Mr. Zebulon Pike - Explorer

Ironically Aaron Burr's shady activities actually gave the US some benefits in creating interest in new explorations.  In 1805, Wilkinson ordered Lt. Zebulon Montgomery Pike, a young officer under his
command to lead an expedition up the Mississippi River to locate the source, inform the Indians of American sovereignty and warn the Canadian fur men off US soil.  He was also to report on mining activities around the French settlement of Dubuque.   The lead mined there was necessary for making bullets.

On August 9, 1805, Pike started out with 20 soldiers, totally innocent of any plots or schemes.  He inspected the lead mines and fought the Sioux in Minnesota.  They wintered in Little Falls. In December Pike set out with a small party to find the headwaters of the Mississippi.  Only by being given shelter by the Canadians at a trading post was he and his party able to survive being frozen to death.  Pike then ordered the hosts to evacuate US Soil or pay American duties. When Pike was refused he shot down the British flag. 

Pike thought he found the headwaters at Leech Lake, but was mistaken.  He returned to St. Louis in April 1806. 

Next time...Pike goes Southwest
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On this Day in History: "On January 14,  1639,  the first constitution in the American colonies, the “Fundamental Orders,” is adopted by representatives of Wethersfield, Windsor, and Hartford in Connecticut.

Go West Young Man!

The fur traders moved westward.  In 1673, Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet had reached the
Mississippi River from the Great Lakes region.  They reported an all water route between the northern lakes and the Gulf of Mexico.

This idea inspired others, beginning with Robert Cavalier, Sieur de LaSalle,  who launched an enterprise in 1675 to establish trading posts in the interior to ship furs to Europe via the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi.  LaSalle lost his life trying to plant a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi.

In the 1680s trappers and traders operated out of a base at the head of Lake Michigan, Michillimackinac.  Their miserable work and brutal hardships built a network of Indians alliances that gave France supremacy in the Mississippi Valley and challenged the Spanish in Texas and New Mexico.

Ironically, the gold and furs that won the empires for Spain and France also doomed them to destruction in North America.  Both colonizing powers were bent on skimming the surface wealth from the New World, so much so that they disregarded the unoccupied central coastlands.  Regions between Canada and Florida, with the temperate climate and tillable soil, were necessary to sustain a permanent colony.

Next time...England's good fortune
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Today in Pioneer History:  On August 10, 1846, after a decade of debate about how best to spend a bequest left to America from an obscure English scientist, President James K. Polk signs the Smithsonian Institution Act into law.

Pioneer Pieces: Full Steam Ahead!

By the 1840s steamboats had become part of the American River Folklore. Originally they were used as rescue boats prior to flood control along the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys. Even after the railroads came through, steamboats were still used in floods because between a flood and a railroad, the railroad never wins.

Pioneers who lived along the riverbanks had their own way of surviving a flood - they would load a flatboat raft with all of their possessions and livestock and literally "ride the storm out".

Steamboats became the "Queens of the River", the "Titanic of the River" and afforded the passengers the most modern and luxurious accommendations of all travel, including the popular ship design in Rococo.

Best known steamboat advocate, Mark Twain, penned his best work aboard his beloved riverboats. He claims he got the pen name Mark Twain from a Mississippi steamboat captain name Jonas Sellers.

Next time - Man the Lifeboats!