CHAPTER XX

PIKE'S EXPLORATIONS

Ascending the Mississippi. A second expedition westward. Hostile Spanish influence. Into Colorado. The first glimpse of Pike's Peak. On the upper Arkansas. Disappointment and privation. In Spanish territory. Captured by the Spaniards. Pike's return and death.

While the Lewis and Clark expedition was struggling across the mountains in 1805 another explorer was on his way from St. Louis northward. Lewis and Clark were sent by the President, and theirs was the first governmental exploration of the Louisiana territory. The second exploration was a military one, and was the first military expedition sent into the new country. It was commanded by Lieutenant Zebulon M. Pike, a young army officer, born in Lamberton, New Jersey, in 1779.

In 1805 General James Wilkinson, the commanding officer of the army, ordered Lieutenant

Pike to ascend the Mississippi to its head waters. He was to make the sovereignty of the United States known to the Indians and Canadian traders. He was to observe the country, and to ascertain if possible the sources of the Mississippi.

It was on August 9, 1805, that Lieutenant Pike left St. Louis with twenty men to carry out his orders. They traveled in a keel boat seventy feet long. Provisions for four months were carried, but as it turned out nearly nine months passed before they returned. They ascended the river with few adventures and on September 22 they camped near the site of the present city of St. Paul, where they held a council with the Sioux.

From this point, undeterred by cold and scanty supplies, they made a plucky winter journey to Leech Lake (Minnesota), which Pike supposed, erroneously, to be the main source of the Mississippi. He overlooked the real source, Lake Itasca. They reached Leech Lake on February 1, but after various explorations. and some negotiations with the Indians, which

included a treaty with the Sioux, they turned back. Of the Falls of St. Anthony, Pike gives a vivid picture, and his journal is full of interest, although less detailed than that of Lewis and Clark. On April 30 the expedition returned to St. Louis. The lieutenant had learned much about the upper river, although he was mistaken as to its source, and his expedition had succeeded in proclaiming the dominion of the United States.

More important and more closely associated with our narrative was Pike's second expedition. In July, 1806, he left St. Louis with a military party numbering twenty-three, under orders from General Wilkinson to travel westward into the interior of Louisiana, to reach the sources of the Arkansas River, and to explore the mountains of the present state of Colorado. He also escorted to their homes. fifty-one Osage and Pawnee chiefs and their people who had visited Washington.

The first part of Pike's route was by water up the Missouri, and then up the Osage to the villages of the Osage Indians. Thence

he traveled overland through Kansas to a Pawnee village.

The cession of Louisiana with its indefinite boundaries had already caused complications with the Spaniards, who held the southwest, including the present state of Texas. They had heard of Pike's expedition and had sent an armed force to turn him back from any territory which they claimed, or to make him a prisoner. Out of this grew trouble later.

The Spaniards had held a council with the Pawnees and had made them presents of flags. Even after Pike had explained to them the American ownership of the country, and an old Pawnee warrior had obediently brought out a Spanish flag and taking it from its staff replaced it with the American flag, the Pawnee chief tried to keep the Americans from continuing westward, saying that he had promised the Spaniards to intercept them. But Pike kept resolutely on.

As they crossed the plains they saw the old camps of the Spanish troops who had preceded