Lewis Accidentally Shot by Cruzatte

In one of the expedition’s most bizarre incidents, Lewis was shot in the left buttock by the one-eyed Pierre Cruzatte during an elk hunt. Lewis initially believed it might be a Blackfeet attack.

“I instantly supposed that Cruzatte had shot me in mistake for an Elk as I was dressed in brown leather.”

The ball passed through the fleshy part of his buttock without hitting bone. Lewis dressed the wound himself and spent the next several weeks lying face-down in a canoe. Cruzatte denied firing the shot, but Lewis found a ball in his own leggings that matched Cruzatte’s short rifle.

This was Lewis’s last journal entry for several weeks as he recovered from the wound. It was also, effectively, the end of his journal writing for the expedition — a circumstance that has frustrated historians ever since.