Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Geol. Survey.
The uncertainty of the sources of the Mississippi and of the northern boundary of Louisiana impelled the astute Jefferson to arrange for other explorations in that quarter before the return of Lewis and Clark. For this work a young, brave, and capable officer, Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike, was chosen.[68] He proceeded to St. Louis, and in August, 1805, with a keel boat seventy feet long, and a crew of one sergeant, two corporals, and seventeen privates, provisioned for four months, started to explore the Father of Waters to its uppermost rill. The Amerinds of this region had a great dread of the Americans, considering them quarrelsome and warlike, hence they would often go out of the way to avoid a meeting. Yet Pike was generally well received and one influential chief gave him a special peace pipe to show to the Sioux above as a sort of passport. It was a request to have him treated with friendship and respect. At one of the villages this friendship and respect were indicated by a salute from the guns of a party on shore. The guns were loaded with ball and, inasmuch as their owners were drunk, they tried to see how near the boat they could strike without actually hitting it. Notwithstanding their undesirable condition, Pike presented them later with several gallons of rum, an action which seems hardly pardonable in a government officer, yet this issuing to the natives of intoxicants was common among all officers, traders, and all managers of fur companies. They knew its diabolical effect, as well as its debasing and generally demoralising quality, yet they all did it. Of course the ordinary fur trader desired to intoxicate the natives in order to overreach them, and traded whiskey, or rather alcohol and water, for their goods because in this way he made a profit of several hundred per cent. The great fur companies each used it in their trade because the others did; but with the officers of the United States Army there was no excuse for employing this means of gaining the Amerind favour.
The expedition mounted the river without any serious drawback, and the boats, increased to four all told, were Pike's pride, for he exclaims on one occasion: "Our four boats under full sail, their flags streaming before the wind, were altogether a prospect so variegated and romantic that a man may scarce expect to enjoy such a one but twice or thrice in the course of his life." They sailed across Lake Pepin with violins playing, and other music, and altogether seemed to enjoy their voyage. In this region Jonathan Carver was supposed to have travelled in 1766-68, and since that time the fur traders from the north and north-east had operated all over it. When Lewis and Clark were at their Fort Mandan, a man named Haney visited the place, and they obtained from him "much geographical information with regard to the country between the Missouri and Mississippi and the various tribes of Sioux who inhabit it." Pike found there a number of agents and trappers belonging to the British fur companies and protested against their occupying the country. Everything was amicable between them, and after a winter spent in the region Pike returned, by the river, to St. Louis, the last of April, 1806, about the time that Lewis and Clark were toiling up the Columbia on their return.
A little more than two months before Lewis and Clark arrived at St. Louis, Pike was again on the march, this time with his steps directed toward the mighty peak which now bears his name, and which afterwards evolved itself into the famous motto of the caravans, "Pike's peak or bust." It was July 15, 1806, when he made his start on this traverse of the plains and mountains, apparently with no information as to the route, with no guides, and with no proper equipment. Of course he had no intention of blundering around the high mountains in dead of winter, but it was an impossibility for any party to accomplish the journey out to the head of Red River and back before cold weather should set in, therefore, with all the uncertainty, they should have been provided with winter clothing, but they had nothing of the kind. I should say they had hardly enough of anything for even a summer campaign. However, where ignorance is bliss, preliminary suffering is avoided. He was directed to escort a number of rescued Amerind captives back to their tribe, and with these he left St. Louis. The whole party consisted of one lieutenant, one surgeon, one sergeant, two corporals, sixteen privates, one interpreter, and fifty-one natives of all ages. Up the Missouri, which somebody has styled the "Mother of Floods,"[69] in two boats, they worked their way for six weeks to the Osage River. Here the boats were sold for a hundred dollars and horses were purchased with which to continue.
The Spaniards on this expedition kept a jealous eye, as indeed they did on any party from the United States into the region beyond the Missouri.[70] A strong force in fact had been sent to intercept Pike. This had gone as far as the Sabine, and then northerly to the Republican fork, the very place where Pike soon after arrived and found the trail of his prospective captors. The relations of the United States and Spain were much strained owing to the Louisiana transaction. The Spaniards were endeavouring to limit Louisiana as much as possible, while on the other hand the claims of the United States were as broad as the most liberal conception of the extent of Louisiana could formulate, and as Louisiana never had possessed any real demarkation it is easy to see how far apart the two countries on this subject were. In the region farther down the river, in the Texas and Orleans districts, the situation was precarious. While Pike was fitting out, information of his intentions was forwarded by Spanish agents to their Government. The large armed force whose trail Pike had now fallen upon was the result. According to Pike, who afterwards learned all about it from its commander, Malgares, it had three objects: first, to descend Red River, and if Pike was met to turn him back; second, to explore the country to the Missouri; third, to visit a number of the native tribes, make them presents, and renew the chain of ancient friendship between "his most catholic majesty and the red people." Furthermore, the commanding officer had orders to compel all parties in this country to retire to the acknowledged territory of the United States, or to make prisoners of them and take them to New Mexico. So the position of Spain with regard to the region lying along the Missouri River was entirely plain.
It was fortunate that they did not meet with Pike till he was worn out by exposure and famine, for he certainly would have given battle. But Malgares, who was a man of "large fortune, generous, well educated, with a high sense of honour," was later under different circumstances very kind to Pike, and to the surgeon, Dr. Robinson, so that both became much attached to him.
On his march he gathered in every American trader and trapper he found and some of these he sent to Nachitoches, a Spanish post in Texas, where Pike afterwards found them existing in abject poverty. The army was made up of one hundred dragoons from the province of Biscay, who had fitted out on reaching Santa Fé, and were there joined by five hundred mounted militia, equipped for six months. Each man led two horses and a mule, making in all over two thousand head of stock. Down Red River they had gone some 233 miles, before turning to the north-east to reach the Arkansas, where Malgares left 240 of his men with the worn-out stock, while with the rest he kept on to the village of the Pawnee Republic, on the Republican fork of the Kansas River, where he held councils with various tribes of Pawnees. It was about here that the unfortunate Villazur party met its sad fate in 1720, and the recollection of that affair now produced in the Spanish soldiers a desire rather to revenge the treachery against Villazur by destroying the Pawnees, than to promote the repairing of the slender links of the ancient amity chain. In addition to this they seem to have grown discontented. These considerations and the lame condition of the stock prevented Malgares from advancing farther or from waiting to intercept Pike, and he was obliged to take the back track; a lucky thing for the small American party. By October he was in Santa Fé, where his militia disbanded, but he remained there with the regular troops. He was well out of Pike's way, as it was the end of September before the American party came upon the trail of the Spaniards on the Republican fork.
A Glade for the Weary. Altitude 8000 Feet.