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.