Zebulon Montgomery Pike

Born January 5, 1779
Lamberton, New Jersey

Died April 27, 1813
York, Canada

Explorer, army officer

Acareer army officer who gained fame for his expeditions through Minnesota, Colorado, New Mexico and other areas in the years before the War of 1812, Zebulon Montgomery Pike later distinguished himself as a wartime general. He led the U.S. forces that attacked York, Canada, in April 1813 and was killed toward the end of that battle. Pike gave his name not only to a U.S. warship, the General Pike, that saw action later in the war, but to Pike's Peak mountain, located near Pueblo, Colorado.

An ambitious young soldier

The son of Major Zebulon Pike and Isabella Brown, Zebulon Montgomery Pike was born in Lamberton, New Jersey (now part of Trenton). His family had emigrated (came from another country) to the United States in 1635 and went on to establish a long military tradition. His ancestor Captain John Pike had fought in the early colonial wars against the Native Americans, and his father served in the American Revolution (1775-83) and was a career army officer.

For most of his childhood Pike's family lived in New Jersey and western Pennsylvania. When he was fourteen, his father was assigned to Fort Washington on the Ohio frontier. The elder Pike's commander was General James Wilkinson (1757-1825), who would later gain notoriety as a spy for the Spanish and as an unpopular commander during the War of 1812. Eager to play the role of a dashing soldier like his father, young Pike joined the army at fifteen. He served briefly under his father, then under Revolutionary War hero General "Mad Anthony" Wayne (1745-1796), who had earned his nickname for his bravery and quick temper.

Under Wayne's command, Pike helped to ferry supplies to forts along the Miami River. From 1795 to 1799 he did the same kind of work on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, gaining some valuable experience in supervision and serving as an agent for the private contractors who supplied the army with food, clothing, and other provisions. He was commissioned as an ensign (the lowest-ranking officer) in the army's Second Infantry in 1799 and was made a first lieutenant a year later, when he was twenty. Pike served a few uneventful years with the frontier army, waiting for a chance to make his name.

During this period, Pike was trying to augment his patchy education by studying French, Latin, Spanish, mathematics, and science on his own. In March 1801 he eloped with his cousin Clarissa Brown, despite her father's disapproval. The couple would have five children, but only one daughter, Clarissa, would survive longer than her father (Clarissa would marry the son of William Henry Harrison [1773-1841; see biographical entry], another major figure in the War of 1812).

Seeking the source of the Mississippi River

In 1803 the United States acquired a huge expanse of territory from France (the acquisition was called theLouisiana Purchase; see chapter 2), nearly doubling the size of the nation. Americans were eager to know what lay in this vast wilderness, and in 1804 President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) sent an expedition headed by Meriweather Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clark (1770-1838) to survey the new territory. Meanwhile, General Wilkinson—whom Jefferson had appointed governor of Louisiana—was also interested in sponsoring an expedition. Pike was assigned the task of locating the source of the Mississippi River thought to be somewhere in the newly acquired territory.

Pike left St. Louis (in what is now Missouri) on August 9, 1805, accompanied by twenty men and carrying enough provisions to last four months. Traveling along the Mississippi in a seventy-foot keelboat (a large, shallow boat often used to transport goods up and down rivers) they proceeded north into what is now the state of Minnesota. By this time, the bitterly cold weather of the northern winter had set in, so the expedition halted near the Falls of Saint Anthony (close to the present-day cities of Saint Paul and Minneapolis).

They built a rough stockade, and then Pike and some of his men continued moving north, dragging their supplies through the snow on a sled. In early February they found Leech Lake in northern Minnesota, and Pike decided that this was the source of the Mississippi River (he was wrong; actually the source is located a little west, at Lake Itasca). Pike visited several British fur trading posts and informed the traders that they were trespassing on U.S property; he also met with various Native American tribes in the area. Then he returned to St. Louis, arriving on April 30, 1806.

Another expedition

Less than three months later, Pike embarked on another journey. This time, Wilkinson instructed him to look for the sources of the Arkansas and Red Rivers. He also was to gather information about the Spanish settlements in New Mexico. At this time Spain was still in control of a major portion of what would eventually become part of the United States, including Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and California. Relations between Spain and the United States were somewhat uneasy, and Pike was told not to offend or alarm the Spanish.

Leaving St. Louis on July 16 with a crew of twenty-three men (including Wilkinson's son), Pike headed west, following a route up the Missouri and Osage rivers in central Missouri to the Arkansas River. On November 15 the expedition sighted the Rocky Mountains, and a week later they reached the site of what would become Pueblo, Colorado. They paused briefly and attempted to climb to the top of the tallest mountain in the Rocky Mountain range. They were not successful, and Pike claimed that no one would be able to scale this mountain. Fourteen years later Major Stephen Long's expedition would reach the top of the mountain eventually called Pike's Peak.

Pike explored the headwaters (source) of the Arkansas River and then turned south in search of the Red River's source. The expedition crossed the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in southern Colorado, crossing into the Spanish territory of New Mexico. On the banks of the Conejos River (a tributary of the much larger Rio Grande) they built a fort.

Spanish authorities became concerned about Pike's presence, although he assured them he was only there to protect the area from Native Americans. He was taken to Sante Fe and then to Chihuahua, where he was questioned by the chief commander of the region. Pike's papers (including his records of the expedition) were taken from him, so that he later had to reconstruct them from memory as well as from some notes he managed to hide in gun barrels (Pike's papers were returned to the U.S. government about one hundred years later). Pike was to return to Natchitoches, Louisiana, about a year later.

Returning to a controversy

While Pike was in New Mexico, a scandal had erupted over the alleged treasonous (assisting the enemy during war) misdeeds of Aaron Burr (1756-1836), a former vice president of the United States, who was accused of having bought land in the West with the intention of setting up a separate empire there. Wilkinson, Burr's partner in these schemes, had exposed him to Jefferson. Pike's connection to Wilkinson and the timing of his expedition made it look like he might himself be a collaborator.

Pike claimed that he knew nothing about what Burr and Wilkinson had been plotting. He had assumed that the information he had gathered in New Mexico would be used by the U.S. government in the event (which many thought likely) of war with Spain. Secretary of War Henry Dearborn (1751-1829) believed Pike and cleared him of any wrongdoing; nothing could be proven against Wilkinson, either.

The publication of Pike's rather poorly written report on his expedition was overshadowed by that of Lewis and Clark. Nevertheless, Pike's report provided a great deal of useful information about the West. Pike speculated that the Great Plains would never be inhabited by white Americans (the settlers of the late nineteenth century would prove him wrong on that point) and that New Mexico held many opportunities for trade.

A wartime commander

Pike had been promoted to the rank of captain in August 1806; he was made a major in 1809 and a lieutenant colonel in 1810. He served as a battery commander of the army's Sixth Regiment, then as a deputy quartermaster general at New Orleans, again serving under Wilkinson. In April 1811 Pike was given command of the U.S. troops stationed at Baton Rouge. He put them through a rigorous training program, and they performed well at the Battle of Tippecanoe (when U.S. forces fought against an allied Native American force in northern Indiana in November 1811).

The United States declared war against Great Britain in June 1812. The war was provoked by two major issues. The first was Britain's maritime policy of impressment in its war with France. This policy was where British officials boarded U.S. ships to capture deserters from their own navy, often wrongfully taking American citizens in the process. The other issue that led to the war was Great Britain's overly friendly relations with Native Americans. Americans believed that the British were encouraging Native Americans to attack white settlers who were moving west. The Native Americans believed that the settlers were encroaching on (gradually taking over) their land.

At the time the war began, Pike was promoted to the rank of colonel and assigned to lead the Fifteenth Regiment on the Lake Champlain (located between the border of New York and Vermont) frontier. By October, Dearborn and other strategists had decided that the United States would invade Montreal, one of Canada's most important and well defended cities. Pike's six hundred men were ready and waiting at Plattsburg, New York (on the shore of Lake Champlain) when the plan was abandoned.

Pike, however, received permission to lead an advance into Canada on November 21. They met and scattered a small group of Canadian soldiers and Native American warriors, burned the enemy camp, and headed back toward the U.S. border. On the way, Pike's troops had a skirmish with what turned out to be another U.S. force, and there were five casualties (two killed, three wounded).

The Battle of York

In spring 1813 U.S. leaders planned to invade Canada through the cities of Kingston and York (present-day Toronto), both of which were major shipbuilding centers; York also was the capital of upper Canada. Too sick to command the attack on York himself, Dearborn assigned the task to Pike. In preparing his men for the coming battle, Pike gave strict orders that in the event of a victory they were to respect the enemy's personal property; no looting would be tolerated. Loading seventeen hundred troops onto the ships of Commander Isaac Chauncey's (1772-1840) fleet, Pike himself boarded the Madison. From aboard the ship he directed the landing of the troops on the morning of April 27. A company of riflemen was the first to attack. Then Pike jumped into a boat and, after reaching shore, led the charge inland to reach the town's fort. Meanwhile, Chauncey's naval forces backed up the army with covering fire from their ships.

Soon the British commander, General Roger Hale Sheaffe (1763-1851), could see that his troops would not win the battle. He drew his regular soldiers back into the fort and prepared to retreat to Kingston, destroying military equipment in order to keep it out of enemy hands. Foreseeing a victory, Pike halted his troops six hundred feet away from the fort. He was sitting on a tree stump interrogating some prisoners when suddenly there was a terrible explosion. The fort's magazine (ammunition storehouse) had been ignited, and several hundred pounds of gunpowder as well as a huge quantity of ammunition had blown up with great force and deafening noise.

"Honor and glory await my name"

Rocks and other debris were scattered for three hundred yards around the site of the explosion, which killed or severely wounded more than one hundred Americans as well as about forty of the British and Canadian soldiers. Pike was among the victims, when a huge rock fell on him crushing his ribs and breaking his back. He passed his command to Colonel Cromwell Pearce (1772-1852), telling his men "Push on my brave fellows and avenge your general." Pike was carried back to the Madison in great agony. Having heard the victorious cheers of his men as they entered the fort, and having requested that the captured British flag be placed beneath his head, Pike died. His body was taken to Sacket's Harbor and buried at Fort Tompkins.

In the disorder and lack of strong leadership that followed the battle, the American troops forgot Pike's orders and went on a rampage through the town of York, looting and burning public buildings. They were angered over the rumored discovery of a scalp in one of the government offices (it was said that the British paid Native Americans for the scalps of U.S. citizens) and also distraught over the magazine explosion and the death of their beloved general.

In a letter Pike wrote to his father before the battle, he seemed to anticipate the possibility that he might not survive it, as well as the honorable reputation that he would earn for himself, as stated in John K. Mahon's The War of 1812 : "If success attends my steps, honor and glory await my name—if defeat, still should it be said we died like brave men and conferred honor, even in death, on the American Name."

Where to Learn More

Books

Elting, John R. Amateurs to Arms!: A Military History of the War of 1812. Algonquin Press, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991. Reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1995.

Heidler, David S., and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds. Encyclopedia of the War of 1812. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 1997.

Hickey, Donald R. The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989.

Hollon, W. Eugene. The Lost Pathfinder: Zebulon Montgomery Pike. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1949.

Jackson, Donald, ed. The Journals of Zebulon M. Pike, with Letters and Related Documents. 2 vols. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966.

Mahon, John K. The War of 1812. Da Capo Press, 1991. Reprint. Originally published by University of Florida Press, Gainesville, Fla., 1972.

Terrell, John Upton. Zebulon Pike: The Life and Times of an Adventurer. New York: Weybright and Talley, 1968.

Web sites

War of 1812. [Online] http://www.galafilm.com/1812/e/index.html (accessed on November 26, 2001).

Zebulon Pike—Explorers and Travelers. [Online] http://www.kcmuseum.com/explor05.html (accessed on November 26, 2001).

The Lewis and Clark Expedition

With the Louisiana Purchase the United States acquired an area covering more than eight hundred thousand square miles (including the present-day states of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, the part of Minnesota that is west of the Mississippi River, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, most of Kansas, the parts of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado that are east of the Rocky Mountains, and Louisiana west of the Mississippi but including the city of New Orleans) for only fifteen million dollars. With the purchase came a whole new set of problems but also, as President Thomas Jefferson saw it, opportunities.

And opportunities were definitely what he had in mind when he decided to send off his private secretary, Meriweather Lewis and Lewis's friend and fellow army officer William Clark to explore the new territory. The Lewis and Clark expedition was the nation's first overland exploration of the American west and northwest. From May, 1804 to September 1806, Lewis and Clark covered eight thousand miles of land between St. Louis, Missouri, and the coast of what is now Washington state. Jefferson wanted them to find the fabled "Northwest Passage," an inland water route that would make it much easier to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Although they did not find such a passage, their journey was a success and their experiences and observations proved invaluable.

The so-called "Corps of Discovery" set out with forty-eight men, including hunters, soldiers, and boatmen as well as Lewis's African American slave, York. Following the Mississippi River north, they crossed the Rocky Mountains and the present-day states of Montana and Idaho. Then they traveled into what is now Oregon via the Snake and Columbia rivers. They reached the Pacific Ocean in November 1805 and built Fort Clapsop, where they spent the winter. On the return voyage, the corps split into two groups, with Lewis leading a party along the Yellowstone River and Clark venturing into north-central Montana. The two groups reunited before returning to St. Louis.

The Lewis and Clark expedition gathered extensive and carefully documented information on the geography, plants, and animals of the American west. They also learned much about the Native Americans who lived in the areas they covered, and their encounters with these people were remarkably positive. While wintering in North Dakota they had encountered a Shoshone woman named Sacajawea who served as an interpreter and whose presence helped to establish the group's peaceful intentions.

Source: Heidler, David S., and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds. Encyclopedia of the War of 1812. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 1997.