William Dunbar
A merchant and cotton planter and one of the great scientific observers of the Old Southwest, William Dunbar led the 1804-1805 expedition to explore the southwestern boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase. With his second in command George Hunter, the Dunbar expedition provided some of the earliest records of the flora and fauna of the Ouachita Mountains as well as the first detailed chemical analyses of the Hot Springs of Arkansas.
Born into a noble family near Elgin, Morayshire, Scotland, in 1749, Dunbar had gained a sound education at Glasgow in science and mathematics before emigrating to North America in 1771. From the moment of his arrival, he threw himself into the mercantile community in Philadelphia, transporting a load of goods he had brought with him from London to Fort Pitt as his first effort at entering the Indian trade. He formed a partnership with the well established Philadelphia merchant John Ross (also a Scot) in 1773 and soon removed to a plantation in West Florida near modern day Baton Rouge to carry their enterprise down the Mississippi and into the Caribbean.
Despite the vicissitudes of war, Dunbar and Ross prospered, and in 1792, they established another plantation, the Forest, southeast of the important port city of Natchez in Spanish West Florida. Using the profits from his cultivation and sale of indigo and cotton, Dunbar was able to buy out his partner by the late 1790s.
Despite all his frenetic activity as a merchant and planter, Dunbar became known for his scientific talents. His agricultural activities in particular were viewed as progressive, involving innovations in the form of plows and harrows, the cotton gin, and other aspects of cotton production, and this reputation, combine with his great wealth, earned him a succession of important positions in the Spanish colonial administration. As Surveyor General for West Florida and a member of the boundary commission in 1798, Dunbar was introduced to the surveyor Andrew Ellicott, and through him, to Thomas Jefferson and much of the rest of the small American scientific establishment. During the later 1790s and early 1800s, Dunbar developed an increasing interest in scientific matters, building a remarkably well equipped astronomical observatory at the Forest, conducting investigations into natural history, Indian languages, and paleontology, among an eclectic range of topics. After gaining election to the American Philosophical Society in 1800, Dunbar contributed a dozen articles to the Transactions over the course of a decade.
Following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Jefferson conceived of organizing not only the expedition of Lewis and Clark, but a parallel expedition to the southern Mississippi Valley to help delineate the still murky southwestern boundaries of the Purchase. As the most prominent scientist in the Old Southwest, and despite being over 50, Dunbar was the logical choice to lead the expedition, and George Hunter, a Scottish chemist and druggist from Philadelphia, was selected as second in command. Although the Dunbar expedition was originally slated to survey the entire region subtended by the Arkansas and Red River watersheds, friction with the Osage Indians and Spanish colonial officials led Jefferson and Dunbar to curtail the scope to a more manageable foray up the Red River to the Ouachita as far as the Hot Springs.
On October 16, 1804, Dunbar, Hunter, and a party of 15 left St. Catharine's Landing for an expedition that lasted just under three months. Although the scale of the enterprise was less dramatic than that of Lewis and Clark, and the results somewhat more modest, Dunbar and Hunter provided some of the earliest natural historical observations on the region and performed the first detailed chemical analyses of the hot springs.
Scientific pursuits occupied much of the last half decade of Dunbar's life. He remained a minor political and cultural force in the Mississippi Territory as a member of the territorial legislature and in other offices until his death on the twelfth anniversary of the Red River expedition, Oct. 16, 1806.
Zebulon Pike
In a relatively brief military career, Zebulon Montgomery Pike rose to the rank of Brigadier General, led two expeditions into the heart of the western wilderness, was a prisoner of war, a spy, the center of an international incident, and a suspected traitor, all before dying an heroic death at the age of 34 during the War of 1812.
Born in Lamberton, New Jersey, during the American Revolution, Pike enjoyed only a scant education before following his father, Maj. Zebulon Pike, into the military. Enlisting as a cadet at the age of 15 while his father was stationed in Cincinnati, Pike served in a succession of forts on the Ohio frontier, Kentucky, and Illinois, rising through the ranks of the Provisional Army on the strength of a record that was distinguished more by ambition than actual achievement. Although lacking the refinement and erudition of a Meriwether Lewis, he was a considered a zealous officer and hard-nosed and disciplined leader.
While serving at St. Louis in 1805, Pike gained the attention of Gen. James Wilkinson and through him, received the opportunity for advancement he was seeking. Spurred in part by the expedition of Lewis and Clark, but without the backing (or knowledge) of the President, the perpetually self-interested Wilkinson selected Lt. Pike to lead a reconnaissance northward to locate the source of the Mississippi River and to collect geographic information about the region. In many ways, the expedition could not have been more poorly planned. Bereft of any semblance of appropriate training for conducting a scientific expedition, Pike set off without even an interpreter or surgeon in his party and with only a limited idea of what he was to accomplish. On August 9, 1805, Pike led 20 soldiers out of St. Louis, ascending the Mississippi as far as the Little Falls in present day Minnesota, where they set in for the winter. Taking a small contingent with him, Pike then headed overland by sled to present day Lake Leech, which he decided (in error) was the source of the Mississippi. After negotiating with the Dakota to purchase 155,000 acres for a military reservation and drawing up a minor treaty with them, he returned to St. Louis, arriving at the end of April 1806.
Not surprisingly, the expedition returned little useful information. None of the Indians with whom Pike parlayed could be convinced to visit St. Louis and the treaty he signed was never actually ratified by Congress. Perhaps the most useful outcome was his simple presence in a region in which British influence was gaining, making the implicit statement that America was finally exerting its territorial claims.
Regardless of the merits of the Mississippi expedition, the scheming Wilkinson immediately convinced Pike to lead a second, more ambitious expedition, to scout the headwaters of the Arkansas and Red Rivers and enter Spanish territory as far west as present day New Mexico. Once again, Wilkinson operated without Jefferson's approval on motives that remain unclear. Whether Wilkinson intended, as some believed, a conspiracy to separate the western territories from the union or, as others insist, to investigate Spanish territory for the good of the nation, Pike followed orders without question, though he was probably aware that his mission was tantamount to spying. In July 1806, Pike crossed Missouri and Kansas, by late November reaching (but not ascending) the peak that was later named after him in the front range of the Colorado Rockies. The party surveyed the headwaters of the Arkansas River and headed southward, deeper into Spanish territory. Having crossed the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, his party dwindling in number from the hardships of the voyage, a disheveled Pike was taken prisoner by Spanish forces in February 1807. He was released in the early summer and after returning to the east, successfully cleared himself of suspicion for his involvement with the duplicitous Wilkinson. Resuming his military career, Pike enjoyed a succession of promotions culminating in his appointment to Brigadier during the early stages of the War of 1812. He was killed in action leading his troops in the capture of York, Ontario in 1813.
