Explorers and Travellers

by A. W. Greely

Here they first strikingly realized the transparency and purity of the mountain air, which to the eye quite annihilates distance. He writes: “Marched at our usual hour, pushed with an idea of arriving at the mountains, but found at night no visible difference in their appearance from what we did yesterday.” It may be added that eight days’ march brought the party only to the base of the mountains.

On November 22d he fell in with an unsuccessful war-party, composed of sixty Pawnees, returning from a foray on the Comanches. The savages at first acted in a friendly manner, but receiving some small presents, demanded ammunition, corn, blankets, kettles, and indeed everything they saw. Being refused they threw away in contempt the articles given. Pike ordered the horses packed, when the Pawnees encircled the small party and commenced stealing everything they could, when Pike commanded his men to stand to arms, and to separate themselves from the savages. This done an order was given to kill the first Indian who touched any piece of baggage, when the Pawnees, realizing that further misconduct meant fight, filed off and allowed them to depart.

The party was now at the present city of Las Animas, where the Arkansas forks, and as the Spanish troops followed the main stream instead of the Purgatory, Pike took the same route. At the Herfuano he decided to put the main party in camp while he explored the surrounding country, so he threw up a small breastwork, opening on the river, somewhat to the east of the present city of Pueblo. Starting to ascend the north fork (the main Arkansas) to the high point of a blue mountain, which he conceived would be one day’s march, it took two days to reach the base and more than another day to reach its summit. He records that his men had no stockings, were clad only in light summer overalls, in every way unprovided for the inclement surroundings, the snow to their hips, the temperature nine degrees below freezing, while in forty-eight hours the four men had for food only one partridge and a piece of deer’s rib, but adds that they were amply compensated for their toil and hardships by the sublimity of the view—an unbounded prairie overhung with clouds. The summit of Grand (Pike’s) Peak, bare of vegetation, snow-covered, and double the height of the peak ascended, he thought no human being could then have ascended, even had it been near instead of a day’s march to its base.

The December journey up the narrow, cliff-bound valley of the Arkansas is a continuous record of hardship and suffering. The horses with difficulty found grazing in the snow-covered valley, while the fearless ravens lighting on the men seized meat from them, and, despite the kicking and plunging of the horses swooped down on them and picked their sore backs till they bled. The thermometer fell to thirty-eight degrees below freezing, while the badness of the trail obliged the party to cross and recross the ice-filled river, from which several froze their feet badly. Had the weather continued so cold “some of the men,” says Pike, “must have perished, for they had no winter clothing; I wore myself cotton overalls.”

Here the returning Spanish expeditionary column under Malgares had turned south, skirting the mountains until it reached a practicable pass through the Cimarron range to Taos; but the main Spanish trail failing in the snow-covered plain Pike pursued a side trail to the northwest, and crossing a dividing ridge came on an ice-covered stream, which, to his surprise, ran to the northeast, and proved, as he thought, to be the head-waters of the Platte, the south fork rising in the South Park, where he then was. Here he found evidences of the park having been lately frequented by large parties of Indians. Beyond this he doubtless crossed into the Middle Park, and saw the head-waters of the Colorado Grande, and so was the second party to reach from the Atlantic tide-water the sources of streams draining into the Pacific.

Pike was now lost in the maze of snow-covered mountains under most adverse circumstances, as he recites: “Eight hundred miles from the frontiers of our country; not one person clothed for the winter, many without blankets, having been obliged to cut them up for socks, etc.; laying down at night on the snow or wet ground, one side burning, while the other was pierced with cold; endeavoring to make of raw buffalo-hide a miserable substitute for shoes;” the men falling sick, and, finally, the country so broken and precipitous, that even the Indian horse could not carry a pack, and three animals were lost from falls and bruises.

Pike was disconsolate, but not discouraged. He sent ahead the interpreter and two soldiers travelling light to find a way out, while, making five small sleds to carry the baggage and be dragged by the men, he followed. Struggling on, nearly perishing from cold, and almost famished for food, the 5th of January found Pike, greatly to his mortification, in the same old valley of the Arkansas, in sight of his camp of December 10th. Realizing that he could expect nothing further from his few worn-out horses, and burning with mortification at his egregious error in considering the Arkansas as the Red, Pike decided to try on foot that journey which had failed on horseback. He at once strengthened the small fort, left therein heavy baggage, horses, etc., with the interpreter and one man, while with the rest he started to cross the mountains with packs in search of the Red River, where he intended to send back a party to guide the pack-train to it. This in the belief that the Red River had its sources to the southwest, instead of in its true location hundreds of weary miles to the southeast.

Humboldt’s map of New Spain, compiled from data in the City of Mexico in 1804, plainly indicates that the Spanish labored under the same error as Pike, they also thinking the sources of the Red River to be some two or three hundred miles northwest of their true position. This map shows that although the main Red was well known, yet the head-waters of the Canadian were believed to be, and were charted as, the northwest extension of the Red to within fifty miles of the place where Pike was later arrested. It may be added, as showing the extent of geographical knowledge in New Spain at that time, that the upper Arkansas was known under the name Rio Napestle, although its connection with the lower Arkansas was only suspected. The Pecos, Colorado, Trinity, and Sabine Rivers were also known, but the Llano Estacado, of Texas, and the plains of Colorado, Indian Territory, and Kansas, though they had been crossed here and there prior to 1805, were practically unknown lands, given over to the buffalo and savages, who were popularly and correctly associated with them.

Impressed with the belief that he finally was on the right track, Captain Pike, on January 14, 1806, started on the eventful journey that was to carry him into New Spain, and lead him into the hands of the Spaniards he was charged to avoid. They marched in heavy order, every one—man, doctor, and commander—carrying forty-five pounds of regular baggage, besides arms, ammunition, and such food as he thought proper; the average burden being seventy pounds per man, to be carried over a snow-covered and mountainous country.