The E-Sylum:  Volume 8, Number 25, June 19, 2005, Article 8

NO COIN FOR ZEBULON PIKE

Subjects for new coins are often chosen from dozens or even
hundreds of possibilities, leaving many disappointed also-rans.
An opinion piece in the June 14th Denver Post laments the fact
that explorers Lewis and Clark have been honored on coinage,
but not Lt. Zebulon Montgomery Pike, who led an equally
harrowing 1806-07 trek from St. Louis to the Arkansas River
to its source in the Rocky Mountains, then into the San Luis
Valley where he was captured by Spanish soldiers.

"Pike's story is not a simple one, and we don't know a lot
of it. But Pike cannot be addressed without delving into
conspiracies, double agents, secret payrolls, ambiguities,
multiple motives, disputed boundaries, espionage and treason.

It is for this reason, I suspect, that schoolbooks gloss over
Pike if they mention him at all. The politics of the Pike expedition
are vastly more interesting than those of the Corps of Discovery,
but Pike is just too complex to fit into the myth of America the
Inevitable and Ever Virtuous, whereas Lewis and Clark slide
right into the national self-image."

To read the full article: Full Story

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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