wait they lived yeah they came they came back I
thought they were eating cannibals think the party they ate each
other hold on I need to figure this out X um no they lived we've been silent for
like 10 minutes oh may maybe it was a okay maybe it was a
Franklin expedition in the Arctic that ended in cannibalism no didn't we 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 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 you know they had bury some of their things um and they pull them up
toward the end they were like almost out of food almost out of like gifts for the Indians they um did end up stealing a
canoe from one of the tribes and they probably did more of that as well like with without it but they made it back to
St Louis on September 23rd 1806 so they were gone for from 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 they 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 they had no idea was going on they were just totally um separate they were also had been also
sending Indian chiefs to Washington DC um to Washington to meet with the president to start to like discuss
Sovereign Sovereign Tre and all those things and um some of them made it some of those guys died which was a bummer
for for peace talks obviously but um that was happening too but their families were okay the woman that Clark
had had been in love with when he left was still around still available they got married had a bunch of kids um
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 zaka jia'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 is that incredible like yeah I mean hard but did
I mean I mean cuz my thought my thought process was that's why I was like okay just buy whatever you want because who cares they're going to find your body
anyways is like if you twist an ankle you're kind of dead like it's pretty it
is a miracle so they had like they had 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 and like I'm sure it was just like a disgusting wounded 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 yeah so um
that's you know yeah no they 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 CU 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 he didn't he should have done all
these things and he just procrastinated he was probably in one of his like depressive states 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 like just like didn't answer and he was also given the um the job of being the governor of
the 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 um on booze he was like drinking all the time
he wasn't talking to anyone he's also probably riddled with scds 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 it took him a while and then so this is Le
on decided to go west back to Louisiana Territory he could like actually do his
job as Governor he was getting paid for it but he was never there October 19th 1809 he stopped at a um an inn called
the Grinders stand which was 70 miles Southwest of Nashville so like around
there and actually 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 um grineer she was like he's acting really weird I don't know what's going on and
so she went to his room and she heard gunshots he had shot himself in the head but he had not died and then 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 as as by Suicide as as fast as he could
um they tried to save him but it was it was too late so um 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 a 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 I'm starving always wondering if someone's
going to come and scalp you you know all those things um 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 um and people forgot about it up
for the most part until people started thinking about big exploration back in the 70s and then 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 we know so the idea was
that he was basically traumatized or PTSD in it or something yeah I think it
was a little bit of everything so like he was a little bit traumatized who 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 man depressive and he was probably in like a depressive State at
this point and just like unable to complete the task and able to do the couple things that he had to do so 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 um 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 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 it 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 um yeah they want to see if they could do it and then also you know meet with the native
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 were the first people to hold an election the side of them to be you know when they were like voting on things they 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 to space just don't have that really so I
think that's really exciting um I 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 this that they all survived you know 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 the 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 as we do
even though you know obviously um I'm sure like the book of read really was
very apologetic about like you really wanted to make peace with the Indians you're like no no they didn't yeah they
did not that did not happen that might be a little revisionist yeah it's a little revisionist but still um but yeah
I think it's super it's super interesting and and more than I more than I knew I thought that it was you know you have this idea when you're a
kid that 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 I obviously last podcast covered um
the Uruguayan rugby team recently and then um as of like last Thursday Society
of the snow came out on Netflix did you see that no I didn't watch it yet but God please watch it you have to watch it
but like it it obviously very different situation those people had no clothing
no gear nothing like that and they had the walk like 31 miles to get to civil
civilization again um 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 that was 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 dud leave me alone yeah I kind think of that
too you're like what I don't want to do like a postmortem on this I just want to do my next thing yeah I just I just finished walking 4,000 miles like can we
just move this up a couple of decades and you'll just cover it after I'm dead they killed themselves they like I'm I
gonna write all this down um yeah yeah it was a lot was a lot
it was a big deal um and then it's interesting that people forgot about it for a while and then it's back or then they came back and now it's like classic
tale of American bravery ETA Ingenuity yeah fun it's fun T how 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 like 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 no um cool
okay 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 plane this week Lindsay my cousin Lindsay texted me about this but like that well in Japan that plane that
exploded on the runway it was just like in t Reef yep you sent me that too and
everyone the people there's like a smaller plane and a bigger plane and the small 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 if it have been in
America they would have been dead yeah I was going to say like that is 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 survive that but
then also that Alaska Airline plane where the door blew off did you see that one crazy yeah I saw oh my God and no one died then either cu no one was
sitting next to the door so it just blew off landed and then I heard that
somebody punched a stewardess in the face on that one on a different flight I
forgot what air maybe it was Delta that somebody actually hit a stus in the face because they were like asking him to do something or not do something and he got
pissed off and they had to deviate the flight over to Dallas and land there to kick the guy off oh my God that's so
annoying how mad would you be I know I would be so mad seriously so a lot of fun playing stuff
going on these days yeah it's wild I'm going to go to plane and next week so I'll be fine where you going
Oakland day um but yeah no it's it's probably fine I don't sit next to the window anyway and now I definitely feel
like Justified and not say next to any kind of doors or anything I think your best bet is to to be over the wings
because I feel like the wings are the part that's like the most reinforced mhm 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 you'll do great yeah cool uh so yeah as I kind of sorted
this podcast out this episode U please do write to us we always love to get feedback um dood gmail.com follow us on
all the socials we're excited to start year two of doing this um and see where
that takes us thanks first awesome thanks Tor we go ahead and cut [Music]
off