" 

GEN. ZEBULON PIKE, EXPLORER 
Who Had More to Do with the Opening to Settlement 
of the West Than Is Popularly Accorded Him 
BY EUGENE PARSONS 
GEIZZ=1HE Pikes Peak celebration, 
T to be held in Colorado 
Springs during the last week 
+; of September, will serve to 
recall what men suffered and 
endured in the early days of 
the Republic, when the West 
was but a waste wilderness, 
the home of savages and buf- 
faloes. 
Zebulon Montgomery Pike 
one might almost say was a 
born explorer. He was a resourceful man, 
undaunted by perils. He was ambitious to 
serve his country and ready for any daring 
enterprise, however arduous, that would 
afford him an opportunity to be useful. In 
the performance of his duty he was a strict 
disciplinarian, and yet he was like a father 
to the soldiers under his command. He 
shared dangers and privations with those 
who accompanied him on his expeditions. 
Perhaps the most striking quality of the 
man was goaheaditiveness. Says Dr. Coues, 
the learned editor of Pike’s journals: 
“Pike had to the last degree the first 
qualification of a traveler—go; people who 
lack plenty of that should stay at home. 
That he was a prudent or judicious traveler 
can hardly be said; he must have been a 
terrible fellow to push, merciless on his 
men and especially on himself. He took all 
the chances per aspera, when some of the 
roughest things might have been smoothed 
or avoided had his foresight been as good as 
his hindsight. He blew up things with gun- 
powder once, and it is a wonder he was not 
blown up on the 4th of January, 1806, 
when the tents caught fire in the night, 
instead of being only burnt out. He missed 
very few of the accidents that the spirits of 
fire, air, earth and water could conspire to 
throw in his way. . . However, he 
got through all right, and got his men 
through, too.” 

When in his teens Pike entered the army. 
From lieutenant he rose to be brigadier- 
general. Great hopes were entertained for 
his future as a commander when his life was 
suddenly cut short by the explosion of a 
powder magazine at York, Canada, in 1813. 
Dying at the age of thirty-four, he had 
achieved an everlasting renown. 
Lieutenant Pike was only twenty-six years 
old when he was chosen to head the expedi- 
tion to the sources of the Mississippi. It was 
a military enterprise and he was accom- 
panied by twenty soldiers. This is the first 
entry in his journal (edited by Coues): 
“Sailed from my encampment near St. 
Louis, at 4 P.M., on Friday, the oth of 
August, 1805, with one sergeant, two cor- 
porals and seventeen privates in a keel-boat 
seventy feet long provisioned for four 
months.”’ 
Day by day they sailed some twenty miles, 
more or less, when not detained by accidents 
or by councils with Indians. The boat often 
stuck fast on logs or sandbars. ‘‘Embarked 
early and made fine way,” he writes August 
19, “but at nine o’clock, in turning the 
point of a sandbar, our boat struck a sawyer. 
At the moment we did not know it had in- 
jured her, but in a short time after discov- 
ered her to be sinking; however, by thrust- 
ing oakum into the leak and bailing we got 
her to the shore on a bar where, after 
entirely unloading, we with great difficulty 
keeled her sufficiently to cut out the plank 
and put in a new one. This at the time I 
conceived to be a great misfortune, but upon 
examination we discovered that the injury 
resulting from it was greater than we were 
at first induced to believe, for upon inspec- 
tion we found our provisions and clothing 
considerably damaged.”’ 
This was but one of many mishaps and 
misfortunes. They often found navigation 
difficult and bad weather frequently delayed 
them. On September 16 the voyagers ran 
