American Exploration
Richard Sparks’ adventure mirrored the shared triumph and failure born of the early nineteenth-century American odysseys through present-day Oklahoma. Commissioned under Jefferson’s Secretary of War Henry Dearborn to follow Red River in present-day Louisiana to its source, Sparks headed up the river from present-day Natchitoches. A seventy-mile tangle of logs and brush called “The Great Raft” bedeviled the journey. Then, near Nacogdoches, Texas, a much-larger and better-armed Spanish force compelled him under threat of imprisonment or death to turn back. Though not accomplishing his mission, Sparks mapped over six hundred miles of Red River, amassed a hefty amount of scientific information about the area, and became the first official American representative who traveled into present-day Oklahoma.
The same year, General James Wilkinson, commander of American forces in the Louisiana Territory, sent Captain Zebulon Pike across the future state of Kansas into the Rocky Mountains to find the source of the Arkansas River and map its course. At the great bend of the river in western Kansas, Pike split his small party. He continued west into the mountains with one group of men. Lieutenant James B. Wilkinson-General Wilkinson’s son-had fallen seriously ill and taken the other portion east and south down the river
Map of the 1806 Red River Expedition, which sought to determine the remote western source and location of the river’s headwaters. Richard Sparks and others contributed the information from which War Department official Nicholas King produced this document.
Read the entire Oklahoma story in John J. Dwyer's The Oklahomans: The Story of Oklahoma and Its People volume 1 of a 2-part series on the 46th state and the people who make this state very special. |