The Story of Brain Surgery

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Speaker 1: And we return to Our American Stories. Up next, a story about a man behind the namesake of a mountain, the highest summit of the Southern Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, to be exact. Here to tell the story of the famed explorer and namesake of Pike’s Peak, Zebulin Pike, is Craig Dumay. Craig is the president of the Grateful Nation Project, an organization that seeks to gather, preserve, and share the true story of America’s military heroes past and present. Let’s get into the story. Take it away, Craig.

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Speaker 2: If you visit the states of Colorado or Minnesota, you’ll encounter more than a few parks, bays, creeks, streets, and schools named after Zebulin Montgomery Pike. Ten states have counties named in his honor, dozens of towns, and perhaps most familiar to many Americans are the famed Pike’s Peak and the Pike National Forest near Colorado Springs. But who is this famous Mr. Pike? For two centuries, historians have argued whether he was an explorer or perhaps a spy. You might be interested to know that he failed at two of the most important missions of his life, one that would nonetheless bring him lasting fame. As the son of a Continental Army officer, Zebulin Montgomery Pike spent parts of his childhood in and around frontier military posts. Destined for a military career, he was born in Lamberton, New Jersey, in January seventeen seventy nine, right in the middle of the Revolutionary War. His father, also named Zebulen Pike, fought beside George Washington. To follow in his father’s footsteps, the younger Zebuln Pike joined the army at age fifteen, serving under Revolutionary War hero General “Mad” Anthony Wayne. One of Pike’s duties was to ferry supplies to forts located on the Miami, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers. At that time, what is now Ohio and Illinois were considered to be the Northwestern Frontier. These assignments gave him valuable experience in navigating rivers, negotiating with natives and frontier trading posts, and supplying armies. When the United States nearly doubled its size with the Louisiana Purchase, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in eighteen oh four to survey the Northwestern portion of what he called the vast wilderness. The land west of the Mississippi River was largely unexplored by European settlers or by the new nation born out of Revolution. A year after Lewis and Clark’s commission, General James Wilkinson also wanted to sponsor an expedition because of his experience with river navigation and supplying remote frontier outposts. Lieutenant Zebulin Montgomery Pike, along with twenty other men and four months of provisions, was sent on a mission to find the source of the Mississippi River, thought to be somewhere in the newly acquired territory. Pike’s nine-month expedition came up short. In February eighteen o six, Pike’s expedition came upon Leech Lake in northern Minnesota, which Pike incorrectly reported as the source of the Mississippi River. The actual source is Lake Itasca, slightly to the west. A few months after his Mississippi River adventure, General Wilkinson assigned Pike to his second expedition into the Southwestern portion of the new Louisiana Territory. The stated mission was for Pike to locate the sources of the Arkansas and Red Rivers. At the time, Spain was in control of major areas that would later become California, New Mexico, Texas, and Florida. Pike was instructed not to alarm the Spanish, as the relationship between the United States and Spain was uneasy after the Louisiana Purchase, many Americans thought that war with Spain was inevitable. If you’ll indulge me for a side note, General James Wilkinson, who commissioned Pike’s expedition into the Southwestern part of Louisiana Territory, was a very sketchy character. To put it mildly. He was responsible for opening trade on the Mississippi River, but in wielding that considerable power, he also became a paid agent of the rival Spanish Empire. In eighteen oh five, he was involved in Vice President Aaron Burr’s conspiracy to establish a separate country in the Texas Territory. When the conspiracy was discovered, Wilkinson turned on Burr by showing President Jefferson a secret letter between Wilkinson and Burr. Burr was ultimately acquitted of treason after it was discovered that Wilkinson had altered the letter to clear his own name because of his connection to the shady General Wilkinson. Historians still argue over the true purpose of Zebuln Pike’s Southwest Expedition. Was he an explorer surveying the new land on behalf of President Jefferson, or was Pike a spy sent to keep an eye on the Spanish Empire? Or did he perhaps have a role in a larger conspiracy with Wilkinson to establish a new nation in Louisiana Territory? Most historians today seem to agree that whatever Wilkinson’s motives may have been, Pike was likely oblivious to anything nefarious. Pike’s Southwest Expedition spent nearly a year traveling through what would eventually become Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas, following a route from the Missouri and Osage Rivers to the Arkansas River. Pike’s expedition made diplomatic visits to Osage and Pawnee villages along the way, arriving at the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in November of eighteen six. In a letter to President Jefferson, who was an insatiable naturalist, Pike wrote: “There was shipped from New Orleans for Your Excellency in the brig Neptune, bound to Baltimore, a pair of grizzly bears, male and female, which I brought from the dividing ridges of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. They are certainly of a different species from any bears we had in the ancient limits of the United States, and are considered by the natives of that country as the most ferocious animal of the continent. I am, Sir, with high respect, your obedient servant.” Near present-day Pueblo, Colorado, the expedition came upon the tallest peak in the mountain range. They unsuccessfully attempted to scale the fourteen-thousand-foot mountain, encountering bad November weather. A second expedition fourteen years later by Major Stephen Long, would reach the top of that mountain, later named Pike’s Peak. Heading south into the Spanish-controlled territory then called New Spain, now the state of New Mexico, Pike’s expedition aroused suspicion and was captured by the Spanish, taken to Santa Fe and later Chihuahua, Mexico, for questioning. Pike’s papers were confiscated by the Spanish commander in the region. Pike later had to reconstruct his expedition’s records from memory and from a few notes that he managed to smuggle out hidden in the barrels of guns. His papers were eventually returned to the U.S. Government, but not until one hundred years later. After his release by the Spanish government, Pike rose through the military ranks. He was given command of U.S. troops in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. By the time the U.S. had declared war against Great Britain in June of eighteen twelve, Pike had achieved the rank of colonel and was given command of the Army’s Fifteenth Regiment. Less than a year later, Pike was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. He led seventeen hundred troops in a successful attack on Fort York, which is present-day Toronto, a major shipbuilding center for the British. With his defenses collapsing, the British commander, General Roger Hale Sheef, was preparing to abandon the fort and retreat to Kingston. He issued an order to destroy his fort’s military equipment to keep it out of the hands of the Americans. With victory at hand, Pike halted his advance a few hundred feet away from the fort. As General Pike sat on a tree stump interrogating British prisoners, the fort’s large ammunition storehouse exploded, hurling debris that killed or wounded hundreds of American, British, and Canadian soldiers. Pike was struck by a huge rock that crushed his ribs and broke his back. Evacuated to the Navy schooner Madison, Pike lived long enough to hear the victory cheers as his men entered Fort York. One of his last requests was that the captured British flag be folded and placed beneath his head. Despite not finding the true source of the Mississippi River on his first expedition and ending his second expedition by being captured and losing his notes, Zebulin Montgomery Pike’s military achievements made him a celebrated hero in his time. Today, many towns, schools, and streets still bear Pike’s name, including the famous Pike’s Peak and Pike National Forest in central Colorado.

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Speaker 1: And a terrific job on the production and editing by our own Monte Montgomery, and a special thanks to Craig Dumay, who’s the president of the Grateful Nation Project. And by the way, to find out more about the Grateful Nation Project, go to herocards.us. That’s herocards.us for more stories like this, the story of the namesake of Pike’s Peak, Zebulen Pike. Here on Our American Stories.