Daily Record
12 // July 2-8, 2018
www.dailyrecord.us
The legend behind the man:
PIKE WALKED TO ARK ANSAS, LEFT BIG FOOTPRINT
Albert Pike (Brady-Handy photograph collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.)
D
a group of trappers, who were headed down the Pecos river into the Staked Plains. It was a difficult and dangerous journey and Pike nearly riving through parts of Little Rock and Hot Springs, one died, writing of the experience in his poem, “Death in the Desert.” But he cannot help but notice Albert Pike’s name. The lawyer, survived and made his way east, traveling some 600 miles on foot before Civil War general, and leader of the Freemasons migrated finally coming to Fort Smith, where he knew no one and had come to to his new home in the Natural State, from Massachusetts in the midthe end of his money. Never one to give up, in a short time the explorer 1800s. How did this man with entrenched ancestral roots in the counpoet was teaching school in a tiny log cabin near Van Buren, and at last try’s original colonies find his way to Arkansas? It was not a straight path tired of wandering, began to settle in to a new life. and likely began as so many adventures did in those days, through the It wasn’t long before Pike’s writing gained attention, from letters he’d restlessness of youth and an itching curiosity to see what lay West. sent to newspapers that supported Robert Crittenden in his run for Pike was born in Boston Congressional territorial delin 1809, to a father who was egate. Pike signed the letters, a cobbler by trade and to Casca, after one of the Roa mother who was a “very man senators who killed Julius beautiful woman,” as her son Caesar. described her. The well-written political When he reached the age articles, under the mysterious of 16, he took and passed the pen name, garnered so much entrance exam to Harvard, notice that Horace Greely and was accepted, but could reprinted them in the New York not afford the tuition. Had he Tribune. All of Arkansas was enrolled, he would have been talking about the articles and in the same class as Oliver wondering who this “Casca” Wendell Holmes. Instead of really was. learning in the classrooms he It was Crittenden who finally began teaching in them, in rutook it on himself to find out, ral towns like Gloucester and and he soon discovered the Fairhaven. During this time he young man teaching in a log A photograph depicting the Albert Pike Memorial Temple on Scott Street in Little Rock circa 1933. wrote poetry, and became so schoolhouse on the Little Piney (Courtesy of Center for Arkansas History & Culture) accomplished at the craft that River. many experts felt he might have become one of America’s greats, had Pike’s revealing attracted the attention of Charles Bertrand, owner of that been his desire. the Whig Party’s newspaper, the Arkansas Advocate. Bertrand quickly In one of his early poems, titled “Fantasma,” Pike wrote of a hopeless offered Pike an editors position in Little Rock, which he accepted. love he felt for a girl who was much wealthier than him. Some believed Pike married Mary Ann Hamilton on Oct. 10, 1834 and the couple this may have had a bearing on his departure for the West, as he wrote, had six children. Hamilton came from a wealthy family, which allowed “Weary of fruitless toil he leaves his home, To seek in other climes a her new husband to purchase an interest in the Advocate and the year fairer fate.” after to buy it outright. Perhaps it was unrequited love that drove young Pike, or maybe it was Still looking for challenges, and perhaps piqued by a part time job he a bit of the same DNA possessed by ancestor Zebulon Pike, the explorer gained as a clerk for the legislature, Pike enrolled in law school. After who gave his name to Pike’s Peak in Colorado, and for whom Pike Coun- passing the bar he sold his interest in the Advocate and became a fullty, Arkansas is named. Whatever the reason, Pike left his home in March time lawyer. of 1831, on foot. By August he had nearly made it to St. Louis, where he His practice soon flourished, with clients that included tribes from the threw in with a wagon train of settlers headed for Santa Fe, which was Indian Territory. From 1836 to 1844, Pike was the first reporter of the Arstill part of Mexico. kansas Supreme Court, tasked with keeping notes on the relevant points He spent eight months in Santa Fe before deciding to travel again with in court decisions, then publishing and indexing the court’s opinions. by JAY E DWAR DS