Lieutenant Zebulon Pike

 

Zebulon Pike, about 1810
 
Zebulon Montgomery Pike, Jr. was born in 1779. He was an American military officer and explorer.
 
Pike worked at a series of frontier posts. In 1805, General James Wilkinson, governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory, ordered Pike to find the source of the Mississippi River. Wilkinson wanted to obtain sites for future military posts in case of war with Great Britain.  Pike met with a party of about 150 Dakota at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers and made a deal with two Dakota leaders for about 100,000 acres of land. It was the future site of Fort St. Anthony, later called Fort Snelling.
 
In 1810 Pike published an account of his expeditions. He later achieved the rank of brigadier general in the Army, and served during the War of 1812. He was killed by British forces during the Battle of York, which, however, was won by the American side. 

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U.S. Government
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Bibliography

Historicfortsnelling.org
<Zebulonpike.org

Resources for Further Research

Websites

The Expansionist Era (1805-1858). Historic Fort Snelling. Minnesota Historical Society.

Looking at the Territory: The Treaty Story. Minnesota Historical Society

Rivers, Edens, Empires: Lewis and Clark and the Revealing of America. The Library of Congress. Exhibitions.

Zebulonpike.org

Primary

Upham, Warren and Zebulon Pike. The Life and Military Services of Zebulon M. Pike. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1908

Glossary Terms

Fort Snelling

Zebulon Pike

Key People

Henry Leavenworth
Henry Leavenworth
Henry Leavenworth

Henry Leavenworth

Born in 1783 in Connecticut, Henry Leavenworth was educated in Vermont and New York. He became a lawyer and entered the military. He made his way up the ranks, eventually declared colonel of the 25th U. S. infantry. He then served in the New York State Assembly, and in 1816, went to Prairie du Chien as Indian agent. In 1818, he was made lieutenant-colonel of the Fifth U. S. infantry.
In 1805 the U.S. Army ordered Lt. Zebulon Pike to explore the Mississippi River and select potential sites for future military posts. When he arrived at the junction of the Mississippi and St. Peters (the present-day Minnesota) rivers, Pike made a treaty with several local Dakota representatives and acquired land on which he promised a U.S. trading post would be built. The trading post was never constructed, but following the War of 1812 the U.S. government sought to firmly establish its presence and stamp out any existing British influence in the Northwest Territory by building a fort at the river junction. The first troops arrived in 1819 under the command of Leavenworth. In 1820 he initiated the construction of Fort St. Anthony, which was later called Fort Snelling.
A few years later, he led U.S. troops in the first military expedition against a Great Plains Indian nation, the Arikara. While in the West he built military posts, one of which was Fort Leavenworth, established in Kansas in 1827. In 1833 he received the full rank of brigadier-general.

By 1834, he was commanding an expedition of the U.S Regiment of Dragoons in Indian Territory where hoped to create relationships between the United States and the Comanche, Kiowa, and Wichita nations. He died on this expedition in 1834.

Married three times, Lake Harriet, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is named for his last wife, Harriet Lovejoy.

View full article: Henry Leavenworth