<P> Striking northwest, the group made for the Pawnee territory on the Republican River in southern Nebraska . At the Pawnee village on September 29, Pike met with the Pawnee tribal council . He announced the new protectorship of the United States government over the territory . He instructed the Pawnee to remove a Spanish flag from their village and to fly the American flag instead . </P> <P> The expeditionary force turned south and struck out across the prairie for the Arkansas River . After reaching it on October 14, the party split in two . One group was led by Lieutenant James Biddle Wilkinson, son of the General . They traveled downstream along the length of the Arkansas to its mouth and back up the Mississippi, safely returning to St. Louis . </P> <P> Pike led the other, larger group upstream, to the west, toward the headwaters of the Arkansas . Upon traversing the Great Plains, Pike wrote, "This vast plains of the western hemisphere may become in time as celebrated as the sandy deserts of Africa; for I saw in my route, in various places, tracts of many leagues where the wind had thrown up the sand in all the fanciful form of the ocean's rolling wave, and on which not a speck of vegetable matter existed ." When Stephen Long led an expedition to the area in 1820, he labeled the area on his map as the "Great American Desert ." </P> <P> On November 15, Pike recorded the first sight of the distant mountain he called "Grand Peak". It has since been called Pikes Peak in his honor . Pike tried to climb the peak, hoping to get a view of the surrounding area to record on maps, the 14,000 - foot summit . Pike's group ascended a lesser summit nearby--likely Mount Miller, which was named for Theodore Miller, one of the soldiers who accompanied Pike . With winter threatening, Pike pressed onward up the Arkansas, and on December 7 the party reached Royal Gorge, a spectacular canyon on the Arkansas at the base of the Rocky Mountains . </P>

Why did pike's expeditions have less impact than lewis and clark's