Zebulon Pike

Zebulon Pike

Zebulon Montgomery Pike ( January 5, 1779 - April 27, 1813 ) was an American officer and explorer .

The Pikes Peak , a mountain in Colorado , was named after him. The Pike Expedition he led , often compared to the well-known Lewis and Clark Expedition , mapped a large part of the southern land area of ​​the Louisiana Purchase .

Pike was born in Lamberton , New Jersey . His father, also called Zebulon Pike, was an officer in the United States Army under General George Washington . Pike junior grew up in various army outposts and joined his father's regiment in 1794 as a cadet .

After an inconspicuous military career, he was commissioned by General James Wilkinson to explore the headwaters of the Mississippi River . This first expedition was relatively unsuccessful, but after his return in 1806 he was sent again and led the actual Pike expedition (July 15, 1806 to July 1, 1807) to explore the west. This trip became his life's work and ended with a stay in prison in New Mexico, which was then still Spanish .

Pike, who had meanwhile been promoted to brigadier general, took part in a military expedition in April 1813. The aim of the US units was the capture of York (now Toronto ). When the troops approached the British fort on April 27, the crew blew up the ammunition chambers. Several Americans, including Pike, were killed by flying debris.

Several Pike Counties and the Pike National Forest in the USA were named after him.

Web links

Commons : Zebulon Pike  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Zebulon Pike's biography ( Memento from June 30, 2008 in the Internet Archive )

literature

• Jared Orsi: Citizen Explorer: The Life of Zebulon Pike. Oxford University Press, New York 2017, ISBN 978-0-19-067414-4 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Liam Peppiatt: Robertson's Landmarks of Toronto Revisited - Chapter 31B: Fort York ( Memento June 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive )