Last weekend I ventured to gelid Alamosa to complete the celebration of the Pike Bicentennial in Colorado at an all-day symposium at Adams State College.
Lt. Zebulon Montgomery Pike and his 14 men entered Colorado out by Holly on Nov. 12, 1806. He left our state on Feb. 28, 1807, escorted by Spanish soldiers and bound for Santa Fe and points south. He led most of his beleaguered party across snowy Medano Pass into the San Luis Valley on Jan. 27, 1807 – 200 years to the day before the symposium.
Thus the date was appropriate, even if most of the Pike Bicentennial in Colorado happened last summer during the months when, 200 years earlier, Pike had been riding across Kansas without danger of frostbite or hypothermia.
Pike’s trip is pretty well documented. We have his journal, as well as most of his papers that were confiscated by the Spanish. We have some Spanish records, too.
But as the symposium made clear, there remains a controversy. Did Pike’s commander, Gen. James Wilkinson, issue secret orders?
We know now that Wilkinson was also on the Spanish payroll, and that he tipped off the Spanish about American expeditions. We also know that Wilkinson had communicated with Aaron Burr, vice president during Thomas Jefferson’s first term, about leading an army west to establish their own realm out here. Wilkinson then turned against Burr when Burr was charged with treason.
So with that in mind, was Pike sent west to:
1) Follow his written orders to establish the southwestern boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase, and avoid contact with the Spanish?
2) Pretend he was lost and deliberately be captured by the Spanish, allowing him to observe the military situation in New Mexico, so that
2A) The United States would be better prepared if it went to war with Spain, as seemed possible at the time?, or
2B) Burr and Wilkinson would be prepared if they launched their own conquest?
Some questions have been pretty well answered. There’s no evidence that Pike was a knowing part of the Burr-Wilkinson conspiracy. He was cleared after an investigation by Secretary of War Henry Dearborn.
Further, Pike was a Federalist under a Republican administration headed by President Thomas Jefferson, who was eager to discredit political opponents – witness Burr’s treason trial (that ended in acquittal), or Jefferson’s efforts to impeach Federalist judges. If there had been any involvement by Pike, it would have been uncovered then and used by Jefferson’s administration to besmirch the Federalists. That’s the nature of American politics.
So the remaining question is whether he believed that the upper Arkansas River, and then the upper Rio Grande a month later, were the Red River, as he wrote in his journal. Or did he actually know where he was the whole time, and made those inaccurate entries so that when he was captured by the Spanish, as planned, he would enjoy “plausible deniability?”
This question was not resolved on Saturday. For my part, I take Pike at his word, that he honestly believed that he was on the Red River (which actually starts in the Texas panhandle) when he camped near Salida on Christmas Day, 1806. Rivers twist every which way up here, and confusion about drainages remains to this day. (Highway signs in the northern San Luis Valley indicate that it’s in Rio Grande drainage, when in fact that area is a closed basin that naturally drains into no river.)
If Pike knew he was on the Arkansas in late December, and was trying to get to the Rio Grande to be captured, why didn’t he he just head south over Poncha Pass? As he struggled down the Arkansas from Salida, he even guessed there could be a game or Indian trail over “one of the chains [of mountains] to the right,” which is where Poncha Pass sits.
To believe that he subjected himself and his men to the ordeal of frostbite and hunger that followed as they struggled down the Arkansas and then across the Wet Mountain Valley and over the Sangre de Cristo Range, just to maintain a pretense, is to make him one of the most malicious men who ever wore a uniform.
Pike was headstrong, ambitious and sometimes reckless. But I’d need a lot more evidence to believe that he was also malicious. However, I suspect that if there’s a Pike Tricentennial Symposium a century hence, people will still be arguing about this. For us history buffs, there are some issues that never get settled.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
