PIKE, ZEBULON MONTGOMERY American explorer and soldier, was born at Lamington, Somerset county, N.J., the son of Zebulon Pike (1751-1834) a captain in the Revolutionary War, who remained in Federal service until 1812. The son entered his father's company as a cadet about and in 1799 or i800 was commissioned first lieutenant. When in 1805 President Jefferson wished the upper Mississippi region of the Louisiana Purchase explored, Lieut. Pike, then 26 years of age, was selected to lead the ex pedition. With 20 soldiers he ascended the Mississippi from St. Louis past the Falls of St.
Anthony to a place in Morrison county, Minn. Hence he made an expedition on foot to the fur trading posts of the Northwest Company, a British concern, at Sandy, Leech and Cass Lakes, and took formal possession for the United States. He returned to St. Louis in April, 1806, and almost immediately was de spatched at the head of an ex pedition to treat with Indian tribes and explore the country west and south-west of St. Louis to the headwaters of the Arkansas and Red rivers. After holding a grand council of the Pawnees, he ascended the Arkansas river through the Royal Gorge, and came in sight of the mountain which was named Pike's Peak in his honour. While searching for the Red river he came to the South Platte, marched through South Park, left it by Trout Creek pass, struck over to the Ar kansas, which he thought was the Red river for which he was searching, and, going south and south-west, came to the Rio Grande del Norte (about where Alamosa, Conejos county, Colo rado, is now) on the 3oth of January 1807. There on the 26th of February he and a small number of his men were taken prisoners by Spanish authorities, who sent him first to Santa Fe, then to Chihuahua to General Salcedo, and by a roundabout way to the American frontier, where he was released on the ist of July 1807.
He was promoted captain (August 1806), major (May 1808), lieu tenant-colonel (Dec. 1809) and colonel (July 1812). In 1808 he tried in vain to get an appropriation from Congress for himself and his men. He was military agent in New Orleans in 1809-1810, was deputy quartermaster-general in April—July 1812, and was in active service in the War of 1812 as adjutant and inspector general in the campaign against York (now Toronto), Canada, and in the attack on York on the 27th of April 1813 was in immediate command of the troops in action and was killed by a piece of rock which fell on him when the British garrison in its retreat set fire to the magazine, just as his victorious soldiers were breaking in.
His Account of an Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi and through the Western Parts of Louisiana . . . and a Tour through the Interior Parts of New Spain was published at Phila delphia, 181o; rearranged and reprinted in London, 1811, and has been published in many editions since, including translations into the French and Dutch. The standard edition with memoir and notes by Elliott Coues was published in 1895. In 1908 H. E. Bolton published some of the papers taken from Pike in Mexico (originals then in Mexican archives but forwarded to Washington in 1910) in the American Historical Review (vol. xiii., 798-827). See the sketch by H. Whiting in vol. V., Ser. 2, of Jared Spark's Library of American Biography.