Spain and the United States both seek…
September 1806 CE
In June 1806, Lieutenant Facundo Melgares and six hundred men had been dispatched from the Spanish provincial capital of Santa Fe down the Red River and then northward into present-day Nebraska.
Although no Spanish records of the Melgares expedition are known to exist, it is believed that its purpose was to find and arrest the Lewis and Clark party, and to establish alliances with the natives of the region, including the Pawnees.
Leading one hundred and five Spanish soldiers, four hundred New Mexican militiamen, one hundred natives and more than two thousand animals (a caballada of horses), Melgares had reached Nebraska, and in the third task, Melgares succeeded and planned to build a fort on the Arkansas river.
About a month later, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike had left St. Louis with an American party of twenty-three men, and orders to negotiate peace between the Kanzas and Osages, to contact the Comanches of the high plains, and to explore the headwaters of the Red and Arkansas Rivers.
For guides and interpreters to the Comanches, Pike had turned to the Pawnees; his Osage and Pawnee guides had led him northwest through present-day Kansas toward the Kitkehahki village on the Republican.
The Southern Pawnees Are divided into three bands: the Chauis, or Grand Pawnees; the Pitahawiratas, or Tappage Pawnees; and the Kitkehahkis, or Republican Pawnees.
Melgares is the first to arrive at the Kitkehahkis village on the Republican River.
His journey north had not been easy.
Mutiny had broken out and been suppressed among his New Mexican militia; and many of his horses had gone lame, or had been stolen by Pawnee raiders.
He had left two hundred and forty of his men on the Arkansas in southern Kansas before turning northward with the other half of his force.
In the Republican River village, he meets with Kitkehahki and Chaui leaders, to whom he presents gifts, including Spanish flags.
The Pawnees agreed to expel Americans from their territory, but also oppose the Melgares expedition's continuing to the Missouri River.
In the face of this opposition, and with no supply lines and a force too large to live off the country, Melgares returns to the Arkansas and thence to Santa Fe.
Groups
Osage Nation (Amerind tribe)
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Kaw, or Kanza, people (Amerind tribe)
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Pawnee (Amerind tribe)
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New Spain, Viceroyalty of
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Santa Fe de Nuevo México (Spanish Colony)
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Comanche (Amerind tribe)
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Spain, Bourbon Kingdom of
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United States of America (US, USA) (Washington DC)
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Louisiana, Territory of (U.S.A.)
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