America Unearthed: The Suspicious Death of Meriwether Lewis (Season 1)

He's one of America's most legendary explorers, Meriwether Lewis. Handpicked by President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 to team up with William Clark to map out the land acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. The area was enormous, reaching from Louisiana up to what is now Montana. Jefferson hoped they'd find a direct water route to the Pacific, create a map of the area, and catalog new species of plants and animals in the region. But there has always been some who believe there was more to their expedition. I got a call from a journalist friend who said he had something interesting to show me. We got something I want to show you here. Take a look at this, and I borrowed these books, and I want to show them to you. What is this? What you're holding there is the first edition of the Corps of Discovery by Lewis and Clark. Really? Yeah. Wow, this is amazing. Does this chronicle everything that they saw? Well, see, that's the point. It may not chronicle everything. What do you mean by that? Well, it means that there are missing pages in Meriwether Lewis's journals. Do we have any idea what is in those missing pages? We don't have any idea what's in it, but he could have known something. He could have found something that would be so frightening to that day and age that somebody might want to kill him for it. Okay, I know that he died in 1809, and this would have been about 3 years after they came back from the expedition, but I thought it was suicide. That's what I've always heard. It's the prevailing theory, and that's where the evidence seems to point. We do know that Thomas Jefferson tasked the Corps of Discovery and Lewis and Clark with finding out about tribes and the flora and the fauna in the West, but he also tasked them with something very unusual. He said, I want you to look for any possibility of Welsh settlement in the West. Pre-Columbian Welsh? Pre-Columbian Welsh. Let's say they found that. Well, if they had that information, if Meriwether Lewis possessed that in his journals and it didn't appear it was part of the missing, then it would take the whole idea of American colonial history, our very foundation, and toss it out the window. Wow, that kind of a discovery could have gotten Lewis killed. You know what we call that? Motive. It's a shocking theory. Did Thomas Jefferson send Lewis and Clark on a secret mission? Did the president want them to find out whether the Welsh were here before the original colonists? And could whatever Lewis found have led to his murder? Well, this is really fascinating stuff, but I'm a geologist. I was looking for a geologist because I think one of the answers rests in a stone, and if it's authentic, may suggest some evidence of pre-Columbian Welsh. There's an ancient Welsh settlement in the United States. It's called the Brandenburg Stone, and I'd like you to take a look at that. Where is this stone? In Kentucky. After talking to Don, it seems like there's a lot we actually don't know about America's most well-known explorer, like whether Meriwether Lewis ended his own life or whether someone ended it for him. If he found evidence the Welsh were in America in pre-Columbian times, it could mean they staked a prior claim to the land. Land Jefferson just spent $15 million on in a move that would double the size of the United States. The missing journal pages could be a clue, and so could this Brandenburg Stone, a stone inscribed with what could be a land claim and possibly written in Welsh. Jerry, what's been the reaction to the stone? Some people believe the stone is ancient Welsh. Some people dismiss it. I think it's entirely possible that it's an ancient inscription. This is an amazing stone, and this inscription here especially is really amazing. You know, a couple things just right off the bat. This is the first time I've ever looked at this stone. First of all, these are limestones, probably Ullitic limestones, and if you look very closely, you'll see what looks like little sand grains, but they're actually sand of limestone, and they're called Ullites. When I look down into the grooves, I can see some of those uids, so that's an indication of weathering. Based on everything I've seen, we're not looking at a hoax here. Does anybody know what this inscription says? It's been translated as a property boundary, a land claim stone, and if that's the case, then certainly this would indicate a possible ancient or prior claim. Lewis found something like this, indicating that other people came to North America prior to Columbus, prior to this land acquisition. If they knew something about what was in Lewis's diary, that could have gotten him killed. Why possibly? Where this whole thing started for me, a good friend of mine suggested I come and look at this stone after we looked at Meriwether Lewis's journal. Oh yeah. Some of the pages in that journal have gone missing, and maybe the reason is because during the expedition, he found something that indicated pre-Columbian contact. This could actually call into question the whole legitimacy of the United States.