Apparently, the information was filed and forgotten, and only surfaced a year or so ago during an examination of the archives of the Guthrie Oklahoma Scottish Rite Cathedral. Since it has not yet been possible to trace a "chain of possession" for the speech, showing how it was recorded, who had copies, when the typescript was made, etc., it is reasonable to ask if one can be certain that Pike wrote and delivered the speech or whether it might be the work of someone else, or even fraudulent. As yet, it is not possible to provide exact proof on these points. 

We know from Pike's own records and from independent sources that he was in the immediate area at the time. And certainly, if the speech were the work of someone else, that person would have to be completely familiar with the text of many of the Scottish Rite Degrees as well as Pike's writing style. The text bears the marks one would expect if someone were combining and simplifying ideas he had recently written. There are paraphrasings and nearly exact quotations. 

Most convincing to this writer, however, are the internal rhythms of the lines. Pike was a lover of and a performer of music. At this time in his life, he still actively played the violin, and, by independent accounts, played it quite well. There is an almost musical phrasing in Pike's words intended for oral delivery, and one need only compare the internal phrasing of the speech with the internal phrasing of the longer speeches of the rituals to see the similarity. 

In this paper, the writer will suggest the place of the speech in the context of Pike's life at the time, provide some information concerning Muscogee Lodge No. 93, and suggest some points of interest in the text of the speech. In many ways, the speech of June 24, 1857, was woven from the major threads of Pike's professional, emotional, spiritual, and Masonic lives. The twelve months leading to that beautiful early summer morning had been an emotional roller coaster for Pike. It is useful to consider five threads, the background events and life themes which led to that moment. 

The first thread relates to the time of Pike's famous trading expedition in 1831–32. Pike felt a sympathy for and identification with the native population of Indian Territory. He recorded those feelings at the time²  and recalled the incidents in vivid detail near the end of his life in "Essay X - Of Indian Nature and Wrongs," in Essays to Vinnie.³  (The "wrongs" referred to in the title are wrongs committed against the Indians, not wrongs they committed.) 

Throughout his life, until a very advanced age made the trips impossible, Pike used to spend from three weeks to three months at a time camping and hunting with the Indian tribes in Indian Territory. He was held in high regard by the Indians, and he returned that regard. These friendly contacts would come to be important in Pike's professional life as well. Thus, Pike's early experience with and mutual regard for the American Indians of Indian Territory is our first thread. 

The second thread begins in the fall of 1851, when Pike made an extended trip through several northern states. He had been greatly concerned about the economic welfare and future of Arkansas and had written and published several editorials in the Arkansas Advocate urging economic growth and diversity in the South.⁴  Pike was never comfortable with slavery, but he felt the only practical way to eliminate slavery was to eliminate the need for it. Throughout the northern states, he had seen the benefits of economic diversity and of a first-rate transportation system of roads and railways.⁵  As long as the economy of the South was dependent upon large plantation crops, slavery would make economic sense. If the economy could be diversified, however, the driving economic force behind slavery would be eliminated. 

In December 1851 in Little Rock, Pike spearheaded the organization of an "Industrial Association," a conference on the economic condition of the South. The meeting spawned an annual series of such meetings known as the Southern Convention. In January 1852, Governor John Selden Roane appointed Pike to represent Arkansas at the Southern and Western Railroad Conference, which was to examine the possibility of a southern transcontinental railroad.⁶  Little more than talk was accomplished, but Pike was still able to hope that the topic might bear fruit. 

Then, in December 1856, just six months before the St. John's Day speech was given, disaster smote Pike's plans for the economic development of the South. The Southern Convention announced that the main item on the agenda of that year's Convention would be the resumption of the slave trade and the importation of Blacks from Africa. After making a powerful speech at the Convention denouncing the idea—during which he said that he would "suffer myself to be torn by wild horses before I would justify the renewal of the African Slave trade"—he withdrew from the Convention. In the same speech he also expressed the hope that "the time might come when all men might be free." 

He was attacked on the floor of the Convention for expressing those ideas.⁷  It must have been a crushing blow to Pike, who had believed that, with economic development and with education, slavery would end naturally. Our second thread, then, is a frustration over the inability of men to see large pictures of economic development, and a despair of human intellect or at least of the willingness of men to think. There are clear echoes of that despair in the speech to the Creek Nation. 

The third thread is that of oratory. Pike was the best known and most popular orator in Arkansas, even in the South. So far as is known, his reputation, at least in the South, began in 1834 when Pike joined the Little Rock Debating Society and delivered the "Independence Day Address." The speech was widely reprinted, and Pike found himself increasingly in demand as an orator.⁸  Pike's style is essentially an oral style, even in his written materials. 

This writer has observed, time and again, that Masons who have difficulty reading and understanding Morals and Dogma find it much easier and clearer if they will read it aloud to themselves. Pike carefully breaks his sentences down into phrases, but they are oral phrases, not written ones. 

His reputation as a speaker caused his speeches to be widely reprinted in newspapers and collected into anthologies.⁹  In the spring of 1856, slightly over a year before the St. John's Day Address was given, Pike's biography appeared in Duyckinck's Cyclopedia of American Literature. Oratory at the time is rather a different thing than it is today. The most highly praised element was eloquence. And, although Pike's orations have more than their share of content, how something was said was far more important than what was said. The orator was expected to speak slowly, with a sound like a great organ. (It is well to remember that we are in the days before electronic amplification.) An audience anticipated that a speech would last at least two hours, and felt cheated if it did not. Going to hear a speaker was a form of entertainment and education, and 19th Century America prized both. 

The fourth thread is professional. This writer, working on another project, once counted 23 careers which Pike could be said to have followed. But for most of his life, the great majority of Pike's income came from the practice of law. Pike had educated himself in the law, been given a license, and was rapidly becoming one of the best paid, best know, and most highly successful lawyers in the South. He was also one of the most knowledgeable.¹⁰ 

In early 1852, the Creek Nation retained Pike, for a contingency fee of 25%, to press their claims in Congress. The federal government had taken their lands under the Treaty of Fort Jackson, negotiated by Andrew Jackson himself, with promises of immediate payment for the land. In fact, not a single penny had been paid to them, apart from a small token payment made at the time. The tribes were badly in need of funds to feed and cloth their members, but every time the issue was brought before Congress, the question of giving good American gold to "half-naked savages" was easily set aside. Pike was, essentially, retained as a lobbyist.¹¹ 

In the spring of 1854, Pike undertook a similar commission for the Choctaw Nation.¹²  He spent much time in Washington, buttonholing Senators and making his case. While Pike's skill as a lawyer was an important factor in the decision of the tribes to contract with him, almost certainly a more important factor was that they knew him personally. He had spent many months camping with them, sharing their food and sharing the food he cooked, sharing tobacco in the solemn rituals of the warriors, and learning a part of their language.¹³ 

In 1857, he was successful in winning a settlement for the Creek Nation. The government was to make the first payment to the tribes, in gold, in June of that year. Pike went to the Creek Nation to be present when the payment was made and then remained for three months, camping and relaxing with his friends.¹⁴  Thus it was that he was in the Creek Nation when St. John's Day arrived and he was asked to give the address. Pike had been working many long and hard hours, and he was truly exhausted, a fact to which he alludes in the opening of the speech. But it was a Masonic request, one he could not easily deny. 

The fifth thread is Masonry. On March 20, 1853, Pike had received the 4° through the 32° of the Scottish Rite at Charleston, South Carolina, conferred on him by Dr. Albert G. Mackey. Ten days later, on March 30, Mackey informed Pike that he, Pike, was now the Deputy Inspector General for Arkansas. On March 8, 1855, having collected a library of more than 100 rare books on symbolism, religion, philosophy, and history, Pike began rewriting the Ritual of the Scottish Rite. By March 31, 1857, he had finished the revision and sent a bound copy of the manuscript to Mackey. Thus, he had completed that project less than three months before the date of the St. John's Day speech which is our concern here. The fifth of our threads is thus in place. 

The unique value of the speech, in the opinion of this writer, is that it is virtually a précis of the Scottish Rite Degrees. Pike had almost no time to prepare a speech. He had arrived in the Creek Nation only a few days before mid-June,¹⁵  and the speech was delivered on June 24. Also, the intervening days were not ones of leisure, since Pike was preparing to oversee the paying of the claim and the collection of his fee. Almost certainly, he used the materials most ready to his mind, and that material consisted of  the Degrees of the Scottish Rite, on which he had so recently completed his labors. 

Paraphrasing of the Ritual occurs frequently in the speech, and the great ideas with which he had struggled so long and valiantly, easily formed the basis for his remarks. The speech consists of 10,572 words, divided into 357 sentences and 75 paragraphs. A complete text will be printed in Heredom, volume 7, the annual transactions of the Scottish Rite Research Society in 2000, along with the full text of this address. To join the Research Society, please click here. 

If one of the duties of a Mason truly is to learn about the Craft, then a paraphrase of Pike's final paragraph in his address to the Creek Nation is a fitting conclusion to this essay: As long as we remember that Masonry is the performance of duty, the Fraternity will thrive and benefit the world. 

Jim Tresner  is Director of the Masonic Leadership Institute and Editor of The Oklahoma Mason. A frequent con-tributor to the Scottish Rite Journal and its book review editor, Illustrious Brother Tresner is also a volunteer writer for The Oklahoma Scottish Rite Mason and a video script consultant for the National Masonic Renewal Committee. He is the Director of the Thirty-third Degree Conferral Team and Director of Work at the Guthrie Scottish Rite Temple in Guthrie, Oklahoma, as well as a life member of the Scottish Rite Research Society, author of the popular anecdotal biography Albert Pike, The Man Beyond the Monument, and a member of the steering committee of the Masonic Information Center. Ill. Tresner was awarded the Grand Cross, the Scottish Rite's highest honor, during the Supreme Council's October 1997 Biennial Session.