Christopher
(Kit) Carson was
born in Madison County, Kentucky, on 24th December, 1809. The family
moved to Howard County, Missouri, when Carson was a child.
At
the age of 14 Carson was apprenticed as a saddle maker in Franklin,
Missouri. The following year he ran away and joined a group of people
travelling to Sante
Fe.
Eventually he became a teamster for Robert McKnight at the Santa Rita
copper mine in New Mexico.
He
met Tom Fitzpatrick, the famous mountain
man, and over the next few years he worked as a trapper in
the Rocky Mountains.
In
1835 Carson saved the life of Mark Head during a fight with a group
of Blackfeet.
The following year he joined the Hudson's
Bay Company and
in 1837 worked with James
Bridger in
the Yellowstone.
Carson's
first wife died after giving birth to a couple of children. His second
wife was a Native American. Later he married Marie Josefa Jaramillo.
Carson took his eldest daughter to school in Missouri. On the journey
he met John
Fremont, who had just surveyed the Des Moines River.
The two
men got on well and Fremont hired him as a guide at £100 a month.
In 1843,
with
Carson and Tom
Fitzpatrick as
his guides, Fremont's party followed the Cache de la Poudre River
into the Laramie Mountains. He then crossed the Rocky
Mountains via
the South Pass and Green River. He then followed the Bear River until
it reached the Great Salt Lake.
After
spending time at Fort
Hall he
followed the Snake River past Fort
Boise to
Fort
Vancouver,
where he met John
McLoughlin.
Fremont then turned south where he explored Klamath Lake and the Great
Basin before making a
midwinter crossing of the Sierra
Nevada mountains
and despite great hardships reached Sutter
Fort.
Fremont and Carson eventually reached St.
Louis
on 6th August,
1844.
In
1845 Carson joined John
Fremont
at Bent's
Fort for his third expedition. While this trip was taking place the
Mexican War started. Fremont was given
the rank of major in the United States Army
and General Stephen
Kearny
persuaded Carson to work as his guide in his attempts to capture California.
Carson developed a sympathy for the plight of Native Americans and
in March, 1854, he became an Indian agent in Taos. On the outbreak
of the American Civil War Carson joined
the Union Army. He was given the rank
of colonel and commanded the 1st New Mexico Volunteers.
In
1849 Carson began farming at Raydo, New Mexico. He often left the
farm to guide military parties. Carson also went trapping in the mountains
and took sheep to California.
Carson was appointed superintendent of Indian Affairs for Colorado
Territory in 1853. He held the post until 1861 when he resigned to
become a colonel in the New Mexico Volunteer Infantry. After taking
part in the battle of Valverde, he was promoted to Brigadier General.
He led an expedition to Adobe Walls and in November 1864 he fought
about 3,000 Kiowas,
Comanches,
and Arapahoes.
Kit
Carson resigned from the army in November, 1867. He settled at Boggsville,
Colorado, where he died on 23rd May, 1868.
(1)
John
C. Fremont, Exploring
Expedition to the Rocky Mountains (1845)
In the afternoon a war-whoop was heard, such as Indians make when
returning from a victorious
enterprise; and soon Carson and Godey appeared, driving before them
a band of horses, recognized by Fuentes as part of those they had
lost. Two bloody scalps, dangling from the end
of Godey's gun, announced that they had overtaken the Indians as well
as the horses... The time, place, object, and numbers considered,
this expedition of Carson and Godey may be considered among the boldest
and most disinterested which the annals of western adventure, so full
of daring deeds, can present. Two men, in a savage desert, pursue
day and night an unknown body of Indians into the denies of an unknown
mountain - attack them on sight, without counting numbers - and defeat
them in an instant - and for what? To punish the robbers of the desert,
and to avenge the wrongs of Mexicans whom they did not know. I repeat:
it was Carson and Godey who did this - the former an American, born
in Boonslick County in Missouri; the latter a Frenchman, born in St.
Louis - and both trained in western enterprise from early life.
(2)
John F. Rusling, Across America (1874)
He (Kit Carson) declared that all our Indian troubles were caused
originally by bad white men... He pleaded for the Indians as "poor
ignorant creatures" whom we were daily dispoiling of their hunting
grounds and homes.
(3)
Charles Averill, Kit Carson (1849)
I have heard that of his character, which leads me to believe that
the rough manner, the uncultivated
speech, apparently peculiar to him, are in a degree assumed; that
he in his youth received the benefits of a good education and good
society, but that he ever loved the wild delights of a hunter's life,
and with its freedoms and pleasures, determined to adopt its plain
habits and plainer mode of speech.
(4)
Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California (1886)
Somewhat less garrulous and boastful than many of the frontiersmen;
yet the difference between
him and others of his class in character and skill was by no means
so marked as has been represented in eulogistic biographical sketches.
No one, however, begrudged Kit the fame his biographers have given
him. It is their custom, ignoring faults, to concentrate in one trapper
all the virtues of his class for dramatic effect.
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