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Malgares and Pike
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I like to read what I call "small scale history". That is history that concerns some small or minor event yet is written with a great amount of detail that allows the reader to put himself in the place of the historical characters and assess if the outcome of the event would have been different if history had been required to deal with the reader—sort of a self-aggrandizing type of history. That is what I have been doing today in reading about some events with the Pawnee Indians in 1806.
In 1806 the Spanish authorities in Santa Fe got wind of a rumor which said that an American military officer was off on a patrol up the Red River of the South (now the border between Texas and Oklahoma) to explore the country and convince the world that the Louisiana Purchase did not have the Missouri River as its southern border but rather extended to the Red River. Now the Spanish didn’t agree with this at all and felt that Spain’s territorial right ran all the way to the Missouri at the very least and really should go beyond that. As a secondary mission objective Lieutenant Malgares was instructed to search out and make friends with as many Indians as possible and to assure their loyalty to the reign of Charles IV and to impress upon them their duty to obey the King of Spain and Almighty God as interpreted by the Jesuit priests which were to accompany him.
The Spanish authorities in Santa Fe therefore sent a rather strong body of troops—6oo men–under the command of Lieutenant Don Fernando Malgares to the Pawnee and Comanche country of the Red River with orders to keep a sharp look out for an advancing group of American soldiers and if they could be found to order them out of Spanish territory and jolly well see that they went. Their advance up the Red River was an obvious affront to the sovereignty of the territory of His Most Catholic Majesty Charles !V. In order to provide Lieutenant Malgares with the necessary mobility and make his task easier the officials gave the Lieutenant a remount remuda of 2000 healthy Spanish horses.
Now it seems a little odd that The Spanish officials would put such a large group of men—battallion strength—under the command of a mere lieutenant. Not only that but Malgares
was for the duration of the mission to be in the status of "a man alone". There was no way that Malgares could communicate with his superior offices and the accomplishment of the mission as well as the safety of his troops was to be his responsibility alone. Malgares would get no advice from the head-shed while on this mission.
So Lieutenant Malgares and his 600 men and 2000 horses rode off to the northeast until they struck the Red River and journeyed down it putting out scouts by day and pickets by night to assure that they were not surprised and overcome by the vast horde of Americans which rumor said were surely there—but Malgares spent the whole spring and summer riding around Red River Valley and never saw even one American soldier nor trace thereof and Malgares decided the rumor was just in error—there was no American military body in the area. So he proceeded to devote the last few days of his patrol to the secondary objective of the mission—making friends with he Indians and assuring their loyalty to Spain. His scouts had already located the main camp of the Pawnee which numbered about 1300 adult Indians and he rode into the encampment and hailed the chief of the Pawnees and made a long speech in which he assured the Pawnees that they were sons and daughters of Charles IV and that every Pawnee owed loyalty and servitude to the King of Spain. Malgares told the Chief of the Pawnee that there was rumor that an American detachment was on its way to the land of the Red River and that the King of Spain would be grateful if the Pawnee killed the lot of them when they showed up. As a token of their loyalty to Spain Malgares presented them with a flag of Spain and a staff and suggested that it would be wise for them to fly this flag at all times to show their loyalty to Spain. We actually have no record of exactly what the Chief of the Pawnees replied to all of this but we do know that he accepted the flag and lashed it to the opening serving as an entrance to the tepee and probably remarked that it was a colorful and beautiful addition to the decor of his home and "thank you". And with that Lieutenant Malgares made his way back to Santa Fe and everyone patted themselves on the back and said what a wonderful thing they had done to scare off the Americans.
But the Americans were not scared off—they were just late in leaving St. Louis and they reached the Pawnee village about two months after Malgares left. They were a bit of a different body of men. There were 20 of them plus their commander Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomnery Pike and every one was afoot. There was not a horse in the group. There were no priests and the twenty men were obviously living off the land because there were no wagons or carts to carry provisions. Lieutenant Pike was aghast at seeing the Spanish flag flying from the Chief’s teepee and to hear the tale of the recent visit of the Spanish. He gently lectured the Chief and told him that no son can have two fathers and that the father and protector of the Pawnees was not some King distant in Europe –"across the great waters"–but merely just down the road in Washington DC. Whatever he said it changed the hearts and minds of the Pawnee. They tore down the Spanish flag and presented it to Pike and he found a US flag just as big and it was lashed in place at the teepee entrance. The Pawnee were back in political place and Zebulon Pike had done with twenty men and no horses what the Spanish could not do with 600 men and 2000 horses.
Lieutenant Pike went on to a successful career in the Army and is best noted for having Pikes’s Peak named after him and for stealing California and the whole Pacific Coast from Mexico. Pike was killed in the War of 1812. In April of 1813 he was blowing up a British powder magazine in
York Ontario (now Toronto) when a rock from the magazine structure hit him in the head and killed him.
Now how I would have done it if I’d been there....Gotta go feed the dog.
Charles Turrentine
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