II. In July, 1806, Pike left St. Louis on his second expedition. He ascended the Missouri to the Osage, and the latter to the villages of the Indians of that name. Thence he continued westward overland, entered Kansas, and proceeded to the Pawnee village on the Republican river, near the present Kansas-Nebraska line. Turning southward, he reached the Arkansaw river at the present site of Great Bend. There he dispatched his junior officer, Lieutenant Wilkinson, with a few men, to descend the Arkansaw, while with the rest of his company he ascended the same river into Colorado, as far as Pueblo. From this point he made an unsuccessful side-trip which had for its object the ascent of the since famous peak which bears his name, and returned to his camp at Pueblo. Thence pushing up the Arkansaw, he was halted by the Grand cañon, at the site of present Cañon City. He then made a detour to the right, which took him up Oil creek into South Park. He traversed this park, along the South Platte and some of its tributaries, left it by way of Trout Creek pass, and was thus again brought to the Arkansaw. He pushed up this river till he viewed its sources, in the vicinity of present Leadville, turned about, and with great difficulty descended it to the very camp he had left at Cañon City. This part of his journey was not accomplished without much hardship, and ended in chagrin; for he had fancied himself on the headwaters of that Red river whose sources he had been pointedly instructed to discover. Nothing was known at that time, to Americans, of the origin of that great branch of the Mississippi which was called Red river lower down; nor was it known till years afterward that what the Spaniards had called high up by a name equivalent to Red river was really that main fork of the Arkansaw which is now designated the Canadian river, whose sources are in the mountains not far from Santa Fé. _This_ was the river which Pike might have found, had his search been more fortunately directed, though neither he nor any other American was aware of that fact at the time. Nevertheless, he determined to carry out his orders to the letter, and with more courage than discretion pushed southward from his camp at Cañon City to discover an elusive Red river. He passed up that tributary of the Arkansaw which is now called Grape creek, and thus into the Wet Mountain valley. There the party suffered almost incredibly from cold and hunger; some of the men were frozen and crippled for life. But Pike managed to extricate himself and most of his companions from their perilous situation by crossing the Sangre de Cristo range through the Sand Hill pass into the San Luis valley, where he found himself on the Rio Grande del Norte. He descended this river to the Rio Conejos, and there established himself in a stockade--in part at least for the purpose of tarrying while he sent a small party back for those of the men who had been left behind, both at Cañon City and in Wet Mountain valley.