Everyone knows Louis and Clark but Thomas Jefferson sent many explores and surveyors into the new Louisiana Purchase.  One was Zebulon Montgomery Pike who was one of the first white men to explore the vast wilderness that is now Colorado.

Born in New Jersey in 1779, Pike joined the U.S. Army at the age of 20, following in the footsteps of his father, also named Zebulon, who was a veteran of the American Revolution. Like many men of the era, Pike did not get a formal education.  Instead, he used his time in the army to educate himself, carrying books into the wilderness and reading voluminously.

Pike soon became the protégé of James Wilkinson who was also secretly a double agent for Spain. In the summer of 1805, Wilkinson gave Pike the difficult assignment of conducting a survey of the upper Mississippi River. While Lewis and Clark were at the headwaters of the Missouri River far to the West, Pike left St. Louis, Missouri, with orders to explore the Mississippi and purchase sites from American Indians for future military posts.  He took a force of 20 men on a 70-foot keelboat up the Mississippi River, departing from Fort Bellefontaine on August 9, 1805. Pike and his men explored the river into modern-day Minnesota. The expedition returned to St. Louis on April 30, 1806. Pike was only modestly successful in his relations with the Indians but brought back important geographical information about a little-known portion of the new Louisiana Territory.

Pike’s second expedition, 1806-1807, was to escort for some Osage Indian travelers from St. Louis back to their villages and negotiate peace between the Kanza and Pawnee tribes.  Pike was also to explore the headwaters of the Arkansas River, then proceed south, locate the source of the Red River. 

Most importantly, Pike was to ascertain what the Spanish were doing along the poorly defined southwestern border of the Louisiana Purchase. Tensions with Spain were high, and many Americans expected a war.  This was one of several intelligence operations against Spain, using army officers disguised as traders and escorts for Indian Chiefs.  Wilkinson was really up to, however, has remained a mystery. In collaboration with Aaron Burr, Pike’s commander, James Wilkinson, appears to have been planning a coup in the West. Pike almost certainly knew nothing of the Wilkinson/Burr intrigues but was aware that his service as a spy for his country was important. Pike was to scout as close as possible to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  If discovered, he would use the cover story that he had become lost while en route to Natchitoches, Louisiana.

Zebulon Pike set out on July 15, 1806, with 18 enlisted men, a volunteer physician, an interpreter, and one other officer, James Wilkinson’s son – Lt. James Biddle Wilkinson.  The group made their way across Missouri, returning the Osage people to their villages.  Upon reaching the Arkansas River, Lieutenant Wilkinson left the party with five men, returning successfully to St. Louis despite three desertions. Pike and the 15 others started up the Arkansas River on October 28, following the trail of a troop of Spanish cavalry.

On November 11, Pike made a bold decision; even though his party did not have the clothing, equipment, or supplies for a winter expedition, they would press on.  Proceeding nearly due west, they reached the site of modern-day Pueblo, Colorado, on November 23. Fascinated with a blue peak in the Rocky Mountains to the west, leaving the bulk of the men at a base camp Pike explored the mountain.  He spent several days trying to reach the peak but the lack of winter clothing and food eventually drove him back to the base camp. Zebulon Pike never set foot on the mountain that would bear his name — Pike’s Peak.

Two months later, the party found the source of the Arkansas, which they had been sent to do, and returned back east, their job for the army completed. On their way back to the United States, Pike and his party were captured by the Spanish and taken to Santa Fe. After five months in captivity, the men were released.

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