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| Zebulon Pike |
August 9, 1805. St. Louis, barely more than a muddy river town, fades behind a keelboat pushing into the current. Twenty men, a seventy-ton barge, and one twenty-six-year-old lieutenant—Zebulon Montgomery Pike—head north into land no one in Washington has seen.His orders are to explore the Mississippi to its source, meet with Native leaders, pick spots for forts, and make sure everyone from the Sauk to the French traders knows who owns Louisiana now. Pike jots the moment in his journal like a telegram: “Left the post with twenty men and a barge of seventy tons, provisions for four months.” No flair, no reflection, just record.
The river doesn’t care about plans or flags. The current is heavy, the heat thick. The men fight mosquitoes, mud, and fatigue, pushing poles into the bottom to move a few yards at a time. Nights mean sleeping in wet clothes, drying powder near the fire, and keeping guard against thieves or curious strangers. Pike drills them anyway—inspection, orders, inventory. He’s a soldier first, explorer second.
By the end of August, they reach the Des Moines Rapids—eleven miles of limestone ridges beneath the surface, snagging the keelboat like claws. The men curse, haul, and pole their way through, half-dragging the craft upriver. Pike writes: “The longest and most difficult passage on the river.” To him, the rapids aren’t just an obstacle—they’re a choke point. Control this, and you control everything that moves north.
In February 1846, the Saints fled Nauvoo. They crossed the frozen Mississippi, chased by mobs and fire. Wagons and pushcarts rolled into Iowa’s cold wind. The land was a swamp of mud and misery. Wheels sank. Oxen faltered. Children cried. Food ran out. And graves multiplied.Still, they moved. They built bridges, cut trails, buried their dead and sang. Faith kept the wheels turning.
By summer they reached Council Bluffs. Behind them—Garden Grove, Mount Pisgah, Locust Creek. Ahead, the unknown. Iowa had tested them and found them unbroken.
