At 10 00 p. M. Eastern, Caroline Glick argues the u. S. Pursuit of a twostate solution to the israelpalestine conflict has failed miserably and is base owned palestinian claims to handle that are unfounded. We wrap up at 11 00 p. M. Eastern with bernard schwartz, author of just say yes. That all happens next on cspan2s booktv. Jared orsi is next. He recounsels the life of explorer zebulon pike, the name sake of pikes peak in the rockie mountains. This is an hour and 15 minutes. Thank you all for coming out. So im going to talk about a book ive recently published on zebulon pike. Came out month before last, in january, and i had some slides for you, most of them are images that i took, and i tide 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 him in the winter time in a shot i took in june. So theres one that didnt work out. 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 texty. They have a lot of words on them. And i dont thats by design. I dont necessarily envision 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 i have encountered in my sources, and so dont worry about reading every last word. Im not going to read them to you. But if theyll kind of convey an impression of the language of the time, and ill paraphrase the most important points you need to understand. So, if you cant read all of it, dont worry about that. Let me jump in. Im going to talk for about 45 minutes, and then i below be glad to take ill be glad to take questions and answers as long or as short as your interested in it. After the introduction theres two parts to the talk. One about pikes early life and the other about his adventures in the rockie mountains. So lets begin on january 20, 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 rockie 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 week to go on but two imperiled not to. They were cold and hungry and inadequately clothed and at any time know where they were. On this day pike discovered that two of his men, john sparks and thomas dari had frostbite so bad they could not walk knee any longer, and so turning 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. I want you to recall this word fortitude. 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 oforbidding mountains in the san louis valley he sent a rescue party back to retrieve sparks and dari, and the rescuers found sparks and dourty alive but still unable to travel, and 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 was sacred not to leave them alone in the wilderness. Little did they know my heart, pike wrote in his journal, 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. That concept of gratitude as something that a nation owes people who sacrifice for it physically is another concept well come back to. So, what are we to make of all this . Who was pike . The question i want to ask today. Was he an intrepid explorer whose hardiness in the face of difficulty opened the west to his nation, or was he a reckless commander whose poor decisionmaking exposed his men to unnecessary danger . Or perhaps, as some he speculated, spy whose secret orders to reconnoiterer santa fe impelled him anward 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 fishing him out have looked soley at his official military journals and reports, which are too big thick volumes. Theyre very unwieldy, even contradictory documents and as a result, were left with those contradictory images of him. What my book tries to do is employ some new strategy for understanding pike. One thing i did was i hired a genealogist who compiled a whole bunch of documents about his early life that no pike historian had ever look at before. Another thing i did was to look at some letters. He is only left us, other than his official military reports, only left us 14 letters in his own hand. But i wrung as much meaning out of the 14 letters is a could, reading between the lines and trying to read them in the context of the time, and wheres privilege historians dropped in close in their work on pike in the past, i really took them seriously from an an analytical perspective. Theyre all from the time period of his young adult life so give us a glimpse of him at a formative moment. Ive Read Everything that pike read. We have about a dozen different books we know he read, that he said he read or was influenced by, and ive gone back and read all those things in order to try and get a sense of what kind of information about his culture and world did he have available to him, and then fortunately, as youll see, i pay close attention to the natural environment, especially the mens bodies. Sparks and dourtys toes and other aspects of their physical experience of exploration and the landscape, and after doing this im convinced that above all pike was nationalist. Thats the single best word to characterize his personality and his ideas, is nationalism. This wasnt a given at the time. Because america, at this time, was a young and fragile nation. We didnt 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 dvded to cast their lot with the nation. But early in life pike became persuaded that the pest way to advance his best way to advance his considerable amibitions was to sacrifice physically for his nation. And his actions in the rockie mountains need to be read in this light, i think. So, lets town 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 down on the ohio river, a little east of its confluence with the mississippi. And as products of the american revolution, military forts like this one are markers of a historic shift in western civilization history. For the first time in western civilization in the middle and late part of the 18th century, its no longer unanimously accepted that the only i would 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 virtue visual fewous behavior. This is becoming an increasingly widely seasoned idea at the end of the 1700s. So pike was interested in this concept of virtue. What did virtue entail . Well, a few stuffy old englishmen thought 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 sitting with a immobility. George washington was made by this tutor to copy the 101 precepts of civility from which he learned wisdom such as not spitting 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 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 advicegivers cancelled against excessive shiver aring or scratching or snapping of fingers or drumming of table tops, rubbing of hands, biting of nails and taps of toes. 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 to fiddle with this for just a second to see if i can get rid of that thing. Apparently not. There we go. All right. 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 if when we talk about brides, it offer brings to mine things like status and wealth and beauty, occupation, desire, things we might call cultural. So, tonight, im dressed up and you all were able to come more casually. That signals the different roles we play in tonights event. This is how the english mannerists thought about bodies, about markers of one0s social position. But bodies 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 frontier, the ohio valley that he grew up in, and the results, the consequences of those decisions that he made and how they affected his activities in the rockie mountains. Ill say that again. That it came out kind of garbled. His life is a story in many ways of what he decided to do when his body melt the culture of the early republic and the environment of the frontier, simultaneously. And how those life decisions he made shaped his behavior in the rockie mountains. So, pikes letters suggest that as a young man, like most americans, he ate this manners stuff up. His favorite advice track seems to have been this little book called economy of human life by a fellow named robert dodgely. One of the most important and influential english publishers of the middle of the 18th 18th century, and like the other mannerists dodgely talked a lot about bodily positioning. He condemned people who used their body to draw attention to themselves. But oneonone deers how a Frontier Youth like pike, who was in no danger of having the financial means to let fancy clothes or public parading soley his virtue. How he would have read such counsel. Dodgely and other writers of the literature imagined their readers would be sitting by firesides in philadelphia parlors, 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 in 1795, at the age of 15. And for the next decade, he spends most of his time as a river runner. He is 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, and so when the current was high it tested the strength, the muscles of the men on the rivers. When the current was too low, they had to worry about they had to guard against the danger of shoals and snags, and when it got really low they had to tike the goos off the boat and portage the boats and goods on the backs of animals. Has held with men who weighedded waded into the river water with chunks of ice floating buy. For pike and the dozens of men he commanded on the river, most of the time they were transporting supplies they were too hot, hungry, tired, cold, sunburn, mosquitobitten or exhausted. And in this environment, bodily discipline involve considerably more endurance and suffering than simply remembering not to scratch. Or walk at a 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 die bell tated by the time he reached the age of 50, and pike thought, i dont want this life. This is going to beat me up and then chew me up and ill be kicked out of the army when im no longer useful. But he didnt quit. And here dodgely provides us some clues, perhaps, about why he didnt. Dodgely devote 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 affirmations exhorting young men like pike to show fortitude in the face of hardship. This is the same word he used in exorting sparks and dougherty to. Act with fortitude. And if he takes the advice he could easily have reasoned himself into accepting the armys promise of physical suffering and called it a great virtue. All of this was also reinforced by some high profile examples, one of which is George Washington in 1796 he 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. Dodgely not everybody could sacrifice in the way a president could, by giving up a third term in office. Now, dodgely nevertheless 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 virtues. Everybody has something they can sacrifice, and you can be virtuous, humbler people than president s and generals can be virtue yous in doing well to that which is committed to thai charge. So dodgely is calling everybody to verse fewous sacrifice. The question is, what does pike have. No reputation no. We no honor no education no property. What does somebody a young man on the frontier like pike that he can sacrifice one day in one of the margins on of a page of dodgelys book, next to the entry of sincerity, pike scribbled this. So that is what pike can sacrifice for his nation. His life. His body. But its not just his own body he is going to discipline for the nation. He also once he is an officer, begins to discipline the men under his charge. So one quick story. Cold morning, december, 1801, he is the crew of 70 men and a tent craft fleet that is carrying supplies down the ohio river to build a new fort near the mouth of the Mississippi River. Now, the fleet consist iowa kind of boats. Supply boats, which were very heavy, that carried 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, the pike soldiers hustle out of their tents and pack up and then they start scrambling for the Lighter Company boats to avoid the toil of having to row and pole the heavily laden supply boats. Pike was incensed. He picks up a still smoldering log from one of the camp fires and flings it a the slackers and then picks up another and another and very quickly order is restored. Whats going on here is that to pike, shirking of physical duty is the worst kind of dishonor. Its a violation of the code of selfsacrifice for the nation, and it calls for bodily discipline, in this case through pelting of firewood. So, life at the frontier fort gave pike lots of opportunities to discipline other peoples bodies and soon he would get his own opportunity to test his own fortitude. So, one day in late 1803, Merryweather Lewis came to where pike was station it. Lieu was was looking for a few men, hardy in body and soul and spirit, to accompany him on a grand adventure, a core of discovery, all the way to the pacific ocean. He had already selected hid lieutenant for that trip, a man from a prominent kentucky military family, his name was william clark, so you know, 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 recently acquired louisiana territory, and he wanted them to be led by, quote, the armys most capable officers. Dead did pike want to lead one, lewis asked . He sure did. In the spring of 1805 when orders came to lead an expedition to the head waters of 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 1st. 1805. But he overreached those orders. He stayed up in the minnesota wilderness, and spend a very cold, hungry, and exhausting winter there. And he comes back the following spring and actually make note of the fact that he is overstepping his orders. His supervisor, this guy right here, who well talk about more in a second wrote to the secretary of war that pike is a very good soldier but 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 he is refracted it. He doesnt take it literally but refracted it through his physical experience on the frontier, and he has 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 one of those summertime photographs. He was there in the wintertime, of course. He tests this theory in the minnesota wilderness, at its limit, and it works. He comes back, and he 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 think about how his wife felt. Hes been gone for nine months and within three days he gets back on to st. Louis and given another highprofile assignment. With another opportunity to sacrifice and win glory on behalf of the nation. And its this second assignment that is going to bring him to the valley where he had to abandon sparks and daugherty. That brings me to the the end of the first part of my presentation. Now id like to fastforward and join him in the middle of his expedition. This an overview of pikes second expedition. It begins here actually i have a pointer here begins here in st. 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 who the United States was courting an alliance with at that time. Then comes back down the plains, up the arkansas with, wonders in the rockie mountains lost for a couple months, and finds himself down here near the new mexico border where he is arrested be a unit of the spanish army. Spain owns what is now the southwestern United States and mexico at the time, and so when pike shows up down here they call him a trespasser, and they arrest him. They tick him first to santa fe and then the city of chihuahua to explain himself to military and civil authorities, and then finally they march him back across texas and redeposit him on u. S. Soil at in july of 1807. Almost one year, just 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. Rejoin him right about here, in southeastern colorado, on november 15th, 1806. He his 16 men cancaravan are riding along the Arkansas River, and at 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 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 mexican mountains. Their destination is now in sight. From this point over the next few days, pikes reading pikes journal is almost comic cal. This is the marker that marks the site where he first spotted it. Werent able to see the mountain on that particular day. But in the days after he spots it, his journal is somewhat humorous. Each morning he gets up and he thinks he is going to march to the mountains that day. And then he is 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 alleghenys at all. Pike doesnt really understand what he is seeing. He hasnt acclimated himself to the clear air and long sight lines and soaring heights of the american west. So the possibility you can see a mountain and still be more than 100 miles away from it, like he was, is not something he can wrap his voice valley mind around. Underestimating the distance to the crest, he called the grand peak, is only the first mistake he made about the rockie mountains. The pinnacle was not a days march away. The mountains were nothing like the alleghenies and the men were not going home anytime soon. More than two months would elapse before they escaped the mountains, and in the interim, pike was trying would attempt to climb the mountain without food or blankets or even socks. He would lead men wearing summer army cotton uniforms into the mountains on the morning of winters first blizzard. Twice he would cross chains of mountains without clear and explicit need to do so. He would leave frost bitten men in the wilderness, contemplate suicide, threaten to execute a ma lingerer, and he razeed an American Flag on spanish soil. This behavior is sufficiently strange to have led to speculation, both at the time in his day, and since then, about the possibility theres Something Else going on with his expedition, perhaps he has secret orders he is 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 accomplish it most of what his orders had asked him to do. The only thing remaining was to find the head waters of the red river, and then descend the red river back to the mississippi valley. Still, as the horses weakened and the cottonwoods turned golden and the nights grew chillier, pike was worried the lateness of the season placed the objects of the mission in jeopardys was determined to press on in spite of any hardships or obstacles they might encounter. That raises the question, whose objects was he pursuing . Ones they were jeffersons. Youve probably all seen pictures like this, in texasbooks and things like that. Depicting the louisiana purchase, in very clear terms, with very welldefined boundaries, bus these maps depict louisiana as it looked in 1819, after the United States and spain actually agreed on its boundaries. Thats not what it looked like in 1803 when jefferson first made the purchase in 1803 it looked more like this. This is a spanyear map from the time. Louisiana was a blank spot on the map. That nobody really knew, nobody in spain or the United States or france, from whom jefferson bought it no one in those countries really knew what was there, and its boundaries were also elusive. Nobody knew exactly where louisiana stopped and started. 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 Mississippi River is what spain thought he had purchased from france in 1803. You can see theres going to be some problems here. Louisiana was a blank spot on the map and whoever was going to 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 governor of louisiana territory, wherever louisiana territory stopped and started. He was the governor. He was also the ranking general in the United States army. And 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 corner the market on the as yet up developed but potentially lucrative trade with the new mexican could capital, or perhaps to spy as part of a scheme that wilkinson was cooking up with this man, aaron burr. Burr was looking for something to rekindle his sagging plate political and economic fortunates. Its possible he was accused of this and tried it was possible he was trying to foment secession, and was more likely trying too launch a filibustering expedition, that is to gather a private army can 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 side man. Either way, whatever he was up to, the recon since of the territory that pike was heading into was potentially would have been quite useful to burr. The fact that all three men were at the same fort in june of 1805 at the time the wilkinson and burr first met to Start Cooking up the plan, has led to speculation that perhaps pike was part of the burr and wilkinson scheme, and and the real goal was to get to santa fe despite his official instructions to avoid it. Also fueling that speculation is the pike fact that pike carried with him a handdrawn map to santa fe; well talk more about this in a minute. 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 incriminating is the fact that peek wrote a letter to wilkinson on july 22nd, few weeks after he had left st. Louis, and this is one of those paragraphs, those texty slides you dont need to read every word of but basically in this hiss gash dar belled language what pike is saying if i happen to run into some spaniards wink, wink ill tell them im looking for the red and if im lost and trying to get week in United States. If they happen to require that i go to santa the to explain myself to officials there, so much the better. So are the sang win expectations he is referring to there, is that code for secret orders to get to santa fe . Some people have suggested, yes. And we will see. His objects 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 not essential to understanding what happens next. So im going pass over that aspect of his downy, but if you want to talk about it in the q a session, id be happy to go into more detail there. This is the view he likely had. The closest spot he got to pikes peak. Never fully climb it. 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 vicinity of modern canyon city, a place where several small tributaries of the Arkansas River come together, and pike wasnt sheer 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 to figure out this question. And on december 10th, he decides that he is going to turn north. Now, this is perhaps a curious decision for a man who is looking for the red river. This slide on this picture on the left here is the santa fe trail map 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 again, this direction is north. So to get from the arkansas to the red, you want to go south or southwest. Ing the map overhere we dont have evidence for certain that pike carried this map with him but its quite likely he did, or at least he knew of its contents. This is a map prepared by alexander von humble, the great prussian photographer at the time, and he asked spanish officials what they knew of the geography, and here you can see at the top of the map something labeled the Arkansas River in spanish, and this says rio rojo, so red river. 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 head waters of the red river are in northern texas. So elusive are they that they werent finally pinpointed 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 north, and the reason he decides to go north is twofold. One is he looks to the southwest and he sees the mountains, 14,000foot peaks, a sheer face, and he says, its impossible to cross them. The other thing is he finds a human trail, heading north from what is now canyon city, up a creek bed, and pike is sufficiently confused about the geography he decides he wants to get directions, talk to anybody, spaniard, indian, and wants to find out what is going on here. So the travels north over into what is now south park in colorado, and wanders around there, doesnt find anything of interest to him, and then travels to the southwest. Looking for the red river to the southwest. He travels over trout creek pass, which i followed today by highway 284 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 bison and have a Christmas Eve feast. Camp out on Christmas Day. Can you january first on his 28th birthday he comes over the ridge and spies his camp. 36 brutal days of the mountains have yielded only way the rediscovery of the arkansas which he has been following since midoctober. So if this was still the arkansas, where was the red . Texas wasnt one of the places that crossed his mind. He looks which he had previously decided where of kosovo and he decides it must be to the southwest over those mountains and he decides to cross. Now, some have interpreted this as evidence of secret orders. He is going to get santa fe no matter what even if he got across the mountains. Maybe so but a look at the map reveals that if he is on the arkansas, the red river right here in santa fe art in the same directions of the direction alone doesnt tell us what about what the objection is. But the path i think it does tell us something. This is the view that he would have had from his Christmas Day camp it for several days before and after. The past is a low spot in the mountains a little bit to the southwest of the city and if he had stood at the camp and looked south, he would have found a very inviting place to try to cross the mountains. If the mission is to get santa fe this is as good of a place as any to try to do it. If he stands in the same spot and looks to the left he will see the peaks of the northern end of the mountains and hes going to realize that if i run across, its never going to get any better than this. But he doesnt. He continues down the stream which is the behavior of somebody that believes he is on the red river and intending to head home. Whatever his motives, he decides to cross. There were two men behind and the horses were shot into the planned is to leave a couple men behind with the horses and let them recover while the rest of the party goes and finds a good halfway and once they find that, they will send back and they will have recovered and founded the easiest route through the mountain. The planned might have worked except for january 17. January 17, he came between the narrow range of the hills into the colorado westmount valley near here late in the day of the last hours of sunshine right about the time i took this photograph and he sees there is nothing in the way of the water in front of him and he decides that he is going to cross the valley if not very evidence in this picture but at the first art well worded and have lots of streams coming down the mountain canyons. The aerial distance takes him several hours and they have to do most of the crossing in the dark. Right about here the men get their feet wet crossing the creek. Several hours later by the time they get to the camp on the campfire going to star the darkd the temperature has stalked him degrees below zero in several of the men have very serious frostbite. This necessitates the rest for several days and by the time they start the march again without the sparks they leave behind because of the frostbite by the time the march again, a blizzard has struck and the snow at some point says that he cant see more than a few feet in front of him and at th the party become separated. On two occasions on one occasion they go three days without food and then they go for days without food. And it eventually becomes too much for john brown, private john brown who grumbles on january 21 something to the effect of these araffect of ther horses and at first he ignored his comments and later in the day they shoot a bison and the feast by campfire. After everybody is satisfied and has eaten their fill, he lights into him and calls brown seditious and mutinous and says if i hear a comment like this from you again i will execute you. And again, you dont need to absorb everything that i want to point out some of the language that he uses in criticizing him, language that is heavy with nationalist implications in the aftermath of the constitution of the bill of rights and the nation. He talks about equal that he and gratitude. Remember what he promised to do, to return them to a grateful country and he is accusing him of being the opposite. He talks about physical sacrifice in the contempt of danger and he promises again the rewards of the government and gratitude of the country men. Countrymen. So, when he has lost everything, food, direction the horses come in support of his men, he falls back on the language of nationalism. He looks pretty bad right about now. It has upset him even pass after pass blocked by snow. He alternates between this obsession and despair that the zaire to just lay down and die in the snow. Hes abandoned five men and has driven others beyond their limit and has threatened to execute anybody that grumbles. The secret orders here he sees this as the behavior of a man following the secret orders to get to santa fe. Lets go back and talk for a second as the nature side of the diagram that i showed you a few minutes ago. The caloric intake has been dangerously low since Christmas Eve feast. They alternated rubbing several days without any food at all and then occasionally getting to eat for a day. The medical reports or the research that i studied about starvation and the physicians i talked to have told me that it is unlikely that the gastrointestinal system would have been able to absorb enough nutrients from this feast to make up for the depletion of fat and muscle that occurred. On that day they hadnt eaten for for days. They were probably suffering the first effect of starvation, weight loss and weakness, either at ability, violent outbursts of anger come in. Memory and concentration. If you couple this with the hypothermia they were also probably suffering from and the apathy into the clouded the judgment that comes with it, it probably means that not only are the exhausted that they are probably losing their ability to process information and make decisions about literally he cannot think straight at this point. His outburst might have been the action of a man that had secret orders to get to santa fe, that they arbutthey are also consisth the actions of the hungary hypothermic organism that has lost the ability, lost mental stability and mental acuity. In any case, things got better after the meal. On the 27th of january, they finally find the path and they look out over the broad valley with a river. We can see this here with a reverb running through it to the southeast. The red, that was still in texas. But he took it for the red and he went down to the southern end of the valley and he built a small stockade on a tributary of the river he sent a rescue party back and they sent back another rescue party and while the second was still out, the party of the spanish showed up at the fort and told him that he was on spanish soil. What is this . He told him just like he had told wilkinson he would pretend to be lost. He was camped on spanish soil. The spaniards marched himself in the santa fe and then to the provincial capital before returning him back against texas to american soil later that summer. Very patriotically, he expresses the excitement that he has upon returning to the United States. Lets return to the question by way of conclusion lets return to the question of secret orders. I havent given you all of the evidence thats relevant, but ive given you a bunch of it and its inconclusive. The most certain thing we can say is that we cant know for sure. Its tantalizing that he had secret orders but that rests on the existence of orders for which we have no direct evidence of their existence. As ias an unrelated geographer r and a cognitively impaired organism squares away not only with all of the Available Evidence but with the habit of overreaching workers. He was a nationalist and comes by hearing doesnt fit his ammo. Its not keeping with his character. Going beyond his orders, doing Dangerous Things for making poor decisions when he is cold and hungry and exhausted due square away with his character. And as a historian, if everything can be explained by the Available Evidence i think that historians often be cautious and resting their explanations on context or conjectural evidence. Its possible that he had orders although it is possible he didnt. His behavior is described as part of a larger set of mistakes and poor decisions that were occasioned by the failure of all of his resources. His men to his horses, the mind, the body of the failure of those things to do which he had expected and needed them to do. With that, i will stop and i will be happy to take questions or comments if you have been. Thanks for your attention and for coming out tonight. So where did he go from here . From that point on he has a career trajectory. The question of where did he go from this point forward, he has a career trajectory of first publishing his journals and that takes about a year for him to organize the paper that he has from his expedition and things like that. Then he gets a series of military promotions. By the ease of the war of 1812, he is a colonel. This is an march of 1813. In april of 1813, the battle of york takes place. One of the few decisive american victory is of the entire war and he is killed in combat at that battle. York is as you now know as toronto. And its been politically volatile and the James Madison administration that started the war begins to see that it has stalemated and its incredibly unpopular and he looks for ways to back out of it and the war that began as an attempt to seize canada, to gain territory for the United States he backs off of that and he says it is about testing the mettle to show on your to say we can stand up to powerful army in the world at the time and not lose. If he is trying to frame the war that part of it goes that have sacrificed for the country become a tool for the Madison Administration to demonstrate the honor and the bravery and sacrifice of americans in the war. So he actually just rockets to fame. Other than George Washington hes the brightest military hero and going to mix my metaphors come in the pantheon of American Military heroes for a very brief time from his death until the early 1820s and in fact if you know anything about meriwether lewis, he committed suicide in 1809, he died in a political scandal. Lewilouis and clark are not at l popular in American Culture at the time. Of the time. Pike is a major hero. Those forces are going to reverse over the course of the 19th and the 20th century. But in death he gets the glory and the same that had always eluded him in life so its too late to enjoy the physical sacrifice for his country does end u up giving him the very wos that he thought it was. Thanks for that question. Any other questions . How old was pike when he died . He was 34yearsold. Of course as i was writing this, i had to confront the fact i was writing about someone that had accomplished more in his life than i had even though i had lived longer than he had. The question was did he marry or have family . He did. In 1801, he married a woman named clara brown who by all accounts of his and her and other people was a very impressive woman well educated, she spoke several languages and spoke french, german and spanish. The sort of woman that pike said would share my impressions. She was much wealthier than he was. His family was against the marriage, her father in particular. At this point, he was the lowest level of the army hierarchy. One of the interesting things and i never would have put this together except the books happened to be open on my desk and i put things that didnt does is really go together i put them together. There was a book called karissa. Its one of the longest novels ever written and its also one of the most popular novels of the 18th century and it is a story that reflects this idea that people are free agents, people are independent so they can make whatever they want of their Lifetime Associated born into a standing family, and her father keeps her under his thumb as he wants to prepare her for a successful marriage that will enhance the family, the familys reputation. But she has got ideas of her own. So you have the old idea that parents should control who they are children marry in order to maintain the high standing of the family versus the upstart independence and young daughter. He ends up missing and he ends up committing suicide. The moral is parents coming you should let your children be independent to make of themselves but they are able to, rather than try to hold onto this whole idea of parents deciding who they should marry to protect family standing. Pike and clara brown married against her fathers wishes. They named their daughter a daughter conceived in rebellion against the parents and named her clueless. So after this story one of the stories that makes me think that he has absorbed these ideas in the 18th century that children should be independent and adults should make up what they can and being born into the station isnt whats important but rather it is what you make it your self. So claire is a is the only surviving offspring. She grows up and she marries the son of William Henry harrison who is a good friend of pike and has a similar sort of military frontier military trajectory except that he lives longer and becomes president of the selected president of the United States in 1840. He doesnt live long just a few months and then he dies but many including myself have speculated that pike lived longer he might have had the career of the trajectory to other famous frontier generals like Andrew Jackson and William Henry harrison who became the president. What you say that he was bright or was just a tremendous fortitude . A tremendous amount of fortitude cracks i think both. Was he just a man with a lot of fortitude . I would say that he had a lot of both. He has no formal education. Even as a young child and a teenager he was getting whatever he could absorbed at whatever school there might have been at a military post and there might not have been any and he was bouncing between them and growing up. If you read his writing is very unpolished if you have gotten a sense of some of these things. They are not supersharp. But the perceptiveness and ability to preserve the inherent or indians or fellow military officers and figure out kind of whats going on in figuring out clever diplomatic ways of handling things strike me as somebody who is very perceptive and bright. Jackson had a little bit more and he started higher in life and had a little bit more education. And of course the other famous frontier person is Abraham Lincoln born in 1829 and go on from Humble Beginnings to become president as well. I think that his ambition and fortitude and the constitution and the spirit would have taken him far. But formal education wasnt something that he had. Of the 14 letters i mention thad that most of them are to his siblings, and hes always exhorting them, study hard, train your mind. He also says train your body. He tells his younger brother who is in one of the first classes at the west Point Academy on several occasions, he says you need to strengthen your body and your mind and thats how you get ahead in life. Basically sacrifice, study hard. He was very ambitious. Yes. In addition to the intelligence, he is long on ambition and stubbornness. In the ohio valley when he is a beginning officer he stays up late night after night so he does his army duties during the day and he studies by candlelight into the night. Thats when he is reading all these things and hes teaching himself one of his co officers at the camp on the ohio river says that he taught himself basic mathematics that he had learned french, that he was a tolerably good scholar this officers has and that he was widely read. If you can imagine again that this not only takes the intelligence that the physical fortitude to be dragging stuff up and down the river all day, then instead of crashing in your tent at night you are up studying and teaching math and the medics and military strategy and that sort of thing. What was his handwriting like . His handwriting like most people at the 18th centur of ths highly stylized and actually lets go back to the santa fe map. This is a little messier than his letters would have been and if you could see this as his handwriting here so it has a lot of the loops and curly cues written. The first time that you encounter this come it took me an hour to read a onepage letter but after you read his handwriting and other peoples handwriting from the time over and over, it starts to come together because it is very consistent. I have several old letters and they are always preaching to the children. Do you ever get to enjoy the benefits of what he was doing and accomplishing, or did he care about that do you think . Spinnaker did he ever gets to enjoy the benefits of what he was a compression and did he care about that . I think that he cared more about fame and gratitude of his countrymen then about material comfort. Thats my sense. Was he able to enjoy those things is kind of a mixed bag and when he returns he returns as justice arenberg goes on trial and he is linked to this through both inside and by insay coincidence of the timing of the exposition. So, there is a cloud that kind of hangs over his whole expedition. A lot of people write nasty things about him in the newspapers and he spends a lot of time trying to clear himself. He gets absolution from jefferson and the secretary of war. They both write letters which he sends to congress saying you know, we know that he wasnt a part of this thing and he petitions him for a reward because when louis and clark got back, they voted the man the parcels of the frontierland and a double pay for going out and crossing and risking their lives instead of staying at home on the ohio river and risking their lives a little bit less. And so, he makes the same request of congress and he forwards these letters from jefferson and the dearborn and the secretary of state James Madison and things like that and the 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 the congress over jefferson and burr and wilkinson just in general and the Congress Never votes. My guess there is no record. Nobody made a decision not to vote, but the last evidence that we have in the congressional record as of the Committee Voting to bring it to a vote on the floor, and then it just disappears. Until the 1840s when we have a comment by his widow who is requesting that the real war to be paid to her. By this point shes destitute and says they never paid it to my husband. I would like it now and then if she dies before they do anything. My guess about what is going on is twofold. One is he is acquitted if he has a lot of political enemies. And so, he has a lot of powerful friends and they cannot manage to get this actually to the vote on the floor. The other thing that may be going on in addition is that the government is very cost conscious in this time cutting back the army substantially and making other cuts. Some of the people that criticized him in the Committee Said we have all these expeditions out there we cannot be getting double pay land grants to everybody that goes on one of these things. The point is we are spending too much. We have to cut back. This is one place we can cut back. Back. So the combination is going on. He never forget the glory that he wants. But he does publish his journal. They are favorably reviewed. He gets the Rapid Military promotion, so i would say that he partially gets it in life and in death he gets the other half. To get to enjoy it. Thank you all for coming out. I hope that you have enjoyed it. The question is when did they name pikes peak. They come west and carry the journal in his hand. A couple of them in the 1820s and a lot of the 1830s and 8040s and started calling at things like pikes peak, pikes mounted, those sort of things. The man that actually climbed it first was a member of his expedition that came in 1820 and his name was edward and james. So some people started calling it james peake and those coincided until the armys topographical engineers officially gave it the name of pikes peak. I dont know there was a plight when they started doing it but it came into the usage and that et 30s and 1840s and james peake kind of sellout. November 11 and february 27 of 1806 and 1807 he did manage to climb the peak. He climbed another mountain but he didnt climb the peak and its almost certainly the mount rosa although there is some debate about that. If you look at the skyline from Colorado Springs you see pikes peak and then the third one to the south is almost a perfect triangle. What grade are you in . Have you seen one of those in the colorado fourthgrade textbook or anything like that . In eighth grade you get to that. What is your name . Thanks for coming. How did they negotiated the disparity . Spinnaker because basically the United States occupied it and persuaded the alliances away from spain and in 1803 he was trying to contest the United States definition that i 1819 the entire hemisphere of the spanish holdings from argentina all the way up to the president was in open rebellion and argentina and mexico and spain was just really weak and they had been toppled by the government in 1808 and spain pretty much have to accept that the United States could determine at that point and then two years later of course mexico falls and becomes an independent nation. And so, really the United States was strong and occupied that space and they were weak to do so. So they didnt have it drawn out in the somebody signed a contract . The diplomats asked the french governor or the french secretary of the foreign affair