Kit Carson

Not a very smiley face, huh, especially for someone born on Christmas Eve!

I mentioned in "On To The Santa Fe Trail" post that this was the stomping grounds of Kit Carson.  Well, if it hadn't been for ol' William Becknell blazing the Santa Fe Trail back in 1821, Kit's story would have been entirely different.  

Christopher Houston “Kit” Carson was born in 1809 in Madison County, Kentucky, but moved when he was but one year old to Boone’s Lick, Missouri.  Yup, Boone’s Lick as in Daniel Boone.  In fact, the land his family settled on was owned by the Boone family.  Carson and his fourteen siblings became good friends and even intermarrying with the Boone’s.  The Boone’s were also renowned for their gentlemanliness and sense of right and wrong.  Kit's relationships with the Boone family must have had an influence on him because he was always known as a just man.

Kit’s father was killed by a falling tree when Kit was only eight, so Kit never learned to read or write as he had to spend his time hunting to feed the large family.  By age 14 Kit was apprenticed to the Workman’s Saddleshop in Franklin, Missouri.  Franklin was the eastern starting point for the Santa Fe Trail, so Kit got first-hand knowledge of the amazing Far West.

Apprentice’s were legally contracted to their employers for a set amount of time.  Ben Franklin was apprenticed to a print shop as a young man.  (See the posts about him from about a year ago.)  If one left his apprenticeship before the end of their contract the employer could have him arrested.  Kit’s master must not have appreciated Kit’s work because he waited a month before even posting a notice for his return, and he only offered 1 cent reward!  Saddle repair seems to be the only thing Kit was not good at, so I’m certain it was because his heart wasn’t in it.

In 1825, at the age of 16, Kit took a job of wrangling the horses, mules, and oxen of a large trading caravan heading out West on the Santa Fe Trail.  The winter of 1826 Kit stayed in Taos, New Mexico, then known as the capital of the fur trade in the Southwest.  Taos would forever after be Kit’s home, and he is in fact buried there.

In Taos, Kit became fluent in Spanish, Navajo, Apache, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Paiute, Shoshone, and Ute.  Wowser!  That’s pretty cool.

From Taos, Kit accompanied trapping parties into California first and then into the Rocky Mountains.  His first Indian attack was by the Apache on the Gila River.

Kit married twice, meeting both of the Indian women at rendezvous on the Green River in southwest Wyoming.  His first wife was Arapaho, “Grass Singing.”  She died after giving birth to their second daughter, and Kit later married “Making-Our-Road,” a Cheyenne woman, in 1841.  Their marriage was short-lived as she left him to follow her tribe’s migration.  His third choice of a wife was in 1842 at the age of 34.  He married 14-year-old Josefa Jaramillo of Taos.  They ultimately had eight children together and those Carson descendants still live in the Arkansas Valley of Colorado.

This same year Kit met John C. Fremont.  Their relationship is pretty much what history is made of.  They explored, fought Indians and Spainards, mapped, and opened the American West.  Kit took time out from all of this to participate in America’s Civil War.  Yup, that’s right.  New Mexico accepted slavery, but it was geographically not conducive to acquiring slaves, and the government leaders threw their support to the Union.  In 1862 the Confederate Rebels in Texas invaded New Mexico hoping to get Colorado gold and ship it to Richmond to fund their fight against the Union.  The Battle of Valverde ended with a Union defeat and the loss of 68 men with 160 being wounded.  Afterward, most of the Union soldiers were ordered back to the east coast, and Kit and his New Mexico Volunteers were left to deal with “Indian troubles.”

As with the Cherokee “Trail of Tears,” the Navajo were sent on “The Long Walk” in the spring of 1864.  In a 300-mile forced march the Navajo were sent to a reservation set up at Bosque Redondo around Fort Sumner, New Mexico.  The Indians had made a treaty to not war against the whites – but the Indians didn’t equate raiding with war, so they were always getting crosswise with the American army, hence the need to get them to a reservation.  Kit participated in rounding up 8,000 Navajo men, women, and children, so the Navajo held him responsible.  Yes, for finding the Navajo and getting them to the reservation, maybe, but not for the government SNAFU’s that followed.  Even so, into the early 20^th century the older members of the Navajo tribe say they knew him to be “just and considerate.”

Toward the end of his life, Kit Carson was reported to be “a gentleman by instinct, upright, pure, and simple-hearted, beloved alike by Indians, Mexicans, and Americans.”  Wow!  Considering the fact that he waged war with all of the above, that is an amazing statement.  Maybe it has something to do with his beginnings…

Kit also fought the west Texas Kiowa, Comanche, Mescalero Apache and Plains Apache.  In 1868, Kit escorted several Ute Chiefs to meet with the President of the United States of America (Hmmm.  That's right after the Lincoln assassination, so it must have been President Andrew Johnson.) and plead for assistance to the Ute tribe.

 

Kit died of an abdominal aneurysm at the age of 58 in May of 1868 Fort Lyons, Colorado.  (That would make him contemporaries with my great-grandfather!)  There have been books written about Kit's exploits, movies, even comic books.  There is a list of places named after him that is too, too long to share here - or maybe anywhere!  He was a pretty cool dude, but he never did learn to smile!