1779-1813

American Explorer and Army Officer

Zebulon Pike was born in New Jersey, the son of a professional army officer. Beginning in 1794, when only 15, Pike served in his father's infantry unit as a cadet and entered the army as a second lieutenant of infantry in 1799. Aware of his very limited formal education (Pike had attended country schools in his native New Jersey and in Pennsylvania), and impatient with the slow pace of peacetime promotions, he taught himself mathematics, the rudiments of science, French, and Latin. He also studied the European army tactics of his day. In 1801 he married the daughter of an army general. Rising steadily through the ranks, he achieved the grade of brigadier general at the comparatively early age of 34, shortly before his death. After spending the years 1799-1805 in a variety of routine frontier assignments, he was selected, while still a...