Donald Mace Williams

From "Zebulon"
   Pike's trip Upriver

“Zebulon”: no. He never went by that
But always by his middle name, Montgomery,
Though he signed orders Z.M., and self-justifying
Letters to that arch scoundrel whom he worshiped,
The thieving double-crosser Wilkinson,
General and traitor, whose majestic purity Pike
No more questioned than that of the Great Peak
He calculated was eighteen thousand five hundred
And some odd feet above sea level — only
Forty-four hundred feet too high. But that
Came on the second trip, the western one.
Wilkinson sent him first not over mountains
But up a river, the river, in eighteen-five.
This was new land, still called Louisiana.
The nation needed word of how it lay. 
“You will be pleased to take the course of the River,”
Wilkinson said, and specified the details
He should note down, among them prairies, islands,
Shoals, rapids, timber, Indian villages,
Weather and wind, how many animal skins
Indians bartered and for what return,
From whom, and where they mostly did their hunting.
Look out for sites for two new military posts,
Said Wilkinson, and get the Indians’ consent,
“Informing them that they are intended to increase
Their trade” and otherwise improve their lot.
“You will proceed,” the order said, “to ascend
The main branch of the River, until you reach
The source of it.” But, Wilkinson went on,
He should go that far only if in no danger
Of being caught by freezeup before he returned.
What did Pike do? He pushed up toward the source,
Sure that to find it was worth frostbite, hunger,
And disregarding orders, that ambition
And curiosity outweighed all else,
As if the only reasonable end
To a trip upriver was the starting place of the river 
And turning back with that unfound was treason,
If not to his country, to one Lieutenant Pike.
They set out from St. Louis, that August day,
With kegs of whisky for trading and morale
On board the boats, and also violins,
Which the soldier explorers played one day
In mid-September when the sailing was fair.
A month past that, they waded up to their necks
Four hours, Pike, really, in there along with his men, 
Dragging their boats upstream, snow falling, till all became
“Perfectly useless in our limb’s with cold”
And went ashore to build a fire. There they discovered
Leaks in both boats, and Sergeant Kennerman,
“One of the stoutest men I ever knew,”
Pike said, threw up two quarts of blood from bailing.
Feeling pity then “for those poor fellows
Who, to obey my orders were killing themselves,”
Pike ordered all back to camp to fell pine trees
And make canoes, a few days’ work. Those done,
They loaded one with goods and ammunition.
It promptly sank, and Pike put his soaked gunpowder
In pots by the fire to dry like cookie dough
Or, as it happened, like a kid who puts
Firecrackers in a tin can for the boom.
The explosion must have frightened bears and foxes
For miles around. So that was one more thing
Pike wasn’t good at judging. No one died,
But the event foresaw the rest of the trip,
A tale of men and sleds falling through ice,
Of scouting parties lost for days, of Pike
And other men caught out on hunting trips
And sleeping blanketless in snow, of cold
So hard that fingers, toes, and noses froze
Like garden hoses on cold nights. “My boys,”
Pike called his men, or “my lads,” or, in the case
Of his young orderly, “my little boy,”
But later, in a letter, they were “dam’d rascels” —
No conflict there, to parents of small boys,
But what he meant was their unletteredness,
Their chewing with open mouths, their filthy words,
Their love of booze, no doubt their bedding of squaws,
Whereas he claimed in his journals to have
Turned down the offer of one of a chief’s wives
For a night, explaining what he said was the white man’s idea
Of faithfulness. His men must have laughed, though only
Behind hands. This was indeed a rough bunch,
Not much worse off half-barefoot in the snows
Than they would have been “on the outside,” at farm
Or factory work back home. But it was more
Than food. They could have stayed on post and slept
Between walls, under roofs. They volunteered
For duty in hell because, hell, nobody else
Had been there. They were like their bookish commander,	
Though neither he nor they would like the comparison.

Donald Mace Williams is a retired newspaper writer and editor with a Ph.D. in Beowulfian prosody. His second book of poems, The Nectar Dancer, was published in August 2023 by Stoney Creek Publishers, and his new translation, Beowulf: For Fireside and Schoolroom, also from Stoney Creek Publishers, has just been published and is available at https://www.tamupress.com/book/9798987900277/beowulf/. He lives in Austin. ”From ‘Zebulon'” is a second excerpt of a longer blank verse poem on the Pike expedition; the first excerpt was published in Pulsebeat 07.