Zebulon Montgomery Pike
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 first lieutenant, to take a party of men and find the source of the Mississippi River.
On reaching Leech Lake in what is now northern Minnesota early in February 1806, Pike believed that he had accomplished his mission. He returned to St. Louis after a challenging 9-month, 5,000-mile (8,000 km) trip with his 20-man command. During this journey, which was intended to supplement the western expedition being led by captains Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clark (1770-1838), Pike encountered several Indian tribes and secured a large tract of land near Leech Lake from the Sioux for a future army post. His efforts were not altogether successful, however. The U.S. Senate did not approve Pike's treaty with the Sioux.
Zebulon Pike. (The Library of Congress. Reproduced by permission.)There were many mistakes in Pike's maps, which were not well drawn, and later explorers determined that Lake Itasca, rather than Leech Lake, was the true source of the Mississippi. Nonetheless, Pike's efforts would later buttress American boundary claims following the War of 1812.
Despite Pike's deficiencies as a mapmaker, General James Wilkinson, the Army's controversial commanding general, next directed him to explore and make maps of the Red and Arkansas Rivers to the west. Pike and his two dozen-man party left St. Louis in July 1806. He and his men got lost owing to the poor maps with which they had been supplied. He discovered but did not climb the mountain that today bears his name. He and his men located the source of the Arkansas River and continued their search for the Red. During the winter of 1806-1807 Pike built a fortified camp for some of his sick men near the present-day site of Canyon City, Colorado. With his other men, he continued southward, reaching the Conejos River in what is now southern Colorado. Wrongly believing this to be his objective, he erected another stockade and sent word for the other men to join him there. Realizing that the Spanish colonial authorities were looking for him, Pike agreed to go with a larger Spanish force that was sent to apprehend the members of his command. Having examined documents Pike had in his possession, the Spanish governor at Santa Fe concluded that he was a spy and insisted that Pike be sent to Chihuahua, Mexico, for further interrogation.
After some months in Spanish custody, and in response to demands from President Thomas Jefferson, Pike and his men were released by the Spanish authorities, and he finally reached Louisiana at the end of June 1807. There, instead of receiving praise for his exploits, Pike found himself accused of being party to a plot by former U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr and General Wilkinson to create an empire in the Southwest by combining some American territory with parts of Spain's colonial possessions in northern Mexico. With difficulty, Pike cleared his name, and resumed his regular military duties.
Pike's papers from his 1806-1807 expedition were not returned to American authorities by the Mexican government for nearly a century. Despite their seizure, Pike published An Account of Expeditions to the Sources of the Mississippi and through the Western Parts of Louisiana (1810), which was later republished in Europe. In the work he commented that the Great Plains might in time become as famous as the deserts of North Africa. Pike also described some of the mammals and birds he and his men had encountered, including the grizzly bear. He sent several cubs east, which were displayed at Charles Willson Peale's (1741-1827) museum in Philadelphia, first as part of a menagerie, later as mounted specimens. An engraving of the bears appeared in John Godman's American Natural History (1826-1828), the first original treatise on American mammals by an American.
Pike was an active military commander during the War of 1812. He was killed in an explosion following a successful attack on the Canadian city of York (now Toronto), six weeks after his promotion to brigadier general.
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