Thomas Jefferson Papers
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https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-44-02-0580

From Thomas Jefferson to Reuben Lewis, 6 November 1804

To Reuben Lewis

Washington Nov. 6. 04.

Dear Sir

I inclose you a letter directed to your brother which came to me under cover a few days ago. I have the pleasure also to inform you that we have lately recieved thro a channel meriting entire confidence, advice that on the 4th. of Aug. he was at the mouth of the river Plate, 600 miles up the Missouri, where he had met a great council of the Missouris, Panis & Ottos, at their invitation; and had also on their request appointed among them three grand chiefs. two of his men had deserted from him. he had with him 2. boats and about 48 men. he was then setting out up the river. one of his boats & half the men would return from his winter quarters. in the spring he would leave about a fourth where he wintered to make corn for his return, & would proceed with the other fourth. all accounts concur in the entire friendly dispositions of the Indians and that he will be through his whole course as safe as at home. believing that this information would be acceptable to your self, his mother & friends, I communicate it with pleasure and with it tender my salutations & best wishes.

Th: Jefferson

PoC (CSmH); at foot of text: “Mr. Lewis”; endorsed by TJ. Enclosure not found.

Reuben Lewis (1777-1844) was the younger brother of Meriwether Lewis and exercised his power of attorney. Their mother was the widow Lucy Meriwether Lewis Marks, a Monticello neighbor. In 1808, Reuben Lewis traveled west with his brother to St. Louis. William Clark engaged him as Indian subagent at Fort Osage, where he also assisted George Sibley in the factory store. Over the next 12 years, Lewis worked concurrently as a trapper and partner with the Missouri Fur Company and as a government agent to the Mandans, Osages, and Cherokees. Family concerns forced him in 1821 to return to Virginia, where he married first cousin Mildred Dabney and settled into life on his Albemarle farm, Valley Point (John C. Jackson, “Reuben Lewis: Fur Trader, Subagent, and Meriwether’s Younger Brother,” We Proceeded On, 38 [2012], 8-17; Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811, by John Bradbury [Cleveland, 1904], 153; Vol. 40:498n).

The channel of communication was likely Amos Stoddard, who in a letter of 29 Sep. to Dearborn reported news of Lewis’s audience with a gathering of Indians and departure from the mouth of the Platte River (DNA: RG 107, RLRMS).

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