Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20140426

Heres a look at our prime time lineup. Coming up at 7 p. M. Eastern, Michelle Gillespie discusses her dual biology. Then at 7 45, max brooks recounts the first africanamerican regiment to fight in world war i known as the harlem hell fighters. At 8 45, michael malice looks at the life and continued influence of kim jungil. At 10 p. M. On after words, Patrick Tucker discusses how large streams of data are changing how we think about the future. And we conclude our prime time programming at 11 eastern with richard vigueri and his examination of the size of the federal government. That all happens tonight on cspan2s booktv. Jared orsi is next on booktv. He recounts the life of zebulon pike. This is about an hour, 15 minutes. Thank you all for coming out. So im going to talk, as jen mentioned, about a book that ive recently published on zebulon pike, came out month before last in january, and i have some slides for you. Most of them are images that i took, and i did the best i could to try and get to the spot where pike was on the same day of the year. Theres one where i cheated, and i have, i have him in the winter time in a shot i took in june. So theres one that didnt work out, but most of them are on or near the exact day he was there. The other caveat i want to offer before we get started is that some of the slides are a little bit texty, that is, theyve got a lot of words on them, and i dont thats by design. I dont necessarily envision that youll read every single word, but i wanted to give readers in the book and also you all here tonight a sense of the kind of language that he used and a feel for the language of the time that ive been countering in my sources. And so dont worry about reading every last word. Im not going to stand up here and read them to you. But if theyll kind of convey an impression of the language of the time, and ill paraphrase kind of the most important points that you need to understand. So if you cant read all of it, dont worry about that. So let me jump in. Im going to talk for about 45 minutes, and then ill be glad to take questions and answers as long or as short as youre interested in it, and theres after the introduction theres two parts to the talk. One will be about pikes early life and young adulthood, the other will be about his adventures in the Rocky Mountains, probably the most famous part of his expedition. So lets begin on january 27th excuse me, january 20th, 1807. Pike was the commander of a u. S. Military expedition to explore the Louisiana Purchase, and the expedition had become badly lost, and they had wandered about in the Rocky Mountains for several weeks. And on this day pike found himself near here in the Wet Mountain Valley of colorado near the southwest of pueblo. And the expedition was in a desperate situation. The men were too weak to go on, but they were too imperilled not to. They were cold and hungry and inadequately clothed, and they didnt know where they were. On this particular day, pike discovered that two of his men john sparks and Thomas Doherty had frostbite so bad that they could not walk any longer. And so furnishing them with as much ammunition and food as he could spare, he exhorted them to resist their fate with fortitude, and with that he left them, abandoned, crippled men alone in the wilderness. And i want you to recall in this word, fortitude, right there, because this is going to be a word that has powerful meaning for pike and that well come back to repeatedly throughout the event this evening. So two weeks later from the safety of a small fort that he built on the yonder side of the forbidding mountains in the san luis valley, he sent a rescue party back to retrieve sparks and doherty, and the rescuers found sparks and doherty alive but still unable to travel. And so they returned to pike on february 17th, and in a dark and desperate gesture, they had removed some of the bones that the cold had separated from their toes and sent them back with the rescuers begging pike, by all that wassay celled, not to leave them sacred not to leave them alone in the wilderness. How little did they know of my heart if they could suspect me of conduct so ungenerous, and he vowed to do whatever was necessary to deliver them to their, quote, grateful country. And that a concept of gratitude as something that a nation owes people who sacrifice for it physically is another concept that we will come back to. So what are we to make of all this . So what are we to make of all this . Who was pike, is the question i want to ask today. Was he an intrepid explorer whose heartiness in the face of difficulty opened the west to the nation, or was he a reckless commander whose poor Decision Making exposed his men to unnecessary danger . Or perhaps, as some have speculated, was he a spy whose secret orders to reconnoiter santa fe impelled him onward even in the face of extreme danger . Pike left us few records of his early life, and as a result, most historians who have tried to figure him out have looked solely at his official military journals and reports which are two big, thick volumes. Theyre very unwieldy, even contradictory documents. And as a result, were left with those contradictory images of him that i mentioned a moment ago. But what my book tries to do is to employ some new strategies for understanding pike. One of the things that i did was i hired a genealogist who compiled a whole bunch of documents that no pike historian had ever looked at before. Another thing that i did was to look at some letters. Hes only left us other than his official military reports, or hes only left us 14 letters in his own hand. But i, i wrung as much meaning out of those 14 letters as i could reading between the lines and trying to read them in the context of the time. And whereas previous historiansing have kind of dropped in quotes on their work on pike in the past, i really took them seriously from an analytical perspective. I tried to figure out what do they tell us about his character. Tear all from the time period of his finish theyre all from the time period of his young adult life, so they give us a glimpse of him at a formative moment. Another thing that ive done is ive Read Everything that pike read. We have about a dozen different books that he said he read or was influenced by, and ive gone back and read all those things in order to try to get a sense of what kind of information about his culture and world did he have available to him. And then finally as youll see, i pay close attention to the natural environment, especially the mens bodies, sparks and dohertys toes, and other aspects of their physical experience of exploration and of the landscape. And after doing all of this, im convinced that above all pike was a nationalist. Thats the single best word to characterize his personality and his ideas, is nationalism. Now, this wasnt a given at the time. Because america at this time was a young and fragile nation. We didnt foe it was going to know it was going to succeed as a great democratic experiment as we know today. Many at the time believed that it would not and perhaps even should not survive. Not everybody decided to cast their lot with the nation. But early in life pike became persuaded that the best way to advance his considerable ambitions was to sacrifice physically for his nation, and his actions in the Rocky Mountains need to be read in this light, i think. So lets turn to pikes early life. He was born in 1779. This is the middle of the american revolution. His father is a soldier, and pike grows up at Frontier Army posts like this one which is down on the ohio river a little bit east of its confluence with the mississippi. And as products of the person revolution, military forts like this one are markers of a his forric shift in his forric shift in historic shift. For the first time in the middle and late part of the 18th century, its no longer unanimously accepted that the only way to get ahead in life is to be born to high social station, that you can actually advance, you can raise your social status through virtuous behavior. This is an increasingly widely accepted idea at the end of the 1700s. So pike, like many Young Americans of the day, was interested in this concept of virtue. What did virtue entail . Well, a few stuffy old englishmen thought that it had to do with manners, and in particular it had to do with bodies and how you carried yourself and how you behaved in public was displayed your virtue. So a gentleman should never be caught lolling supinely or sitting with a stiff immobility of a bashful booby. George washington was famously made by his tutor to copy the 110 precepts of the rules of civility from which he learned such wisdom as not to spit in the fire when other people are trying to grill meat. Advice like this was ever present, a thriving advice literature sprung up on both sides of the atlantic to counsel young men especially men. There was a pair rell lit parallel literature for women. But to counsel young men on how they had to behave, often bodily, in order to get ahead in life. So these advice givers canceled against excessive shivering or scratching or snapping of pingers or drumming fingers or drumming of tabletops, rubbing of hands, biting of nails and tapping of toes. It seemed that no bodily position, no matter how minute, was too small to escape the attention of those who would read into that bodily position evidence of its owners virtue. And at this point i would like, im going to try and fiddle with this for just a second to see if i can get rid of that thing. Apparently not. There we go. All right. So that was distracting me. Well let that go. At this point, id like you to think about bodies as the point of Human Experience where the cultural intersects with the natural. So when we talk about bodies, it often brings to find lots of things like status and wealth and beauty, occupation, desire, things we might call cultural. So tonight im dressed up, and you all or were able to come more casually. That signals the different roles we may in tonights event. This is we play many tonights event. This is how the english mannerists thought bodies as markers of ones social position. But bodies, if you think about it, are also part of the natural world. Were organisms that eat and drink and sleep and seek pleasure and try and avoid anxiety and sense pain, we get sick. Were born and live and die and decompose. We produce waste. We need energy and warmth and water and security. So all of these things we might call, we might describe as being part of the natural world. And so my talk tonight in a nutshell if you boil it down to its core is that pikes life is a story of the decisions that he made, what he decided to do when his body met the culture of the early republic and the nature or the environment of the flop tier the frontier, the ohio valley that he grew up in, and the result, the consequences of those decisions that he made and how they affected his activities in the Rocky Mountains. Im going to say that again. That came out kind of garbled. His life is a story in many ways of what he decided to do when his body met culture of the early republic and the environment of the frontier simultaneously. And how those life decisions that he made shaped his behavior in the Rocky Mountains. All right. So pikes letters suggest that as a young man like most americans he eat this manners stuff up. His favorite advice track seems to have been this little book called economy of human life by a fellow whos one of the most important and influential english publishers of the middle of the 18th century. And like the other mannerists, he talked a lot about bodily position, and he condemned people who used their body to draw attention to themselves. But one wonders how a Frontier Youth like pike who was in no danger of having the financial means to let fancy clothes or public parading sully his virtue, how he would have read such counsel. Writers of this literature imagined their readers would be sitting by firesides in philadelphia parlors and things like that. But remember that pike is reading this out on the ohio frontier in forts. And on the ohio frontier, life was far from comfortable. Pike joined the army if 1795 in 1795 at the aim at the age of 15, and for the next decade he spends most of his time as a river runner. Hes transporting military supplies up and down the ohio river and its tributaries to keep the towns and the frontier posts well provisioned. But travel on the rivers in this day was muddy, messy, difficult, unpleasant sorts of work. So when the current was high, it tested the strength, the muscles of the men on the lives. When the current was too low, they had to worry about, they had to guard against the danger of shoals and snags. When it got really low, they had to take all the supplies off the boats and portage all of the goods, including the boats themselves, on the backs of men and animals. So what sway with do you think could the english mannerists admonition against excessive shivering, for example, have held with men who waded into the early spring ohio river water with chunks of ice floating by . For pike and the dozens of men that he often commanded on the river, most of the time that they spent transporting supplies they were too hot, hungry, tired, cold, sunburned, mosquito bitten or simply just exhausted. And in this environment bodily discipline involved or considerably more endurance and suffering tan simply remembering not than simply remembering not to scratch or walking at a measured pace. So frontier life battered mens bodies. And pike occasionally considered quitting the army. He saw the example that it set for older officers including his father who was mentally and physically significantly debilitated by the time he reached the aim of 50, and pike thought the age of 50, and pike thought i dont want this life. This is going to beat me up and chew me up, and illkicked out of the army when im no longer useful. But he didnt quit, and here doddley provides us some clues, perhaps, about why he didnt. He devoted an entire section of his book to the concept of fortitude which, as you can see from these quotes, he meant in quite a physical sense. The volume was filled with aphorisms exhorting young men like pike to show fortitude in the the face of hardship. This is the same word, recall, that he used in exhorting sparks and doherty to resist their fate, with fortitude. Ask if pike was as and if pike was as taken by this kind of advice as he appears to be with the rest of doddsley, he could have reasoned himself into accepting the armys promise of physical suffering and called it a great virtue. Now, all of this was also reinforced by some high profile examples, one of which is George Washington n. 1796 while pike is running the ohio river with boatloads of supplies, George Washington voluntarily steps down from the presidency and declines to run for a third president ial term to which he almost certainly could have been elected. Doddsley but not everybody could sacrifice in the way a president could, by giving up a third term in office. Now, doddsley, never the less, he said all are not called to guide armies and nations. Not everybody is called to be a general or a president. But that doesnt mean that everybody is not called to be virtuous. Everyone has something they can sacrifice, and you can be virtuous, humbler people than president s and generals can be virtuous in, quote, doing well in that which is committed to thy charge. So doddsley is calling everybody to virtuous sacrifice. The question is, what does pike have . A man of no reputation, no wealth, no honor, no education, no propertier what does somebody like pike have that he can sacrifice . Well, one day if one of the margins in one of the margins of a page of doddsleys book next to the entry of sincerity, which i think is telling in this case, pike scribbles this. So thats what pike can sacrifice for his nation; his life. His body. But its not just his own body that hes going to disbritain for the nation discipline for the nation. He also, once hes an officer, begins to discipline the men under his charge. So one quick story. Cold morning, december 1803. Hes crew of 70 men and a 10craft fleet nascarlying supplies that is carrying supplies down a new fort near the mouth of the hes river. The fleet consisted of supply boats which were very heavy carrying all the goods and Company Boats which were much lighter that carried simply the men and maybe some of their personal supplies. And at dawn after the sound of the revelly, pikes soldiers hustle out of their tents and start packing up, and then they start scrambling for the Lighter Company poets to avoid boats to avoid the toil of having to pull the heavily laden supply boats. Pike was incented s and he picks incensed, and he picks up a stillsmoldering log and flings it at the slackers, and he picks up another and another. Very quickly, order is restored. To pike, shirking a physical duty is the worst kind of dishonor. Its a violation of the code of selfsacrifice for the nation, ask it calls for and it calls for bodily discipline, in this case through pelting of firewood. So life at the frontier forts gave pike lots of opportunities to discipline other peoples bodies, and soon he would get his own opportunity to discipline, to test his own fortitude. So one day in late 1803 Meriwether Lewis came to the fort where pike was stationed. Meriwether lewis was looking for a few men hearty in body, soul and spirit to acane him on a grand accompany him on a grand adventure all the way to the pacific ocean. Now, he had already selected his lieutenant for that trip, a man from a prominent kentucky military family. His name was william clark, so you know of lewis and clark. So pike was not under consideration for this particular expedition, but lewis had an intriguing suggestion or proposition for pike. He said that president Thomas Jefferson was planning to send out several more expeditions to explore the recent hiacquired recentlyacquired louisiana territory, and he wants them to be led by, quote, the armys most capable officers. Did pike want to lead one, lewis asked . Well, you betcha, he sure did. So in the spring of 1805 when pikes orders came to lead an expedition to the headwaters of the mississippi, he was ready to embrace the physical sacrifice that exploration would require. And sacrifice, he did. His orders said to come home by december 1, 1805, but he overreached those orders. He stayed up in the minnesota wilderness and spent a very cold, hungry and exhausting winter there. And he comes back the following spring. And, actually, make note of the fact that hes overstepping his orders here. His supervisor, this guy right here who well talk about more many a second, wrote to the secretary of war that pike is a very good soldier, but with he has a habit of overstepping his orders. And pike is going to do this again before were done with him tonight. Anyway, so by this time pike is 27 years old, and what has he learned . So far . Well, he has absorbed the culture of the early republic, but hes refracted it. He doesnt take it literally, but hes refracted it through his physical experience on the frontier. And hes come to the conclusion that bodily sacrifice for the nation is the best way to win the countrys gratitude, to win honor and glory and social advancement. He tests this theory in minnesota. This is one of those summertime photographs. He was there this the winter time, of course. He tests this theory in the minnesota wilderness, sort of at its limit, and it works. He comes back and not only wins the praise of his military commanders, but he gains the attention of president Thomas Jefferson who lauds his accomplishments as well. Within three days, you can think about maybe how his wife felt about this. Hes been gone for nine months and within three days he gets back to st. Louis, and hes given another high profile assignment with another opportunity to sacrifice and win glory on behalf of the nation. And its this second assignment thats going to bring him to the valley where he had to abandon sparks and doherty. That brings me to the end of the first part of my presentation, and now id like to fast forward and join him in the middle of his expedition. So this is an overview of pikes second expedition. It begins here. Actually i have a pointer here. It begins here many st. In s. Louis on july 15, 1806, and the first part takes him across the great plains to a little detour to pay a diplomatic visit to the pawnee indians whom the United States was courting an alliance with at that time. And then he comes pack down across the plains and goes up the Arkansas River. He wanders around in the Rocky Mountains lost for a couple months, and he finds himself down here near the new mexico border where hes arrested by the spanish by a unit of the spanish army. Spain owns what is now the southwestern United States and mention ecoat the time, and so and mexico at the time, and so when pike shows up down here, they call him a trespasser, and they arrest him. Today take him, first, to santa fe and then to the city of chihuahua to explain himself to military and civil authorities. And then final hi they march him finally, they march him back across texas and redeposit him on u. S. Soil in july of 1807, almost one year, a few days short of a year from when he left st. Louis. So were going to rejoin him. One of the chapters in my book follows him across the plains. Another one follows him in northern mexico. But were going to join him right now, were going to rejoin him right about here in Southeastern Colorado on november 15, 1806. He and his men, his 16man caravan are riding along the Arkansas River. And about 2 00 in the afternoon, pike spots what he thinks is a small blue cloud on the horizon. And he takes his spy glass, and he puts it to his eye, and he realizes thats not a cloud, its a mountain. The men pause, and they give three cheers to the pension can mountains to the mexican mountains. Their destination is now in sight. From this point over the next few days, reading pikes journal is almost comical. This is the marker that marks the site where he first spotted it. Werent able to see the mountain on that particular day. But from, in the days after he spots it, his journal is somewhat humorous. Each morning he gets up, and he thinks that hes going to march to the mountains that day. And then hes really disappointed because he gets to the end of the day, and they look the same as they had in the morning. Now, whats going on here is that although pike compared the mountains to the allegheny mountains, that eastern chain of mountains in new york and pennsylvania and virginia and maryland, the mountains are nothing like the alleghenies at all. Pike doesnt really understand what hes seeing. He hasnt yet acclimated himself to the clear air and long sight lines and soaring heights of the american west. So the possibility that you can see a mountain and still be more than a hundred miles away from it like he was is not something that he can wrap his ohio valley mind around. Underestimating the distance to the crest that he called the grand peak is only the first mistake he made about the Rocky Mountains. The pinnacle was not a days march away, the mountains were nothing like the alleghenies, and the pen were not going home the men were not going home anytime soon. More than two months would elapse before they escaped the mountain, and in the interim, pike would attempt to climb the mountain without food or blankets or even socks. He would lead men wearing summer army cotton group forms into the mountains uniforms into the mountains on the morning of winters first blizzard. He would cross z mountains without clear and explicit need to do so. He would contemplate suicide, and he raised an American Flag on spanish soil. Now, this behavior is sufficiently strange to have led to speculation both at the time this his day and in his day and since then about the possibility that theres Something Else going on with his expedition, that perhaps he has secret orders that hes supposed to follow that are impelling him forward to get to santa fe possibly for treacherous reasons. So although but, in fact, in fact, my take on this is that his terrible ordeal in the mountains actually underscores his commitment to sacrificing for the nation. And to understand that, i want to back up a few days in his expedition to earlier in the fall. So on november 11th pike had located the Arkansas River, followed it almost all the way to the mountains. He had learned much about the geography of the great plains, and he had learned much about Indian Culture on the great plains, so he had accomplished most of what his orders had asked him to do. The only thing remaining was to find the headwaters of the red river and then descend the red river back to the mississippi river, back to the hes valley. To the mississippi valley. Still, as the horses weakened and the cottonwoods turned bright golden and the nights grew chillier, pike was worried that the lateness of the season placed the objects of the mission in jeopardy. And he was determined to press on in spite of any hardships or obstacles that they might encounter. So that raises the question whose objects was he pursuing . So heres some possibilities. One is that they were jeffersons. Youve probably all seen pictures like this in textbooks and things like that depicting the Louisiana Purchase in very clear terms with very welldefined boundaries. But these pictures, these maps depict louisiana as it looked in 1819 after the United States and spain had actually agreed on its boundaries. Thats not what it looked like in 1803 when jefferson first made purchase. In 1803 it looked more like this. This is a spanish map from the time. Louisiana was blank spot on the map. But nobody really knew, nobody in spain or the United States or france from whom jefferson bought it, no one many those countries no one in those countries really knew what was there. And its boundaries were also elusive. Nobody knew exactly where louisiana stopped stopped and s. And to give you a sense of what that meant diplomatically, i like this map. So this lightly shaded portion that takes up much of the middle part of the continent here is what jefferson claimed he purchased from france in 1803. This thin strip along the river is what spain thought that e had very muched from france in 1803. So you can see that theres going to be sop problems here. Louisiana was a blank spot on the map, and whoever was going to l control it was going to be determined by who managed to occupy it first. So one of pikes objects was to set up the possibility for the United States to occupy it. And although jefferson knew about and approved of pikes expedition, he wasnt actually the one who ordered it. The man who initiated the expedition was this man, james wilkinson, one of the arch rogues of american history. Who had been an informant on the payroll of the spanish crown since 1787. At the time of pikes expedition, wilkinson was the golf of louisiana territory governor of louisiana territory. He was also the ranking general in the United States army. And he plans to use these two posts to enrich himself. And so many at the time and since have speculated that wilkinson gave pike secret orders to spy on santa fe either to advance wilkinsons own commercial schemes to try and corner the market on the asyetundeveloped but potentially lucrative trade with the mexican capital, or perhaps to spy as part of a scheme that will kipson wilkinson was cooking up with this man, aaron burr. Burr was looking for something to rekicked l his sag rekindle his sagging political and economic fortunes. Its possible, and he was accused of this at the time and eventually tried, its possible that he was trying to foment secession among western states and territories belonging to the u. S. More likely, he was trying to launch a filibustering expedition; that is, to gather a private army and capture portions of spanish texas or louisiana and carve out a new nation in the middle of north america that he could be the head of and wilkinson would be his righthand man. Either way, whatever he was up to, the reconnaissance of the territory that pike was heading into was potentially quite, would have been quite useful to burr with. The fact that all three men were at the fort if june of 1805 at the time that wilkinson and burr first met to Start Cooking up this plan has led to speculation that perhaps pike was part of the burr and wilkinson scheme and that the real goal of his expedition was to get to santa fe despite his official instructions to avoid it. Also fueling that speculation is the fact that pike caroled with him a handdrawn map to santa fe. Well talk more about this in a minute, but this is likely the first map drawn, First American map drawn showing the relationship of st. Louis which is down here with santa fe which is up here at the top. So north is that way on the map, so you kind of have to look at it like that. And west or southwest is up. Also ip criminating incriminating is the fact that pike wrote a letter to wilkinson on july 22nd, a few weeks after he had left st. Louis. And this is one of those paragraphs, those texty slides that you dont need to read every word of. But basically, in his garbled language what pike is saying is if i happen to run into some spaniards, wink wink, ill tell them that im looking for the red river and that im lost and that im trying to get back to the United States. If they happen to require that i go to santa fe to explain myself to officials there, so much the better. So are the sanguine expectations that hes referring to there, is that code for secret orders to get to santa fe . Some people have suggested, yes, and we will see. Whatever his objects, they impelled him forward. Between november 24th and november 29th, he attempted to climb the grand peak, and thats actually an interesting story in and of itself, but its not essential to understanding what happens next. So im going to pass over that aspect of his journey. But if youd like to talk about it in the q a session at the end of my comments here, id be happy to go into more detail there. This is the image be, this is the view that he likely had. This is the closest spot that he got to the grand peak, pikes peak. He never fully climbed it. Actually, ill go back here a second. By november 30th the men were ready to enter the mountains, and it was snowing. And it turned out to be the first heavy blizzard of the year. By december 5th pike reached a quandary. He was in the modern, the vicinity of modern canyon city, a place where several small tributaries of the Arkansas River come together, and pike wasnt sure which of the tributaries was the main branch. So he camped for five days, he sent men to fan out across the countryside to follow the streams up into the mountains to try and figure out this question. And on december 10th he decides that hes going to turn north. Now this is, perhaps, a curious decision for a man who is looking for the red river. This slide on, the this picture on the left here is the santa fe trail map that he had carried with him. And this is the Arkansas River right here, and you probably cant read it, but this right here says something about several small branches of the red river. So, and, again, this direction is north. So to get from the arkansas to the red, you want to go south or southwest. Now, this map over here we dont have evidence for certain that pike carried this map with him, but its quite likely that he did or at least he knew of its contents. This is a map prepared by alexander von humble, the great prussian geographer of the time. And he had not been to this area, but he had traveled this mexico and asked spanish officials what they knew of the swreography. Geography. And here you can see at the top of the map something labeled the spanish word for the Arkansas River. So this is the arkansas. And this says [speaking spanish] so red river. So again, the youre on the arkansas if youre on the arkansas, the best way to get to the red is to go south or southwest. But pike chose to go north. One other thing to point out about this is that both of these maps turn out to be wrong. The red river is not within 300 miles of pike. The headwaters of the red river are in northern texas. So e louis i have are they elusive are they, that they werent finally pin pointed until 1859, and many explorers after pike would come looking for them in this vicinity, sort of northwest of santa fe, and not find them. Not find the head waters. So pike is up around here, and he decides to go knot. And the reason north. And the reason is twofold. One, he looks to the southwest, and he sees the san grayty christo mountains. A sheer face and he says its impossible to cross them. The other thing is that he finds a human trail heading north from what is now canyon city up one of the creek beds. And pike is sufficiently confused about the geography that he decides i want to get directions. I want to talk to anybody, spaniard, indian, i dont know who they are, but i want to talk and find out whats going on here. So he travels north over into what is now south park in colorado and wanders around there, doesnt find anything of interest to him. And then he travels to the southwest. He says im going to go book looking for the red kiver to the red river to the southwest. He travels to Trout Creek Pass which is followed today by highway 24 and 285 out of south park, and heres another one of my cheating summertime pictures. He crosses and finds a broad river valley which he takes to be the red. The men havent eaten for several days at this point, but on december 24th they kill several buy son, and they have a Christmas Eve feastment they camp on Christmas Day, they fix their moccasins, they dry the meat, they dry out their tents and their blankets, whats left of them, and things like that, and they prepare to begin their homeward journey down the red river. But calamity strikes a couple days later when they find themselves in a Narrow Canyon with sheer walls. The river runs bank toback in several places, and in over places its frozen over into a series of rocky puddle and a the horses start tripping and falling, a couple have to be shot. They go several days without any food. The party becomes separated. They try and unload the horses, build some makeshift sleds, drag the horses and the goods down the river over the icy rocks on sleds, and they become spread out over several miles through the cannon. And on january 1st, pikes 28th birthday, he comes over a ridge, and he spies his december 5th camp. 36 brutal days in the mountains have yielded only the rediscovery of arkansas which he has been following since mid october. So if this was still the arkansas, where was the red . Texas was not one of the places that crossed pikes mind. He looks at the can grays which san grays which he had previously decided were uncross bl, and he decides they must be to the southwest over those mountains, and he decides to cross. Objective is here but the path tells us something. This is the view pike would have had from his Christmas Day camp. For several days before and after. Poncha passis a little to the southwest and if he had stood here and looked south he would have found a very inviting place to cross the mountains. His mission is to get to santa fe this is as good a place as any to do it. If he stands in the same spot and looks to the west he will see the north peaks, he will realize if i want to cross it is never going to get any better than this but he doesnt. She continues downstream which is exactly the behavior of someone who believed he was on the red river and was intending to head home. Whatever his motives he decides to cross, leave two men behind on the arkansas, the courses are shot and the plan is to leave a couple men behind, let the horses recover while the rest of the party goes and find a good path way and once they find that they will send back and hopefully the horses would have recovered and they would have found the easiest course through the mountains. That might have worked except for the events of january 17th. Un january 17th pike became came to a narrow range of hills into the Wet Mountain Valley right about near here. Late in the day, the last waning hours of sunshine, write about the time i took this photograph and he sees nothing in the way of wood and water and he decides that he is going to cross the valley, not very evident in this picture bus and these are well wooded with lots of streams coming out of the mountain canyon. Yet again, pike estimated the aerial distance, it takes several hours, most of this crossing in the dark, they cross great creek, near the modern town of what cliff right about here and the men that their feet wet crossing the creek. Several hours later by the time they get to camp, the 2 trees on the far side of the mountain and get a campfire going is dark and the temperature has dropped to 10 degrees below zero on pikes thermometer and several men have serious frostbite. This necessitates a rest of several days and by the time they start their march again. By the time they start their march again a blizzard has struck. The snow is so bad pike says he cannot seem more than a few feet in front of him. The party becomes separated. Un two locations, one occasion they go three days without food and get a small meal and go four days without food and eventually becomes too much for john brown, private john brown. Something to the effect of these burdens are fit only for horses and at first pike ignored his comments but later in the day they issued a bison and feast by campfire. After everyone is satisfied and as the in their food, pike lights into brown, calls him seditious and mutinous and says that if i ever hear a comment like this from you again i will execute you. And again you dont need to absorb everything here but i want to point out the language pike users in criticizing brown. Language that is heavily filled with nationalist implications in the aftermath of the constitution, bill of rights, Louisiana Purchase and the founding of the nation, talk about the quality, gratitude. Remember pikes promise to return to a grateful country and he is accusing brown of being the opposite, ungrateful. He talks about physical sacrifice in contempt of the danger and promises the rewards of government and gratitude of country men. So when pike has lost everything, food, direction, horses, supported his men he falls back on the language of its nationalism. Pike looks pretty bad. This has obsess him, even when path after pathe are blocked by snow. Shield inmates between this obsession and despair, the desire to laydown and died in the snow. He has abandoned five men and another is beyond their limits, threatened to execute anybody who grumbles. The secret orders this as the behavior of the man who is obsess with following secret orders to get to santa fe. Lets go back and talk for a second about bodies as organism, the nature side of the bodily diagram i should you a few minutes ago. The mens caloric intake has been dangerously low since the Christmas Eve season. They alternated going several days in a time without any food at all and occasionally getting to eat for bad day. The medical reports or research i studied about starvation in the physicians are taught to have told me that it is unlikely that pikes gastrointestinal system would have been able to absorb the nutrients from these occasional feasts to make up for the depletion of fat and even muscle that occurred during the fast. Are in the day t. A. R. P. Sunday brown grumble they had not been for four full days. Pike twice described the party as extremely emaciated and probably suffering the first effects of starvation. Weight loss and weakness, irritability, violent outbursts of anger, impaired memory and concentration if you couple this with the hypothermia they were also probably suffering from and the apathy and clouded judgment that comes along with that, probably means not only are they exhausted but probably losing their ability to process information and make decisions. Literally pike cant think straight. His outburst might have been the action of a man with secret orders to get to santa fe but also consistent with the actions of a hungry hypothermic organism that has lost the ability, lost mental stability and mental acuity. In any case things got better after their meal. On the twentyseventh of january they finally do find a path to get around mountains and look over a broad valley with a river. See this line of trees here, river running through it to the southeast. That was still in texas but zebulon pike took it for the red and built a small stockade on a tributary of the river. He sent a rescue party back, they send back another rescue party and the second rescue party was still out, a party of spanish produce shut out and told him he was on spanish soil. Is this the red . He told the spanish lieutenant just like he told wilkinson, he would pretend to be lost and looking for the red. The rio grande. Pike was camped on spanish soil. The spanish marched into santa fe and then the provincial capital before returning him across texas to american soil later that summer. And pike, very patriotically, expresses the excitement that he has upon returning to the United States. So lets return to the question by way of conclusion here, lets return to the question of secret orders. I havent given you all of the evidence that is relevant here but i have given a bunch of it. It is inconclusive. The most certain thing about secret orders is we cant know for sure. Is tantalizing and plausible he has secret orders but ultimately that theory rests on the existence of orders for which we have no direct evidence of their existence. The counter story of pike as an underlying geographer and cognitively impaired organism, all of the Available Evidence and overreaching order, pike was a nationalist remember. Conspiring with aaron burr and wilkinson doesnt fit his m 0. 19 keeping with his character. Doing dangerous things, making poor decisions especially when cold and hungry and exhausted, do square with his character. As a historian, if everything explained to the Available Evidence, historians ought to be very cautious in wresting their explanations on conjectural evidence. His behavior although it is possible he has secret orders, we cant prove he didnt, is best described as part of a larger set of mistakes, for decisions occasioned by the failure of all his resources, his men, his maps, his forces, his mind, failure of those things to do what expected and needed to do, stop and be happy to take questions or comments. Thanks for your attention and for coming out tonight. Where does it go from here . Where did he go . From that point gone . Pike has a career trajectory. Where did pike go from this point in 1807 forward . He has the career trajectory of first publishing journals, and scraps of paper he has gone from his expedition and things like that and then he gets a series of military promotions promoted quite rapidly. By the eve of the war of 1812 he is a colonel and in the middle of the war he is promoted to brigadier general. This is in march of 1813. In april of 1813 the battle of york takes place, one of the few decisive american victories, pike is killed in combat in that battle. You know it as toronto. The war has been politically volatile and James Madison administration which started the war begins to see the war has stalemated and it is incredibly unpopular and he starts looking for ways to back out of it and it began as an attempt to seize canada, gained territory for the United States. The war is about testing american medal, to show honor and stand up to the most powerful army in the border in the world at the time and not lose. As he is trying to refrain the unpopular war at the end of it the deaths of martyrs like pike who physically sacrifice for the country, a great tool for the Madison Administration to demonstrate the honor and bravery and sacrifice of americans in the war. So pike actually just rockets to fame. Other than George Washington, he is the brightest military hero. I will mix my metaphors. The pantheon of American Military heroes. For a very brief time from his death in to the guest 20s. In fact if you know anything about Meriwether Lewis, committed suicide in 1809, he died in death in a political scandal. Lewis and clark are not at all popular in American Culture at the time. Pike is a major hero. Those fortunes will kind of reverse over the course of the 19 food and 20th century the pike in death gets the glory and fame that have always elude him in life. It is too late for him to enjoy it but in the end physical sacrifice for his country does end up getting him the rewards that he thought it would. Thanks for that question. Any other questions . How old was pike when he died . He was 34 years old. Accomplished more in his life. And he was a very young man, 27 when he departed on his expedition, 28 when he returned. The question is did he ever marry, ever have family . He did. In 1801 he married a woman named Clarence Brown who by all accounts of her, his and other peoples was a very impressive woman, welleducated, spoke several languagess, collected books in french, german, english and spanish. Plus sort of man pike said would share my ambitions, was much wealthier than he was. Her family was against the marriage, her father in particular. Pike at this point was the lowest level of the Army Hierarchy and one of the interesting things, happen to be open on our desk on the same day when i came in one morning, and theres a book called clarice the. One of the longest novels ever written in the english language and one of the most popular novels of the 18th century. It reflects this idea that people are free agents, what they can make what they want of their life. So clarissa is born into upstanding families and her father keeps her under his thumb because he wants to prepare her for a successful marriage that will enhance the family. The familys refutation. But she has ideas of her own. Parents should control to their children marry in order to maintain the high standing of the family versus the upstart independent young daughter. He ends up messing up her love, the moral of this is parents, let your children be independent to make of themselves what they are able to rather than this old idea of parents deciding who they should marry to protect family standing. Pike and Clara Brown Mary against fathers wishes. And name her clarissa. And heroine of the store. One of the things that makes me think, that pike has absorb these ideas of the 18thcentury that children should be independent and adults should make of themselves what they can to be born into high stations is not what is important. And clarissa is the only surviving offspring. And it is a similar sort of military french or military career trajectory except to live longer. And these elected president of the United States in 1840. Many including myself speculated had pike lived longer, had a career trajectory. And other famous frontier generals in Andrew Jackson and William Henry harrison and others became president. Would you say hes extremely bright, a man with a tremendous amount of fortitude. And perseverance. Both. Was pike and man who was extremely bright or just a man with a lot of fortitude . I would say he had a lot of both. He has no formal education. Even as a young child and teenager, how he could absorb it and whatever school there might have been at a frontier military posts and there might not have been any and he was bouncing between them as he was growing up. If you read pikes writing is very unpolished. If you have gotten a sense of these things, the syntax and spelling and things like that are not supershark. Is perceptiveness, ability to observe spaniards or indians or fellow military officers and figure out what is going on and figure out clever and diplomatic ways of handling things strike me as somebody who is very perceptive and very bright and jackson had a little bit more higher in life. And Abraham Lincoln was born in 89 and goes on from Humble Beginnings to become president as well. Intelligence took him far. His ambition, constitution and spirit would have taken him far as well. Formal education was not something, he writes letters to his siblings quite frequently. Of those 14 letters a mention the most of the my to his siblings and he is always exhorting them. And train your body quite a few times. And we need to strengthen body and mind how to get ahead in metlife. Sacrifice, study hard. Very ambitious. He is long on ambition and stubbornness. The ohio valley as a beginning officer staying up late night after night so he does his army duties today, he studied by candlelight into the night. That is when he is reading clarissa and reading these things and teaching himself, one of his skull officers at Camp Allegheny on the ohio river says he taught himself basic mathematics, he learned french, he was a tolerably good scholar, this officer, was widely read. And so if you can imagine not only takes the intelligence but the physical fortitude to be dragging stuff up and down the river all day and instead of crashing in your barracks or your tent at night. You are up studying and chasing teaching yourself french and military strategy, he read a lot of military strategy and that sort of thing. The other thing he rode. What was his hand writing like . His hand writing like most people of the 18th century was highly stylized. Lets go back to the santa fe trail map. This is a little messier than his letters would have been but this is his, if you can see, this is his handwriting here. Lots of loops and curlicues. The s is written as an f which is common in eighteenth and Nineteenth Century script. The first time you encounter this, took me an hour to read a frontpage letter but after you read his handwriting and other peoples handwriting from the time over and over it starts to become very consistent. And they are always preaching to the children, very stylized, beautiful. You ever get to enjoy the benefits of what he was doing. Did he care about that . Did he ever enjoy the benefits of what he was accomplishing . Did he care about that . I think he cared more about fame and gratitude of his countrymen than material comfort. That is my sense. Was he able to enjoy those things . It is so mixed bag. When he returns he is sufficiently, he returns just as aaron burr goes on trial to foment the secession of the western states and territories and pike is linked to this through wilkinson and the timing of the expedition to aaron burr. There is a cloud that hangs over his whole expedition. A lot of nasty things about him in the newspapers and he spends a lot of time trying to clear himself. One of the things he does is get absolution from jefferson and the secretary of war, henry dearborn. They both write letters he sends to congress saying we know pike was not a partisan and he Petitions Congress for a reward because when lewis and clark got back congress voted the man, parcels of frontier land, doubled hey for going out and risking their lives instead of staying at home and the ohio river and risking their lives a little bit less. So pike makes the same respect request of congress, forwards letters from jefferson and dearborn and James Madison and things like that. Congress, the committee reviewing the request votes in favor of granting him this but by this point the expedition is inextricable from the politics that are dividing congress over jefferson and aaron burr and Congress Never votes. My guess, there is no record why they didnt vote. No one made a decision but the last evidence we have in the congressional record is the Committee Voting to bring it to a vote on the floor, then it just disappears. Until the 1840s when we have a comment by his widow, clara, who is requesting that the reward be paid to her. By this point she is destitute. Never paid it to my husband and i would like it now. And she dies before that. My guess is twofold. One thing is aaron burr is acquitted but has a lot of political enemies so pro pike friends, a lot of powerful friends in congress, not enough of them and they cant get this to a vote on the floor. The other things that may be going on in addition or instead is the government is very cost conscious, cutting back the size of the army substantially, making other cuts and some who criticized him in Committee Said we have all these expeditions out there. We cant be giving double pay and land grants and that will break the government. It wouldnt have broken the government but there point is we are spending too much. We have got to cut back. This is one place where we can cut back and some combination of those things is going on so he never forgets the glory that he wants but he does publish his journal. The journals are favorably reviewed, gets the Rapid Military promotions, and partially gets in life and in death he gets the other half. Too late to enjoy it. Thank you much. Thank you all for coming out. I hope you enjoyed it. When did they name it . When did they name pikes he . The next round of explorers to come west where traders and trappers who carried pikes journal in their hands. A few in the 18 teams and a couple in the 1820s and allied in the 1830s and 40s and started calling it thing like highspeed, the mountain, the mountain pike climbed. The man who actually climbed it first was a member of steve alongs expedition which came in 1820 and his name was ed wynne james. Some people started calling it james peak in the 1820s and 1830s and they coexist until the Army Topographical engineer sort of official gave it the name of pikes peak. I dont know if there was a point they started doing it but it came into usage in the late 1830ss and 40s and james peak sellout. [inaudible] other than he passed through it in december, november 11th, feb. Twentyseventh of 18061807. He did manage to climb the peak. Declined another mountain but didnt climb the peak and for