sources

http://www.nndb.com/people/570/000050420/
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WWpikeZ.htm
http://www.pikes-peak.com/page/122.aspx
http://www.nps.gov/archive/jeff/lewisclark2/circa1804/westwardexpansion/earlyexplorers/zebulonpike.htm
http://www.famousnewjerseyans.com/public.htm
http://www.destination360.com/north-america/us/colorado/pikes-peak
http://www.royalgorgebridge.com/

Timeline

1.(January 5, 1779)Zebulon Montgomery Pike was born in Lamberton, New Jersey (now part of Trenton)
2. (1794) Zebulon pike becomes cadet at age 15.
3.(1801) gets married to Clarissa Brown.
4.  (August 9th, 1805) Pike started his first expedition from St.Louis.
5.(February 1st, 1806) Pike went to Cass Lake, the beginning of the Mississippi.
6. (April 30, 1806) Arrived back in Lt. Louis  from first expedition.
7.(July 15,1806) left on second expedition  from St. Louis.
8.( November, 1806) turned around at Pike's Peak.
9. (February 26, 1807)  Pike is captured by Spanish.
10. (July 1, 1807) arrived back in the U.S.
11. (April 17, 1813) Pike was killed in the attack on York (now Toronto) Canada.

returning to the U.S

The Spanish returned Pike and his men to Natchitoches, Louisiana on July 1, 1807.  In 1810 he published his final report of the expedition as a book. It was filled with much valuable information and was widely read.  Among this information was the fact that the borderlands between Spanish Mexico and the U.S was as good as the rest of the Louisiana purchase. This caused a large U.S. interest in that region. Some people think that this interest helped fuel the Mexican-American war sixty years in the future. However, despite all of this, Pike never did locate the headwaters of the Red River.

Information on the Spanish

In Santa Fe, Pike's baggage was searched and Governor Allencaster of Santa Fe, inspected Pike's commission and orders. Then Pike and his men were taken to Chihuahua, Mexico, to meet with His Excellency, Commandant General Salcedo, where Pike's papers and records were again inspected and reviewed. Pike says that he was never formally under arrest on this journey and he was actually able to learn quite a bit about the military forces and the geography and political views of the local people that he met along the way. although Pike could not have guessed it, this information he got about the Spanish land would be his biggest contribution to the growth of our country.

the end of Pikes expedition

On February 7, the assistant captain of the expedition, Doctor Robinson, headed out on his own to visit Santa Fe.  Nineteen days later, a company of Spanish dragoons (men that served in the cavalry) arrested Pike and his crew as American spies coming to scope out Spanish Territory. On the 28th, Pike and most of his men left camp with the Spaniards and headed for Santa Fe. This is where the formal Pike Expedition ended.

a hard winter

Pike and his crew where not prepared for a harsh, January winter in the unforgiving Wet Mountain Valley. Foralmost two weeks, they slowly trudged South, looking for a way to go west through that great wall of mountains we now call the Sangre de Cristo.  It is , the southern most subrange of the Rocky Mountains. They emerged from the mountains at the edge of the Great Sand Dunes on January 28, 1807. They were in the San Luis Valley in the heart of winter.  It was a miserable and grueling experience.  For five days they travelled south in the valley, crossing the Rio Grande and continued until they came to the Conejos River, a tributary to the Rio Grande, at a place where warm springs flowed out of the ground and kept the river free of ice. This is where they built Pike's Stockade  and prepared to last out the winter.

Getting Lost

royal gorge

 Eventually, Pike and his crew came to the Royal Gorge.   Because of the narrowness of the gorge, they tried to find another  way west. At this point they began a series of  ineffective treks that basically  led them in circles and got them lost. Eventually, Pike came to the Arkansas River again, mistaking it for the Red River that he was searching for. . From here, Pike and a couple of his men went North to locate and map the headwaters of the river while the rest of the party went South. Four days later Pike returned to the main group. They then spent Christmas near the center of Colorado . Thinking they were now following the Red River, and that their mission was complete, they started moving back downstream. Pike then  came to the Royal Gorge again and realized their mistake. From here they turned south and   struggled up the canyon of Grape Creek and entered the Wet Mountain Valley, which is in South Colorado.

Climbing Pikes Peak

pikes peak

A few days later they built a camp near the confluence (river junction) of Fountain Creek and the Arkansas River. From here, Pike and three others set out to climb Pike's Peak. They didn't make the summit, having drastically under-estimated the difficulty and the distance involved in getting to the top.  Because of this attempt, the peak is now called Pikes Peak and is a national historic landmark. Pike and the three other soldiers returned to the camp after being gone for a week. The whole party then continued upstream along the Arkansas.

Finding the Front Range

Eleven days later, Pike found the Arkansas River and set up camp for a few days. Here they  hunted and fished for the up-coming winter, and created canoes to head upstream.  Two weeks  and 200 miles later brought them to their first view of the "Mexican Mountains," ( now called the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, about ten miles from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Pike's Peak is in this range).

Leaving St.Louis and talking with Native Americans

On July 15, 1806, Pike and crew sailed from a landing north of St. Louis on the Missouri River and headed west. A month or so later they arrived at the  village of the Little Osage to return the 51 Indians and to have a  meeting with the chiefs of the tribe. After two weeks of negotiations about trading and working with the U.S government, Pike and his men moved on, looking for the Pawnee Nation  and their villages. After three weeks, the Pawnee were found  and more negotiations of the same nature occurred.  According to Pike's notes, he smoked the pipe of peace with Pawnee, Osage and Kansas Indians and felt he was doing a pretty good job of establishing peaceful relations, until it came time to leave the nations. That's when he found out that the Pawnee didn't want him to go any further west. To complete his mission, Pike threatened the Pawnee, saying that even though his men where outnumbered by the Pawnee they would be willing to fight. Also, if Pikes men where killed, the U.S would send many more soldiers to destroy the Pawnee. After considering this, the Pawnee allowed Pike and his  to move on.

The point of the expedition

 In 1806,  just before Luis and Clark returned, Jefferson sent Lt. Zebulon Pike with a company of soldiers to chart that southern boundary of the purchase by following the Arkansas River to its' source. Once there, he was to head south and locate the headwaters (beginning) of the Red River, then follow that river back to Louisiana.  The expedition was also given the task of escorting 51 Osage Indians back to their homes in Kansas. On top of all this, Pike was asked to continue mapping the geography, recording indigenous plants and animals, and trying to establish peaceful trade relationships with the Native Americans like Luis and Clark had done with the northern part of the Louisiana Territory.

second expedition

In 1803 the United States bought the Louisiana Purchase from the French.  President Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their well known  expedition to find out just what exactly was in this huge expanse of land we had just bought.. They explored a lot of the northern part of the Purchase by making the journey to the Pacific coast and then back again to St. Louis.  Luis and Clark did a great job of mapping the geography, as well as recording the wildlife along the way. But Lewis and Clark stayed completely away from the southern boundary of the Purchase. Because of this, the government asked Lt. Zebulon Pike to finish what Luis and Clark had started.

first expedition

the red line marks the route of Zebulon Pike's

 1st expedition

Little is recorded about Pike's first expedition, but what I could find stated that he started off from St.Louis on August 9th, 1805 with twenty men. The point of the mission was to find the headwaters (source) of the Mississippi River.  By September 23, he bought nine miles of land at the mouth of the St. Croix river to make a fort. traveling from that point, he made it to Leech Lake (located in present-day Minnesota), which he thought was the main source of the Mississippi. On the February 1st, 1806, Pike went 30 miles farther to Cass Lake. However, because of British influences, the Native Americans where hostile, which forced pike to turn back. He went down the Mississippi from Dean Creek to St. Louis, arriving on April 30, 1806

early years and personal life

Zebulon Montgomery Pike was born in Lamberton, New Jersey (now part of Trenton)  on January 5, 1779. For the time period that he was born in, his family was pretty typical. He was the second of eight children, and the only one to grow to healthy adulthood. Four of his siblings died in infancy, the other three contracted tuberculosis and were deemed invalids throughout their lives. His father, Zebulon Pike Senior, had served in the military under George Washington during the Revolutionary War. Since then, His father continued to be involved in the military, and Zebulon Jr. learned many frontier skills from his time living at army outposts with his father.
 Zebulon had a limited education, but it is known that he did like to read and could speak a small amount of French and Spanish. By the age of fifteen, Zebulon entered his father's regiment as a cadet. His main duty as a cadet was to take supplies to frontier posts.
By the time Pike was twenty,  he was a first lieutenant in the First Infantry Regiment stationed in western Pennsylvania.  later, he fell in love to Clarissa Brown, his uncle and general's daughter. When General Brown refused permission for them to marry, the two eloped to Cincinnati in 1801.  Later, they got married and several children. However, only one of their daughters reached maturity.

After returning from the second expedition through a period of six years, Pike gets promoted to a colonel.  Pike then served in the War of 1812, and was killed in the attack on York (now Toronto) Canada, on April 17, 1813, by a piece of rock which fell on him when the British garrison in its retreat set fire to the powder magazine.

Introduction

Picture this: a team of men climbing a mountain, waist deep in snow. At the front is a short man, with a ruddy complexion, blue eyes and light hair and his head tilted to the side. when you envision pioneers and explorers, you usually don't come up with a man looking like this. However, this Explorer led two expeditions into the wild Louisiana territory, each for months at a time. This explorer is Zebulon Pike. The first was north, to find the headwaters of the Mississippi river. The second, bigger expedition, went deep into the southern Louisiana territory and northern Mexico. Both of these expeditions were to explore the huge expanses of land that we had purchased from France. Pike's expeditions yielded  maps and categorization of flora and fauna of this wild area that would prove essential to Americans settling the new land. However, probably his biggest contribution to the growth of the United States was that he sparked an interest in Mexican land. this interest would lead to a war and a giant expansion of the union. without Zebulon Pike, our country would not be what it is today.