Review by Ed Quillen
Local History -April 2006 -Colorado Central Magazine
The Southwestern Journals of Zebulon Pike 1806-1807
Edited by Stephen Harding Hart and Archer Butler Hulbert
New introduction by Mark L. Gardner
Published in 2006 by the University of New Mexico Press
ISBN 0826333907
UNLESS YOU’VE BEEN holed up in a remote cave, you’ve doubtless learned that this year and next are the bicentennial of the first American expedition into this part of the world. In the late summer of 1806, Capt. Zebulon Montgomery Pike led a small force west from St. Louis. His orders, in part, were to cross the prairies to the Arkansas River, ascend it to its source, then proceed south to the headwaters of the Red River (the squiggly part of today’s boundary between Texas and Oklahoma) and follow it down to its junction with the Mississippi.
He did manage to find the source of the Arkansas in late 1806, except he thought it was the Red at the time. In early 1807 he was captured in the San Luis Valley by Spanish soldiers. He and his men were taken to Santa Fé, then down the Rio Grande to Chihuahua, before being returned to American soil. Since Spain kept its New World colonies sequestered from the rest of the world, not allowing most visitors to leave, Pike provided a first-hand account of a remote and mysterious forbidden realm.
To put it mildly, this was quite an adventure. The best way to follow it, of course, is to start with Pike’s journal, a best-seller in 1810. Issued in three volumes then, it covered not just the expedition into Spanish territory, but also the preceding year’s journey north from St. Louis to find the source of the Mississippi.
A decade ago, finding the journal wasn’t a problem. Dover, the reprint house, offered a two-volume set, complete with a pocket full of big maps to be unfolded, for less than $30.
But Dover, alas, did not keep the books in print even as the bicentennial approached; so Pike’s journal was difficult to find.
That has been remedied now. The University of New Mexico Press has just issued the relevant (for us, anyway) portion of Pike’s account, based on a 1935 edition edited by two Colorado historians and augmented with a new introduction by Mark L. Gardner of Cascade.
If I were more of a scholar, we could compare the jumbled original of 1810 to the 1895 edition prepared by Elliott Coues, which was the basis for the 1935 Hart and Hulbert edition, which is reissued in this edition with a modern introduction. But that would be of interest only to serious scholars.
SUFFICE IT TO SAY that the copious notes help us understand Pike’s route better, and make it clear that portions of it are still subject to debate, such as his course when he attempted to climb the “Grand Peak” that has borne his name for the past 160 years, or the precise location of his Christmas camp north of Salida.
Pike’s general route around here, in modern terms, was up the Arkansas to Cañon City and the Royal Gorge, north to South Park, west across Trout Creek Pass to the Arkansas, down the Arkansas to the Royal Gorge and Cañon City, up Grape Creek and across the Wet Mountain Valley, then over Medano Pass to a primitive stockade his men built on the Rio Conejos, where the Spanish found him.
You don’t need the notes to get a feel for Pike. Just reading along, youll see a young, headstrong, and ambitious soldier. He wants to be a hero. He drives his men hard and they suffer, losing flesh to frostbite as they trudge through waist-deep snow with 70-pound packs in subzero weather. He threatens to shoot one man for complaining. He insists on his dignity as he is taken prisoner by the Spanish.
But he’s also something of a romantic, as with this description of the San Luis Valley: “one of the most sublime and beautiful inland prospects ever presented to the eyes of man. the great and lofty mountains covered with eternal snows, seemed to surround the luxuriant vale, crowned with perennial flowers, like a terrestrial paradise, shut out from the view of man.”
You can read this book as an adventure, with lots of suspense about whether the hunters will return with meat in time to keep the party from starving to death. Or you can peruse it to expand your grasp of American history. But perhaps of most interest to local readers is Pike’s description of this area back when it was known only to the Utes and an occasional Spanish patrol, half a century before the miners and stockmen arrived.
Where Salida is today, Pike saw that the river spread considerably, and formed “several small Islands, a large stream [South Arkansas] enters from the south.” It was not frequented by Indians, since the going was rough the next day and there were “no roads of buffalo, or sign of horses. I am convinced that neither those animals, nor the aborigines of the country, ever take this route, to go from the source of the river out of the mountains, but that they must cross one of the chains to the right [Poncha Pass] or left, and find a smoother tract to the lower country.”
Pike reports that the river was generally iced over as far down as Parkdale, which inspires some thought because I’ve never seen the river iced over as far up as Salida.
Was that just a hard winter in 1806-07? Or is it evidence of global warming? Or do our activities (i.e. running water through homes and sewage-treatment plants before it returns to the river) warm the water just enough to keep the river from freezing over?
Pike can’t answer that for us, but he does provide one of the first recorded views of our “terrestrial paradise.” Gardner’s introduction argues that Pike’s expedition has been given less attention than it deserves by the American historical establishment, especially in comparison to Lewis and Clark. Pike, after all, opened the path for the Mexican War.
This is a great American adventure story, and now it’s back in print. Reading it is the best way to start celebrating the Pike Bicentennial.
