Famous Explorer Traveled the Osage River

It was under a blistering July sun when 23 white men and their Indian escorts set out on their journey from Ft. Bellfontaine, four miles above the mouth of the Missouri River north of St. Louis. Among the party of 23 men on Pike's expedition was St. James Wilkinson, son of General James Wilkinson Sr., the military commander of the Mississippi River frontier and superintendent of Indian affairs. During this time in Missouri's history, St. Louis was a city of more than 1,000 persons and one-third were black slaves.

An Englishman, Thomas Ashe, author of TRAVELS, described St. Louis in 1806 as "a lawless and violent town since the arrival of a host of Americans". The Pike expedition traveled for 13 days before reaching the Osage River on 28 July 1806. The last settlement of any importance, Les Petit Cotes (St. Charles) had been passed a week before. Traveling the Osage was a tedious and torturous adventure. Their methods were primitive and the progress was slow as they made their way upstream against treacherous sand bars and drift piles.

It is not known for sure, but historians believe the size of Pike's boats measured about 70 feet in length and moved upstream by sails on a mast made of pine spar. Pike had gotten this pine spar in Minnesota only the year before on an expedition he had made to the upper Mississippi country. He discarded the pine spar somewhere along the Osage because it proved unpractical in navigating this stream of water. Many times the crew had to jump overboard and pull the boat upstream with long tow-ropes.

Also aboard his boats were 51 Osage and Pawnee Indians (men, boys, women, and papooses) who were being transported back to their villages near the headwaters of the Osage. These Indians had been captives of the Pottawatomie tribes and were restored to their relatives and homes.

From his personal writings, Pike recorded that a hunter's paradise was seen along the journey through Missouri. He reported a large kill of deer, bear, turkey and other game. He also recorded an encounter with a rattlesnake but since it did not strike, he spared its life. The weapons used were the long, heavy flintlock rifles of the Kentucky style, much the same type gun used at the Battle of New Orleans almost 7 years later in the War of 1812 by General Andrew Jackson and his Tennessee troops.

July 31, 1806, Pike entered what is now Miller County and traveled 18 miles on the river that day. On August 1, only 6 miles was traveled because of heavy rain. The river had raised 6 inches. On August 2, they made only 2 miles because part of the day was used to dry out their provisions and to hunt. On August 3, his party of frontiersmen passed the mouth of the Saline Creek and went on past the present site of Tuscumbia. On August 4, they traveled 10 miles with more rain; August 5 the rain continued and the river raised 13 inches so they had to once again stop and used the day to hunt. It was there that Pike encountered the rattlesnake. August 6, they made 13 miles and passed "Gravel Creek on the West" which must have been the Gravois Creek that we know today.

It was on August 6, 1806 they left our present boundaries of Miller County. After Pike and his crew left our central Missouri region, their expedition continued on westward, passing through hundreds of miles of prairies in western Kansas and eastern Colorado not knowing at the time they would be facing a horrible ordeal within a few weeks. They were subjected to days and nights of bitter cold and hunger. On one occasion, they went 4 days without any food until their commander was fortunate enough to shoot a buffalo. In those beautiful, ice-covered Rocky Mountains they experienced cold so intense that many of them froze their feet. They found no shelter from the biting cold, snow, and blizzards in the mountain wilderness of the Colorado Rockies. Miraculously they all survived.

Pike has been credited with reaching Colorado's beautiful mountain lying west of Colorado Springs. Today we know this majestic mountain as "Pike's Peak" where it lifts heavenward far above the clouds, clad with snow at its summit most of the year round. Pike never climbed this mountain that is named for him. He called it "Grand Mountain" and never knew it would eventually bear his name.

During the early 1980s I took a tour of to top of that fabulous mountain and I can well understand what inspired Katherine Lee Bates, author of the poem and song, "America the Beautiful", to record her immortal words-"Oh, beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain; for purple-mounted majesties, above the fruited plain." Katherine, a visiting English professor, stood on the summit of Zebulon Pike's Peak, 14,100 feet above the earth, viewing a continuous panorama of breath taking scenery of the great plains to the east; the Sangre de Cristo mountains of New Mexico to the south; and an astounding view of mile upon mile of snow-capped giants to the west...............

We Missourians feel we are a part of that vast mountain in Colorado because Zebulon Pike touched our homeland of the Osage here in central Missouri, cutting a path westward on our mighty Osage River, paving the way toward those magnificent Rockies with the labor of rugged frontiersmen and our native Osage Indian scouts.