ONE NATION AMONG MANY The Origins and Objectives of Pike’s Southwest Expedition by Stephen G. Hyslop he Southwest Expedition of Captain Zebu- lon Montgomery Pike was a hazardous military reconnaissance into hotly contest- ed territory. Spain claimed much of the country he traversed, including what is now the state of Kansas, and it was occupied by Indians of various nations who cared little for American asser- tionsT that President Thomas Jefferson, by virtue of the Stephen G. Hyslop is a writer and editor who examines the history of the contested West through the narratives of explorers, traders, and other travelers. He is the author of Bound for Santa Fe: The Road to New Mex- ico and the American Conquest, 1806–1848 (2002), the first chapter of which deals with Pike’s Southwest Expedition. Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 29 (Spring 2006): 2–13. 2KANSAS HISTORY ONE NATION AMONG MANY 3 Louisiana Purchase of 1803, was now their Great Father. ike’s Southwest Expedition grew out of the This complicated Pike’s imposing task of exploring the Louisiana Purchase, which in turn had its roots limits of the disputed Louisiana Territory and urging tribes in a grandiose claim made in 1682 by French ex- of the region to recognize American authority and be plorer René Robert Cavelier, sieur de la Salle. peaceful. After following the Arkansas River to its head- After paddling down the Mississippi River to its waters in the Rocky Mountains at great pains in late 1806, mouth with a party of Frenchmen and Indians in canoes, La he and his men were captured by Spanish troops near the Salle took possession for King Louis XIV of the entire coun- upper Rio Grande in February 1807 and taken first to Santa try watered by the “Mississippi and all rivers which dis- P 1 Fe and later to Chihuahua for questioning. charge themselves thereinto.” This formed the basis for For all the difficulties Pike and company encountered, American assertions that the Louisiana Purchase extended their journey provided as much impetus for westward ex- westward to the headwaters of the Mississippi’s great tribu- pansion as the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Indeed, Pike’s taries, including the Missouri, Arkansas, and Red Rivers. In pitfalls offered Americans a more instructive view of the fact, King Louis and his successors possessed little of obstacles they might face on the way west than the good Louisiana other than places settled by French colonists, no- fortune of Lewis and Clark, who luckily eluded Spanish tably New Orleans and St. Louis. New Orleans alone may parties sent to intercept them. As demonstrated by the tax- have been worth the price Jefferson paid for Louisiana, for ing Southwest Expedition, the fifteen million dollars Jef- control of that port gave Americans free access to the Gulf of ferson offered for Louisiana served merely as a down pay- Mexico from the Mississippi. ment. To make good on that purchase—to secure for the Beyond that, the French controlled Louisiana only to the United States a vast area to which other nations had en- extent that they had diplomatic and trading ties with tribes during claims—would cost Americans dearly in years to along the Missouri River and other western waterways. come. Among those who traded with the French during the eigh- Pike and his men nearly paid with their lives, but the teenth century were three tribes that occupied the mixed encouraging results as detailed in his published account prairie and woodlands east of the Plains and later figured lured other Americans across the Plains and deep into prominently in Pike’s Southwest Expedition: Osages, Spanish territory. In 1821, when Mexico won indepen- Kansas, and Pawnees. The Kansas lived near the mouth of dence from Spain, merchant adventurer William Becknell the Kansas River, with Pawnees to their north and west incorporated one promising stretch of the path Pike fol- (largely in present Nebraska) and Osages to their south and lowed, running westward along the Arkansas River from east (largely in present Missouri). All three groups raised the Great Bend, into the trade route known as the Santa Fe corn and other crops and supplemented their harvests by Trail. If Becknell was the father of that trail, then Pike hunting, sometimes ranging far out onto the Plains in pur- might be called its grandfather, the man who officially in- suit of buffalo and clashing there with rival tribes. augurated a fateful exchange between Spanish and Anglo- By 1720 the Pawnees had obtained guns from the Americans that involved both commerce and conflict, French in exchange for furs, and they used the firearms in leading to the occupation of New Mexico in 1846 by U.S. battles with the Apaches on the western Plains. Those troops following the Santa Fe Trail. Apaches traded with Spanish colonists in New Mexico and Pike was a pathfinder, but the paths he found and pur- alarmed them with fanciful reports that Frenchmen were sued were not new. He built on the accomplishments of settling among the Pawnees and arming them for assaults Spanish and French explorers, who were themselves guid- on Spaniards. With Spain and France at war, New Mexico’s ed by Indians along trails that tribe members had used for governor had orders to challenge the French and to “block 2 ages. In that sense, Pike’s historic venture simply was an- their evil designs.” In the summer of 1720 he dispatched other chapter in a saga that began long before he was born to an army officer and his wife on a farm in New Jersey in 1. Marshall Sprague, So Vast So Beautiful a Land: Louisiana and the Pur- 1779, when the outcome of the American Revolution still chase (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1991), 3–4; William H. Goetzmann and Glyndwyr Williams, The Atlas of North American Exploration: From the remained very much in doubt and few people imagined Norse Voyages to the Race to the Pole (New York: Prentice Hall, 1992), 64–65. that this struggling young nation would ever span the con- 2. David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 169–71; Goetzmann and Williams, The Atlas tinent. of North American Exploration, 94. 4KANSAS HISTORY Pike’s Southwest Expedition grew out of the Louisiana Purchase, which in turn had its roots in a grandiose claim made in 1682 by French explorer René Robert Cavelier, sieur de la Salle (left). After paddling down the Mississippi River to its mouth, La Salle took pos- session for King Louis XIV of the entire country watered by the “Mississippi and all rivers which discharge themselves thereinto.” chiefs. His goal was to persuade the Osages, Kansas, Pawnees, and other French trading partners to keep peace with each other and with the Apaches to their west. This ambitious effort to pacify Indians, like later Amer- ican efforts to do the same, was not a humanitarian ges- ture. French, Spanish, British, and American authorities all incited tribes to make war when it served their national in- terests, but peace often was preferable because it allowed traders and officials to move safely and profitably from camp to camp and reach remote groups such as the Apach- es. When Bourgmont met with the Kansa tribe in July 1724 he urged them to deal peacefully with the Osages and Pedro de Villasur with a force of more than one hundred other Indians accompanying him. “If you quarrel with the Spanish soldiers and Pueblo Indian allies to Pawnee coun- other nations who have come with me,” he told them, 3 try to deal with the presumed French threat. “you will also always quarrel with me.” Bourgmont pre- Villasur’s expedition was not the first Spanish venture vailed on the Kansas to surrender Apache captives and across the Plains. In 1541 Francisco Vásquez de Coronado join in a French expedition that encountered Apaches had journeyed northeastward from Pueblo country to the along the Smoky Hill River (near present Ellsworth). He Arkansas River and beyond in pursuit of the fabled riches invited them to a grand peace council and went on to par- of a land called Quivira. Coronado reaped no profit from ley with the Apaches along the Arkansas. Although they that expedition, but it formed the basis for Spanish claims welcomed his initiative, the Apaches continued to trade to the Plains. Spaniards had difficulty pursuing those with Spaniards as well as Frenchmen until Comanches ad- claims, however, because authorities discouraged trading vancing from the Rockies swept the tribe from the western ventures beyond New Mexico and prohibited the sale of Plains in the 1730s. Many Apache bands took refuge in guns to Indians. The limits of Spanish power on the Plains mountainous regions of New Mexico, where they became became painfully clear when Pawnees ambushed Villasur notorious for raiding Spanish settlements. near the Platte River and killed him and many of his The emergence of the formidable Comanches did not troops. deter French traders from seeking a path to Santa Fe. In the The defeat of Villasur encouraged the French to extend spring of 1739 brothers Pierre and Paul Mallet formed a their chain of tribal alliances westward and seek entry to small trading party and ventured up the Missouri River in New Mexico commercially if not militarily. In 1724 French- the belief that Santa Fe lay near its headwaters. The man Étienne Veniard de Bourgmont, commandant of the Pawnees and other Indians they met with knew better and Missouri River, set out on an expedition that foreshad- advised them to head overland to the Arkansas River, owed Pike’s diplomatic efforts among western tribes.