LIEUTENANT PIKE.
[Sidenote: 1803]
Enters the great Napoleon. He is in the midst of his never-ending
wars. He is fighting England and having a hard time. Spain has ceded
the Louisiana Territory to France, Louisiana as it was then, with its
one million square miles of territory, and not Louisiana as it is now,
with less than fifty thousand square miles, only one-twentieth its
original size. Napoleon sold us Louisiana in 1803, because he needed
the Sixteen Million Dollars we paid him for it, and it is said that he
stated, that in this transfer of territory he would make us so
powerful as a nation, that we would accomplish the downfall of
England, his hereditary enemy, after he was in his grave. St. Louis
had been started by the early French Fur Traders in 1764, and it took
it forty-one years to reach a population of two hundred and fifty
families. They had called it "Pain Court," which means, "short of
bread."
It was in 1804, that the formal transfer of the Louisiana Territory
had been made at St. Louis, first from Spain to France, and then from
France to the United States. Time was unimportant in those days, and
although France had owned her possessions in the New World for two
years, she had not taken formal possession until the day of the
transfer to the United States. This was accomplished on the morning of
March 9, 1804, with such ceremony as was possible in that primitive
community. Down came the Flag of Spain! Up went the Flag of France!
Down came the Flag of France, and up went the Stars and Stripes to
float forever! So at last, after three hundred years, was launched on
its brilliant career, the country that Pope Alexander VI had given to
Spain, and which she had lacked the ability to develop, and the
capacity to govern. One hundred years later, the incident of the
lowering and raising of the flags was celebrated on that very spot, by
one of the greatest displays of modern times. To make it a fitting
centennial celebration, St. Louis voted Five Million Dollars in bonds;
there was a stock subscription of Five Million Dollars; the Government
appropriated Five Million Dollars; and the State of Missouri donated
One Million Dollars, making a total of the exact sum that was
originally paid for a territory, out of which fourteen states and two
territories have since been carved, that now contain the homes of
18,222,500 people, nearly a fifth of the 92,972,267 population of the
United States, a population that in 1804 was but 6,081,040.
In all these years, the Spanish did little in New Spain to extend and
colonize the country. The Spanish race seemed to have lacked the
pioneer instinct; they were a luxury loving people, and did not
possess the hardy qualities and stout hearts that could conquer
unmurmuringly nature's comparatively insurmountable barriers. They
liked the plunder that had intoxicated them under the rule of Cortez,
and the enslavement of the humble and effeminate natives of a
territory whose climatic surroundings sapped their strength and made
them weak. The subjugation of the active and warlike northern Indians
was a very different thing, much to the surprise and disappointment of
the Spanish. They would fight. Large in stature as Coronado states in
his letter to the King, they were made of stern stuff, and their
fierce attitude interposed a permanent barrier to the encroachments of
the Spaniards from the south. They were never meant to be enslaved.
Think of making a menial of a Comanche, or an Apache! Think of old
Geronimo, a body servant! Think of taming a full-grown wild cat, with
its glaring eyes, its tearing teeth, and scratching claws!
When the Apaches found that the Spaniards were repopulating the West
Indies with slaves from the mainland of this Continent, and had
captured some of their own tribe and carried them into captivity, the
indignation and wrath of these natives knew no bounds. They could
fight like demons, and when cornered they could destroy themselves,
but they could never be taken alive and enslaved. If this country had
been inhabited by the docile and easily subdued negroes, we would have
felt the domineering blight of Spain to this day. The reason Spain
failed to rivet its paralyzing hold upon this nation was because the
negro was not a native of this country, but a transplantment from
Africa.
So the Spaniards made no further efforts to penetrate northward into a
territory which they claimed to be uninhabitable for civilized man.
They had made but one settlement--Santa Fe in 1605, which, next to St.
Augustine, Florida, is the oldest town in the United States. Near
Santa Fe, Coronado twice wintered his army on the Rio Grande, in the
Province of Tiguex. For eighty-five years the Spaniards possessed
Santa Fe, when, in 1690, there was an uprising of the Indians, who
captured the town, burned the buildings, and massacred or drove out
its inhabitants. It was at this time that valuable manuscripts are
supposed to have been burned, that might have had to do with
Coronado's expedition. The Spaniards always made triplicate copies of
their State papers, for their better preservation, and it is copies of
these papers that the Archaeological Society hopes to unearth, in the
mouldy and cob-webbed cellars under the monasteries of Old Spain. For
two years, the Indians held Santa Fe, when, defeated in battle, they
again gave way to the Spaniards, who later on, were to abdicate in
favor of the United States.
[Sidenote: 1805]
Washington made history at Trenton, New Jersey, in 1776, by the
capture of a body of Hessian soldiers. About two years afterwards a
child was born in that village whose name must have been given it by a
pious mother with her Bible on her knee, and not, I ween, by the
father, Captain Pike, of the Revolutionary Army, who would have
doubtless called his son after one of the great generals of that time.
It is in the thirtieth chapter of Genesis, we learn of a Zebulun for
the first time, in the story of the sisters Leah and Rachael.
Zebulon Montgomery Pike went to school at Easton, Pa., and before he
was twenty-one was made a Captain in the Army, which shows that it is
a good thing to have a father with influence. In 1805, Pike started,
under the authority of President Jefferson, on an expedition to
discover the source of the Mississippi River. His trip, lasting nine
months, was successful, and upon his return, he started almost
immediately with a party to explore geographically the Louisiana
Purchase. He outfitted at St. Louis, which was the last western point
where supplies could be obtained.
In Lieutenant Pike's party there were twenty-four, including a guide
and interpreter, and he had in his care fifty-one Indians whom he was
to return to their tribe, the Government having rescued them from
other tribes who had made them prisoners. He went by sail boats up the
Missouri River from St. Louis, while the Indians traveled by land, the
two parties camping near each other at night. He kept a journal in
which he made a daily record of events, which he copied and sent in
with his report of the expedition to the Government after his return.
Some excerpts are given to help the reader to a better and closer
knowledge of the man and the times. He records, as he passed through
Missouri, his impression of that State in this language:
"These vast plains of the Western Hemisphere may become in time as
celebrated as the sandy deserts of Africa, but from these immense
prairies may arise one great advantage to the United States, the
restriction of our population to some certain limits and thereby a
continuance of the Union. Our citizens being so prone to rambling and
extending themselves on the frontier, will, through necessity, be
constrained to limit their extent on the West to the borders of the
Mississippi and the Missouri, while they leave the prairies incapable
of cultivation to the wandering and uncivilized aborigines of the
country."
With regard to the Indians placed in his care, we read this:
"* * * Every morning we were awakened by the mourning of the savages,
who commenced crying about daylight and continued their lamentation
for the space of an hour. I made inquiry of my interpreter with
respect to this practice and was informed that it was a custom not
only with those who had recently lost their relatives, but also with
others, who recalled to mind the loss of some friend, dead long since,
who joined the mourners purely from sympathy. They appeared extremely
affected, tears ran down their cheeks and they sobbed bitterly, but in
a moment they dry their cheeks and cease their cries."
Of these same Indians, upon being turned over to their tribe, he says:
"Lieutenant Wilkinson informed me that their meeting was very tender
and affectionate. Wives throwing themselves into the arms of their
husbands; parents embracing their children and children their parents;
brothers and sisters meeting--one from captivity, the other from the
towns; at the same time returning thanks to the good God for having
brought them once more together."
In Missouri, he records his first sight of a slaughter of animals by
the Indians:
"After proceeding about a mile, we discovered a herd of elk which we
pursued; they took back in sight of the Pawnees who immediately
mounted fifty or sixty young men and joined in the pursuit; then for
the first time in my life, I saw animals slaughtered by the true
savages by their original weapons, bows and arrows. They buried the
arrow up to the plume in the animal."
The Indians called the prairie dog the "wish-ton-wish" because of
their shrill bark. He says, in part, of these little animals:
"Their holes descend in a spiral form, on which account I could never
ascertain their depth; but I once had 140 kettles of water poured
into one of them in order to drive out the occupant but without
effect. * * * We killed great numbers of these animals with our rifles
and found them excellent meat after they were exposed a night or two
to the frost by which means the rankness acquired by their
subterranean dwelling is corrected."
While still in Missouri we read from his diary this:
"Friday 12th of September.--Commenced our march at 7:00 o'clock and
passed some very rough flint hills; my feet blistered and were very
sore. Standing on a hill, I beheld in one view below me, buffaloes,
elks, deer, cabrie, and panther. Encamped on the main branch of Grand
River which has very steep banks and was deep. Doctor Robinson,
Bradley and Baromi arrived after dusk, having killed three buffaloes,
which with one I had killed and two by the Indians, made in all six.
The Indians alleging it was the Kansas Hunting Ground, said they would
destroy all the game they possibly could. Distance advanced eighteen
miles."
In Missouri also, in addition to the many species of game which he
daily describes in his journal, he speaks of the wild turkeys. A
mistaken idea exists among some as to how this bird found its way to
the western plains and mountains. In the Eastern States, before the
time of easy transportation or cold storage, dealers would go through
the country gathering the turkeys from the farmers, and driving them
along the public highways to market, in great droves like sheep. From
that, an impression went abroad that later, a drove of turkeys,
crossing the plains to California, became scattered and wild. The
facts are, wild turkeys were plentiful in New Spain and had been
domesticated by the Aztecs before the conquest of Mexico by Cortez.
They were never seen in England until 1541, when they reached there
from New Spain, the very year Coronado was marching with his army
towards Colorado. The highly ornamented head dresses of the Indians,
which were first made from the feathers of the eagles and the owls,
were later made from the glossy and richly hued feathers of the wild
turkey.
Lieutenant Pike and his party passed on westward into Kansas and
followed the Arkansas River into Colorado. Soon after he entered our
State, near the place where the Purgatoire River empties into the
Arkansas, he discovered the Rocky Mountains, then known as the Mexican
Mountains. A legend containing a note of sadness comes to us out the
buried centuries. Soldiers going from Santa Fe to St. Augustine with
gold for the army were never heard of beyond the junction of the
Arkansas and Purgatoire Rivers. As the months and years passed with no
tidings of the soldiers, a Priest named one of the rivers El Rio de
las Animas Perdidas--the River of Lost Souls. The French trappers
later changed the name to Purgatoire. Long afterwards it is said that
an Indian confessed to a Priest that the Indians had surrounded the
men and killed every one. Much gold has been spent since that day
searching for the gold the soldiers were supposed to have buried when
they knew they were to be attacked.
It was on the afternoon of November 15, 1805, that, looking to the
northwest, Pike saw what he took to be a small blue cloud. Then with a
glass he discovered that it was a peak, towering above all the
surrounding heights, and which then and after, his party spoke of as
the Grand Peak. It was known by all the Indian tribes for hundreds of
miles around, and the early hunters and trappers told that it was so
high, the clouds could not get between it and the sky. It later became
known as "Pike's Peak." Two days after the discovery of this Peak,
whose altitude is 14,147 feet, he tells in his journal of the feast of
marrow bones, and how deceptive distance is in this rarified air:
"Monday, 17th November.--Marched at our usual hour; pushed on with an
idea of arriving at the mountains but found at night no visible
difference in their appearance from what we had observed yesterday.
One of our horses gave out and was left in a ravine not being able to
ascend the hill, but I sent back for him and had him brought to the
camp. Distance advanced twenty-three miles and a half.
"Tuesday, 18th of November.--As we discovered fresh signs of the
savages, we concluded it best to stop and kill some meat for fear we
should get into a country where we could not obtain game. Sent out the
hunters. I walked myself to an eminence from whence I took the courses
to the different mountains and a small sketch of their appearance. In
the evening found the hunters had killed without mercy, having slain
seventeen buffaloes and wounded at least twenty more.
"Wednesday, 19th of November.--Having several carcasses brought in, I
gave out sufficient meat to last this month. I found it expedient to
remain and dry the meat for our horses were getting very weak, and the
one died which was brought in yesterday. Had a general feast of marrow
bones. One hundred and thirty-six of them furnishing the repast.
"Saturday, 22d of November.--* * * We made for the woods and unloaded
our horses, and the two leaders endeavored to arrange the party; it was
with great difficulty they got them tranquil and not until there had
been a bow or two bent on the occasion. When in some order, we found
them to be sixty warriors, half with fire arms and half with bows and
arrows and lances. Our party was in all sixteen * * * Finding this, we
determined to protect ourselves as far as was in our power and the
affair began to wear a serious aspect. I ordered my men to take their
arms and separate themselves from the savages; at the same time
declaring I would kill the first man who touched our baggage. * * *"
It was on November 27th that he arrived at the base of Pike's Peak,
and because of the lateness of the season could not ascend it.
Instead, he reached the summit of Cheyenne Mountain, and looked up to
the grand pinnacle that stood out so grandly majestic, seeming so
close, yet estimated by him to be fifteen or sixteen miles away. He
looked down on the billowy clouds below, that rose and lowered like
the tossing of mighty waves in a storm at sea. He stood speechlessly
gazing on such grandeur as his eyes had never yet beheld, and he felt
the awe, and immensity, and sublimity of it, down to the end of his
life. It was the same Cheyenne Mountain where Helen Hunt, the writer,
so loved to be. Here, she was enthralled with the beauty and majesty
that surrounded her, and here she received the inspiration for those
glowing descriptions of nature as she saw it in its restful moods, and
as she pictured it in its times of frenzy. Her love for that mountain
was so great, that on its bosom, high up near the stars, beneath the
trees that spoke to her as they rustled in the summer's breeze, her
grave was made and there she was buried according to her wish.
All winter, Pike prospected the mountains and the rivers, in the midst
of such suffering as few people endure and survive. These few notes
from his diary tell the story:
"Wednesday, 24th of December.--* * * About eleven o'clock met Dr.
Robinson on a prairie, who informed me that he and Baromi had been
absent from the party two days without killing anything, also without
eating * * *
"Thursday, 25th of December.--* * * We had before been occasionally
accustomed to some degree of relaxation and extra enjoyments; but the
case was now far different; eight hundred miles from the frontiers of
our country in the most inclement season of the year; not one person
properly clothed for the winter; many without blankets, having been
obliged to cut them up for socks and other articles; lying down, too,
at night on the snow or wet ground, one side burning, whilst the other
was pierced with the cold wind; that was briefly the situation of the
party; while some were endeavoring to make a miserable substitute of
raw buffalo hide for shoes and other covering. * * *
[Illustration: Pike Leaving the Two Comrades with Frozen Feet at the
Log Fort They Built Near Canon City.]
"Tuesday, 20th of January.--The doctor and all the men able to march
returned to the buffalo to bring in the remainder of the meat. On
examining the feet of those who were frozen, we found it impossible
for two of them to proceed, and two others only without loads by the
help of a stick. One of the former was my waiter, a promising young
lad of twenty, whose feet were so badly frozen as to present every
possibility of his losing them. The doctor and party returned toward
evening loaded with the buffalo meat.
"Tuesday, 17th of February.--* * * This evening the corporal and three
of the men arrived, who had been sent back to the camp of their frozen
companions. They informed me that two more would arrive the next day,
one of them was Menaugh, who had been left alone on the 27th of
January; but the other two, Dougherty and Spark, were unable to come.
They said that they had hailed them with tears of joy and were in
despair when they again left them with a chance of never seeing them
more. They sent on to me some of the bones taken out of their feet and
conjured me by all that was sacred not to leave them to perish far
from the civilized world. Oh! little did they know my heart if they
could suspect me of conduct so ungenerous! No, before they should be
left, I would for months have carried the end of a litter in order to
secure them the happiness of once more seeing their native homes and
being received in the bosom of a grateful country. Thus these poor
fellows are to be invalids for life, made infirm at the commencement
of manhood and in the prime of their course; doomed to pass the
remainder of their days in misery and want. For what is the pension?
Not sufficient to buy a man his victuals! What man would even lose the
smallest of his joints for such a trifling pittance?"
The Louisiana Purchase had left a disputed boundary, which, with other
things, threatened war between the United States and Spain. When Pike
crossed over the Rocky Mountains to the West side, he was exploring
disputed territory, though he was lost and thought he was on the Red
River, instead of the Rio Grande, the former being within the limits
of the Louisiana Purchase. He had passed that River, however, above
its source, and had gotten over on the Rio Grande, which territory was
still claimed by Spain. Had he found the Red River, it was his
intention to build rafts and follow it towards its junction with the
Mississippi, landing on his way at Nachitoches in Louisiana, which is
about one hundred and fifteen miles west of Natchez--that being the
Military Post to which he was to report. Notice of his presence in the
Mountains had reached Santa Fe, where Spanish soldiers were stationed.
The Governor sent an officer and fifty dragoons to bring him out. He
was taken south to Santa Fe, going peaceably, but all the time
protesting in the name of his Government at the indignity. Here he was
questioned, his papers examined, and those in authority being
undecided as to how to handle the matter because of its national
character, they sent him far away to the south, to Chihuahua in New
Spain, the headquarters of the Military Chief of Upper Mexico, where
he arrived April 2d. After being detained for some days, all his
papers again gone over in a vain endeavor to find something
incriminating, it was determined to send him East to his destination,
with an escort, his party, however, not to be permitted to accompany
him, but to be sent after him.
In July, 1806, he arrived at Nachitoches, where he was warmly welcomed
by his fellow officers. A little later he received a letter of thanks
from the Government. He was made a Major in the Army in 1808;
Lieutenant Colonel in 1809; Deputy Quartermaster-General and Colonel
both, in 1812; Brigadier General in 1813. In that year he was sent by
the Government on an expedition against York in Upper Canada, at the
time of our second war with England. Here a magazine of the Fort
exploded, a mass of stone fell on him and crushed him, and he died at
the age of thirty-five. In his pocket was found a little volume
containing a touching admonition to his son. He urged that he regard
his honor above everything else, and that he be ready to die for his
country at any time.
Lieutenant Pike had a pleasing personality, and had he lived, he would
doubtless have been prominent in the affairs of the Government. He had
strong features, keen kindly eyes, firm chin, high forehead, a nose
that showed breeding, was clean shaven, had closely cropped hair
combed straight back, and his picture somewhat resembles the portrait
of Thomas Jefferson, once President of the United States. His modesty
would not permit the giving of his own untarnished name to the great
Peak that through the ages will proudly bear his name. The name came
from a popular demand of the people, who were here at an early date,
and who did away with the name of "James Peak" which Major Long gave
it in honor of one of his own exploring party.
[Illustration: One of the Approaches to Cheyenne Mountain, Pike's Peak
in the Background.]
There is a singular coincidence attached to the name of this Peak. A
pike in former times was the name given to anything with a sharp
point. A road with toll gates was called a pike, because the gate
consisted of a pole that swung up with the small end pointing towards
the sky. In olden times the name of pike, instead of peak, was given
to all summits of mountains. Gradually the word pike gave way to peak,
and the former finally became obsolete. So in the name of Pike's Peak,
we have it so securely named, that even the highest legislation in the
land could not take away from it the name of Pike. And in this
towering peak and its companions, if Prof. Agassiz is right, we have
the first dry land that was lifted out of the great world's waste of
waters. Colorado is to be congratulated that it has a monument in its
midst that will forever commemorate the memory of a good man, who was
intellectually, physically and morally clean and strong; who was
faithful to every trust; tender in his sympathies; lofty in his ideals
and character; and who loved his country so much, that he was willing
to give it all he had--his life.