Christopher Houston Carson (December 24, 1809 – May 23, 1868), better known as Kit Carson, was an American frontiersman.
In recent years, Kit Carson has also become a symbol of the American nation's mistreatment of its indigenous peoples. == Early life (1809–1829) == Christopher Houston Carson was born on December 24, 1809 near Richmond, Madison County, Kentucky.
Lindsay's oldest son, William, married Boone's grand-niece, Millie Boone, in 1810.
He was a farmer, a cabin builder, and a veteran of the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.
He settled in Taos. Carson lived with Mathew Kinkead, a trapper and explorer who had served with Carson's older brothers during the War of 1812.
Carson wrote in his Memoirs, "For two or three years after our arrival, we had to remain forted and it was necessary to have men stationed at the extremities of the fields for the protection of those that were laboring." In 1818, Lindsay Carson died instantly when a tree limb fell on him while he was clearing a field.
Carson found work in the saddlery not to his taste: he once stated that "the business did not suit me, and I concluded to leave." === Santa Fe Trail === In August 1826, against his mother's wishes, Kit ran away from his apprenticeship.
They made their trek over the Santa Fe Trail to Santa Fe, the capital of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, reaching their destination in November 1826.
The advertisement featured the first printed description of Carson: "Christopher Carson, a boy about 16 years old, small of his age, but thick set; light hair, ran away from the subscriber, living in Franklin, Howard county, Missouri, to whom he had been bound to learn the saddler's trade." Between 1827 and 1829, Carson worked as cook, translator, and wagon driver in the southwest.
He spent the winter of 1828–1829 as a cook for Ewing Young in Taos.
The advertisement featured the first printed description of Carson: "Christopher Carson, a boy about 16 years old, small of his age, but thick set; light hair, ran away from the subscriber, living in Franklin, Howard county, Missouri, to whom he had been bound to learn the saddler's trade." Between 1827 and 1829, Carson worked as cook, translator, and wagon driver in the southwest.
He joined Young's trapping expedition of 1829.
The leadership of Young and the experience of the venture are credited with shaping Carson's early life in the mountains. In August 1829, the party went into Apache territory along the Gila River.
He returned to Bent's Fort several times during his life to provide meat for the fort's residents again. == Indian fighter == Carson was 19 when he set off with Ewing Young's expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1829.
In the 1830s, he accompanied Ewing Young on an expedition to Mexican California and joined fur-trapping expeditions into the Rocky Mountains.
Young's party continued on to Alta California; trapped and traded in California from Sacramento in the north to Los Angeles in the south; and returned to Taos, New Mexico, in April 1830 after it had trapped along the Colorado River. Carson joined a wagon train rescue party after entering Taos, and although the perpetrators had fled the scene of atrocities, Young had the opportunity to witness Carson's horsemanship and courage.
Carson joined another expedition, led by Thomas Fitzpatrick and William Levin, in 1831.
In January 1833, for example, warriors of the Crow tribe stole nine horses from Carson's camp.
An incident involving the animals happened to Carson in 1834 as he was hunting an elk alone.
He may have thought he would be known as a "squaw man," which was not welcomed by polite society. In 1836, Carson met an Arapaho woman, Waanibe (Singing Grass, or Grass Singing), at a mountain man rendezvous held along the Green River in Wyoming.
His last battle with the Blackfoot took place in spring 1838.
He lived among and married into the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes. In the 1840s, Carson was hired as a guide by John C.
He wrote in his Memoirs: "[The bear] finally concluded to leave, of which I was heartily pleased, never having been so scared in my life." The last rendezvous was held in 1840.
Fremont's journals appeared in the early 1840s, as modified by Jesse Benton Fremont into romantic accounts of the uncharted West.
He wrote in his Memoirs, "Beaver was getting scarce, it became necessary to try our hand at something else." In 1841, he was hired at Bent's Fort, in Colorado, at the largest building on the Santa Fe Trail.
Singing Grass died after she had given birth to Carson's second daughter in around 1841.
Adaline died in 1860 or after 1862, probably in Mono County, California. In 1841, Carson married a Cheyenne woman, Making-Out-Road.
The historian David Roberts believes his first marriage to an Arapaho woman named Singing Grass "softened the stern and pragmatic mountaineer's opportunism." == Expeditions with Frémont (1842–1848) == In April 1842, Carson went back to his childhood home in Missouri to put his daughter Adaline in the care of relatives.
He was a man of medium height, broad-shouldered, and deep-chested, with a clear steady blue eye and frank speech and address; quiet and unassuming." === First expedition, 1842 === In 1842, Carson guided Frémont across the Oregon Trail to South Pass, Wyoming.
Making-Out-Road left Carson to travel with her people through the West. About 1842, Carson met Josefa Jaramillo, the daughter of a prominent Mexican couple living in Taos.
After the five-month trouble-free mission was accomplished, Frémont wrote his government reports, which made Carson's name known across the United States, and spurred a migration of settlers westward to Oregon via the Oregon Trail. === Second expedition, 1843 === In 1843, Carson agreed to join Frémont's second expedition.
In 1843, in Taos, New Mexico, she fell into a boiling kettle of soap and subsequently died. Carson's life as a mountain man was too hard for a little girl and so he took Adaline to live with his sister Mary Ann Carson Rubey in St.
He married the 14-year-old Josefa on February 6, 1843.
The museum emphasized the early career, from around 1843, when the Carsons bought the home, into the 1850s.
It "honored the great explorer" and was inscribed as well with "He Led the Way." In Trinidad, Colorado, the Daughters of the American Revolution and Boy Scouts of America led fund raising for the bronze statue of Kit Carson in the city's new Kit Carson Park, placed in 1913. Californians followed with a statue of Kit Carson on Olvera Street in Los Angeles, and a bronze representation of a tree trunk with "Carson 1844" inscribed on it, placed at Carson Pass in the Sierra Nevada.
The Kit Carson marker of bronze, dedicated to his 1844 trip, is in Carson Pass, California.
That deed brought Carson even greater fame and confirmed his status as a western hero in the eyes of the American people. === Third expedition, 1845 === In 1845, Carson guided Frémont on their third expedition (there would be a fourth but without Carson).
Near here, a messenger from Washington, DC, caught up with Fremont and made it clear that Polk wanted California. At Klamath Lake, in southern Oregon, Frémont's party was hit in a revenge attack by 15–20 Indians on the night of May 9, 1846.
There was no evidence that the village in question had anything to do with the previous attack. === Bear Flag Revolt === In June 1846, Frémont and Carson participated in a California uprising against Mexico, the Bear Flag Revolt.
and great danger also." In 1846, dispatched with military records for the Secretary of War in Washington, DC, Carson took the Gila Trail, but was met on the trail by General Kearney, who ordered him to hand his dispatches to others bound east, and return to California as his much needed guide.
Louis Jockey Club, one could bet on a horse, "as swift as the wind", named "Kit Carson". == Mexican–American War (1846–1848) == Lasting from 1846 to 1848, the Mexican–American War was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico.
In December 1846, Carson was ordered by General Stephen W.
In early 1847, Carson was ordered east from California again with more dispatches for Washington, D.C., where he arrived by June.
In June 1847, Jesse Benton Fremont helped Kit prepare a brief autobiography, the first, published as an interview in the Washington, D.C.
General Carleton wrote to Carson: "This brilliant affair adds another green leaf to the laurel wreath which you have so nobly won in the service of your country." == Personal life == In 1847, the future General William Tecumseh Sherman met Carson in Monterey, California.
He was dispatched a third time as government courier leaving Los Angeles May 1848 via the Old Spanish Trail and reached Washington, D.C.
with important military messages, which included official report of the discovery of gold in California. Newspapers reported on Carson's travels with some exaggeration, including that he had been killed by plains Indians in July 1848.
In 1848, as his fame grew, a Baltimore hat maker offered a "Kit Carson Cap", "after the unique style of the domestic one worn by that daring pioneer".
Louis Jockey Club, one could bet on a horse, "as swift as the wind", named "Kit Carson". == Mexican–American War (1846–1848) == Lasting from 1846 to 1848, the Mexican–American War was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico.
Averill (1830-1852), 'the youthful novelist," published a magazine article for Holden's Dollar Magazine, April 1848, that he expanded into a novel advertised as Kit Carson, the Prince of the Gold Hunters; or the Adventures of the Sacramento; a Tale of the New Eldorado, Founded on Actual Facts, an even more fantastic tale exploiting Kit's rising fame.
It arrived on bookstore shelves by May 1849, in time for the California Gold Rush demand for narratives (fictional or not) on the trail to California.
Arriving in bookstores in January 1849, his The Prairie Flower, or Adventures in the Far West exploited the Kit myth, and, like Averill, quickly followed with a sequel.
In 1849, as he moved to civilian life at Taos and Rayado, Carson was asked to guide soldiers on the trail of Mrs.
In the 1850s, he was appointed as the Indian agent to the Ute Indians and the Jicarilla Apaches. During the American Civil War, Carson led a regiment of mostly-Hispanic volunteers from New Mexico on the side of the Union at the Battle of Valverde in 1862.
In the summer of 1850, he sold a herd of horses to the military, delivered at Ft.
I am certain that if the Indians had been charged immediately on our arrival she would have been saved." Her child and servant were taken away by the fleeing Jicarillas and killed shortly after the attack, according to a 1850 report by James S.
By the late 1850s, he recommended, to make way for the increasing number of white settlers, they should give up hunting and become herders and farmers, be provided with missionaries to Christianize them, and move onto reserves in their homeland but distant from settlements with their bad influence of ardent spirits, disease, and unscrupulous Hispanos and Anglos.
The museum emphasized the early career, from around 1843, when the Carsons bought the home, into the 1850s.
In 1852, for old times sake, he and a few of the veteran trappers made a loop trapping expedition through Colorado and Wyoming. In mid-1853, Carson left New Mexico with 7,000 thin legged churro sheep for the California Trail across Wyoming, Utah, Nevada into California.
White; the dime-novel Kit would have saved her. === Memoirs === In 1854, Lt.
In fiction, according to historian of literature Richard Etulain, "the small, wiry Kit Carson becomes a ring-tailed roarer, a gigantic Samson…a strong-armed demigods [who] could be victorious and thus pave the way for western settlement." == Indian Agent (1854–1861) == Between January 1854 and May 1861, Kit Carson served as one of the first Federal Indian Agents in the Far West.
He was initiated an Entered Apprentice on April 22, 1854, passed to the degree of Fellowcraft June 17, 1854, and raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason December 26, 1854, just two days after his 42 birthday.
Turley was engaged in late 1856 to help Kit prepare the memoir and after a year's work sent the rough manuscript to a New York publisher.
In 1856, he dictated his Memoirs to another and stated: "I was a young boy in the school house when the cry came, Injuns! I jumped to my rifle and threw down my spelling book, and thar it lies." Carson enjoyed having other people read to him and preferred the poetry of George Gordon, Lord Byron.
Kit Carson's memoir is the most important source about his life, to 1858, but as Carter notes, Kit was too brief, had lapses in memory, and his chronology was fallible.
In 1858, she went to the California goldfields.
A cheaper edition was published in 1859, followed by two imitations that stole the market.
In 1860, Charles Burdett, "a writer of no particular distinction," wrote a biography based on the Dr.
Among the major publishing firms was the house of Beadle, opened 1860.
One study, "Kit Carson and Dime Novels, the Making of a Legend" by Darlis Miller, notes some 70 dime novels about Kit were either published, re-published with new titles, or incorporated into new works over the period 1860-1901.
204 (now Bent Lodge # 42) from the Grand Lodge of Missouri AF&AM, a request that was granted on June 1, 1860, with Kit elected Junior Warden of the lodge. The Masonic fraternity continued to serve him and his family well after his death.
Adaline died in 1860 or after 1862, probably in Mono County, California. In 1841, Carson married a Cheyenne woman, Making-Out-Road.
The great house of inexpensive novels and questionable nonfiction, Beadle's Dime Library, in 1861, brought out The Life and Times of Kit Carson, the Rocky Mountain Scout and Guide by Edward S.
In fiction, according to historian of literature Richard Etulain, "the small, wiry Kit Carson becomes a ring-tailed roarer, a gigantic Samson…a strong-armed demigods [who] could be victorious and thus pave the way for western settlement." == Indian Agent (1854–1861) == Between January 1854 and May 1861, Kit Carson served as one of the first Federal Indian Agents in the Far West.
Carson predicted, "If permitted to remain as they are, before many years they will be utterly extinct." == Military career (1861–1868) == In April 1861, the American Civil War broke out.
In October 1861, he was made a colonel.
In the 1850s, he was appointed as the Indian agent to the Ute Indians and the Jicarilla Apaches. During the American Civil War, Carson led a regiment of mostly-Hispanic volunteers from New Mexico on the side of the Union at the Battle of Valverde in 1862.
The Volunteers fought the Confederate forces in the Battle of Valverde in New Mexico in February 1862.
Adaline died in 1860 or after 1862, probably in Mono County, California. In 1841, Carson married a Cheyenne woman, Making-Out-Road.
He resigned from the army in February 1863.
By March 1863, 400 Apaches had settled around nearby Fort Sumner.
By autumn 1863, Carson started to burn the Navajo homes and fields and remove their animals from the area.
The historian David Roberts writes, "Carson's sweep through the Canyon de Chelly in the winter of 1863–1864 would prove to be the decisive action in the Campaign." The Canyon de Chelly was a sacred place for the Navajo.
In January 1864, Carson swept through the Canyon with his forces, including Captain Albert Pfeiffer.
Many Navajo surrendered at Fort Defiance, Arizona. By March 1864, there were 3,000 refugees at Fort Canby.
Bosque Redondo was closed. === First Battle of Adobe Walls === On November 25, 1864, Carson led his forces against the southwestern tribes at the First Battle of Adobe Walls in the Texas Panhandle.
He made his mark on official papers, and it was then witnessed by a clerk or other official. ==Final days== When the Civil War ended, and the Indian Wars campaigns were in a lull, Carson was appointed brevet brigadier general (dated March 13, 1865) and appointed commandant of Ft.
By 1866, reports indicated that Bosque Redondo was a complete failure, Major General Carleton was fired, and Congress started investigations.
Christopher Houston Carson (December 24, 1809 – May 23, 1868), better known as Kit Carson, was an American frontiersman.
He died at Fort Lyon of an aortic aneurysm on May 23, 1868.
Peters biography, which itself Peters revised in 1874 to bring the biography up to Carson's 1868 death.
In 1868, a treaty was signed, and the Navajo were allowed to return to their homeland.
In 1868, at the urging of Washington and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Carson journeyed to Washington, DC, where he escorted several Ute Chiefs to meet with the US President to plead for assistance to their tribe. Soon after his return, his wife, Josefa, died from complications after she gave birth to their eighth child.
He died a month later, age 58, on May 23, 1868, in the presence of Dr.
Peters biography, which itself Peters revised in 1874 to bring the biography up to Carson's 1868 death.
Adams The Fighting Trapper or Kit Carson to the Rescue (1879), another lurid work without any hint of reality. By the 1880s, the shoot-em-up gunslinger was replacing the frontiersman tales, but of those in the new generation, one critic notes, "where Kit Carson had been represented as slaying hundreds of Indians, the [new] dime novel hero slew his thousands, with one hand tied behind him." The dime novel's impact was the blurring of the real Kit Carson by creating a mythic character.
His resting place is Taos, New Mexico. == Kit Carson as Symbol and Myth, 1900–1960 == In 1950, professor Henry Nash Smith published his classic Virgin Land, the American West as Symbol and Myth.
It is unknown if Carson profited from any of these publications based on his memoirs. In 1905, among the estate of Dr.
Because of Covid-19, none were scheduled for 2020. === Historic preservation === In 1907, the Daughters of the American Revolution began placing monuments along the Santa Fe Trail and other sites that Kit Carson had known.
In 1908, the Grand Lodge of New Mexico erected a wrought iron fence around his family burial plot.
In 1911, the granddaughter of Kit Carson unveiled an equestrian statue at the community park near the state capitol, Denver.
It "honored the great explorer" and was inscribed as well with "He Led the Way." In Trinidad, Colorado, the Daughters of the American Revolution and Boy Scouts of America led fund raising for the bronze statue of Kit Carson in the city's new Kit Carson Park, placed in 1913. Californians followed with a statue of Kit Carson on Olvera Street in Los Angeles, and a bronze representation of a tree trunk with "Carson 1844" inscribed on it, placed at Carson Pass in the Sierra Nevada.
A 1913 statue of Kit Carson stands at Trinidad, Colorado’s Kit Carson Park.
This was published with little comment in 1926, followed by a revised or "polished" version in 1935, and, finally, in 1968, a solidly annotated edition edited by Harvey Lewis Carter, who had cleared up much of the background about the manuscript.
by Isidore Konti, Nevada, and elsewhere. === Early movies and television === Grand popular culture imagery of Carson, expressed through Hollywood cinema, began with the 1928 silent film Kit Carson from Paramount, a purported real-like story of Kit Carson, the famous scout and guide, and the conquest of California.
These popular matinee Westerns strove for entertainment, not for accuracy, and exploit the Kit Carson name and myth. The Kit Carson character played minor roles in other 1930s Westerns like the 1936 Sutter's Gold, loosely about the California gold discovery, and the 1939 Mutiny on the Black Hawk, an odd Western with a mutiny on a slave ship that lands in California with Kit Carson and others ready to save the day.
Alamosa, Colorado, Taos, New Mexico, Jackson, California and elsewhere all had begun hosting "Kit Carson Days" celebrations by the 1930s.
It was followed with a talking movie series begun in 1933, with 12 chapters, titled Fighting with Kit Carson with a cast including Johnny Mack Brown (as Kit), Noah Beery Sr.
This was published with little comment in 1926, followed by a revised or "polished" version in 1935, and, finally, in 1968, a solidly annotated edition edited by Harvey Lewis Carter, who had cleared up much of the background about the manuscript.
These popular matinee Westerns strove for entertainment, not for accuracy, and exploit the Kit Carson name and myth. The Kit Carson character played minor roles in other 1930s Westerns like the 1936 Sutter's Gold, loosely about the California gold discovery, and the 1939 Mutiny on the Black Hawk, an odd Western with a mutiny on a slave ship that lands in California with Kit Carson and others ready to save the day.
These popular matinee Westerns strove for entertainment, not for accuracy, and exploit the Kit Carson name and myth. The Kit Carson character played minor roles in other 1930s Westerns like the 1936 Sutter's Gold, loosely about the California gold discovery, and the 1939 Mutiny on the Black Hawk, an odd Western with a mutiny on a slave ship that lands in California with Kit Carson and others ready to save the day.
The 1940 western titled Kit Carson stars Jon Hall (as Kit), Dana Andrews (as Fremont), and others.
and Jr with "plenty of stunts and action." Paramount's crew converted the series into a feature length film, Fighting with Kit Carson, in 1946.
His resting place is Taos, New Mexico. == Kit Carson as Symbol and Myth, 1900–1960 == In 1950, professor Henry Nash Smith published his classic Virgin Land, the American West as Symbol and Myth.
Though structures that Carson would have known had been preserved pre-1950, full scale historic preservation projects of sites specifically significant for their association with Kit Carson did not begin until 1950s. In 1952, the Masonic Lodge of Taos, which had inherited the Carson home, restored and opened his classic adobe house as the Kit Carson Home and Museum, one representative of the early 19th century architecture and Hispano family setting but significant because of Carson.
Filmed in Kayenta, Arizona and nearby Monument Valley, Navajo were hired as part of the crew. From 1951 to 1955, the television show The Adventures of Kit Carson ran for 105 episodes.
Though structures that Carson would have known had been preserved pre-1950, full scale historic preservation projects of sites specifically significant for their association with Kit Carson did not begin until 1950s. In 1952, the Masonic Lodge of Taos, which had inherited the Carson home, restored and opened his classic adobe house as the Kit Carson Home and Museum, one representative of the early 19th century architecture and Hispano family setting but significant because of Carson.
In 1952, too, the state of New Mexico acquired the grave site and established Kit Carson State Park and Memorial Cemetery.
Filmed in Kayenta, Arizona and nearby Monument Valley, Navajo were hired as part of the crew. From 1951 to 1955, the television show The Adventures of Kit Carson ran for 105 episodes.
The event would have a mountain man camp, part of a living history spectacle, and include muzzle loading musket firing. By the 1960s, Escondido, California’s "Kit Carson Days" celebration included a reenactment of the "Battle of San Pasqual" and Indian dances at Kit Carson Park.
In 1966, the actor Phillip Pine played Carson with Michael Pate as fellow Fremont scout Frenchy Godey in the episode "Samaritans, Mountain Style" of the syndicated series, Death Valley Days, hosted by Robert Taylor.
This was published with little comment in 1926, followed by a revised or "polished" version in 1935, and, finally, in 1968, a solidly annotated edition edited by Harvey Lewis Carter, who had cleared up much of the background about the manuscript.
While a heroic image or reputation of Carson is expressed in the earlier, 1968, biography by Harvey Carter, the older narrative has been revised by both Sides and Roberts: In 1968, Carter stated: “In respect to his actual exploits and his actual character, however, Carson was not overrated.
Some advertised an emphasis on family fun, with children at the end of a parade—the "Kiddie Carson" parade—and young women competing to be "Kittie Carson." Some events closed by the 1970s because of problems with security, especially in small towns that had to fend with weekend visitors that arrived not for the history fun, but to deal drugs, biker gang disruption, and the broad based accusations of "hippie" take over.
A subsequent history symposium, in 1993 in Taos, tried to enlighten and explain the frontiersman, to air various views.
Voicing one extreme view, an anthropologist remarked, "It's like trying to rehabilitate Adolf Hitler." Respected New Mexico historian Marc Simmons published the best of the pieces presented at the 1993 conference.
He is said to have viewed the raids on white settlements as driven by desperation, "committed from absolute necessity when in a starving condition." Indian hunting grounds were disappearing as waves of white settlers filled the region. A final statement from biographer Roberts, 2000: "the fate in recent years of Kit Carson's reputation makes for a more perverse lesson in the vicissitudes of fame." == Legacy == Carson's home in Taos, New Mexico, is the Kit Carson Home and Museum.
"Kit Carson: The Legendary Frontiersman Remains an American Hero" HistoryNet.com June 12, 2006 Roberts, S.
Innumerable streets, businesses, and lesser geographical features were given his name. In 2014 there was a petition to rename Kit Carson Park in Taos, NM Red Willow Park.
Because of Covid-19, none were scheduled for 2020. === Historic preservation === In 1907, the Daughters of the American Revolution began placing monuments along the Santa Fe Trail and other sites that Kit Carson had known.
In Denver, a statue of a mounted Kit Carson once atop the Mac Monnies Pioneer Monument was removed and stored in 2020. Carson National Forest in New Mexico was named for him, as well as a county and a town in Colorado.
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