Kit Carson

[musketman]

What do we really know about Kit Carson?

I posted in this section because he could go in Rocky Mountain Fur Trade, The Plains or Civil War section just as easy...

Christopher Houston "Kit" Carson (Dec. 24, 1809 - May 23, 1868) was an American explorer, guide, fur trapper, Indian agent, rancher, and soldier, who traveled through the southwestern and western USA.

 

[TANSTAAFL]

In the history books, Fremont the "explorer" got all the glory, Kit Carson and Joe Walker did all the work.

During the civil war, Carson broke the back of the Navajo Nation uprising. (he is still hated today in the Four Corners area)

Carson was totally illiterate, having never learned to read or write.

Carson was a man of very short stature, but a very tall man when it came to just plain guts and intelligence. At a rendezvous a large bullying, loud mouth and drunk Frenchy said he could whip any American in the camp. Carson reportedly had enough, said something along the lines of, I am your huckleberry, rode up on a horse with a borrowed pistol and shot him through the arm. When Carson went back to reload, the Frenchy begged for his life and was spared.

 

[Slamfire]

He was a partner in a ranch in the Glorieta Pass/Fort Union area of New Mexico. :hmm:

 

[redwing]

His home in Taos,NM, has been restored by the Masons.
This is a nice place to visit if you want to know
about the LIfe and Times of KC.
I belive he was born in Ky. near where Lincoln was
born, they were born on the same day 30 miles apart.
He died broke in Colorado from a stroke.
rewing :redthumb:

 

[Claude Mathis]

Kit Carson

(1809-1868)

Born on Christmas eve in 1809, Carson spent most of his early childhood in Boone's Lick, Missouri. His father died when he was only nine years old, and the need to work prevented Kit from ever receiving an education. He was apprenticed to a saddle-maker when he turned fourteen, but left home for the Santa Fe, New Mexico area in 1826.

From about 1828 to 1831, Carson used Taos, New Mexico, as a base camp for repeated fur-trapping expeditions that often took him as far West as California. Later in the 1830's his trapping took him up the Rocky Mountains and throughout the West. For a time in the early 1840's, he was employed by William Bent as a hunter at Bent's Fort.

As was the case with many white trappers, Carson became somewhat integrated into the Indian world; he travelled and lived extensively among Indians, and his first two wives were Arapahoe and Cheyenne women. Carson was evidently unusual among trappers, however, for his self-restraint and temperate lifestyle. "Clean as a hound's tooth," according to one acquaintance, and a man whose "word was as sure as the sun comin' up," he was noted for an unassuming manner and implacable courage.

In 1842, while returning to Missouri to visit his family, Carson happened to meet John C. Fremont, who soon hired him as a guide. Over the next several years, Carson helped guide Fremont to Oregon and California, and through much of the Central Rocky Mountains and the Great Basin. His service with Fremont, celebrated in Fremont's widely-read reports of his expeditions, quickly made Kit Carson a national hero, presented in popular fiction as a rugged mountain man capable of superhuman feats.

Carson's notoriety grew as his name became associated with several key events in the United States' westward expansion. He was still serving as Fremont's guide when Fremont joined California's short-lived Bear-Flag rebellion just before the outbreak of the Mexican-American War in 1846, and it was Carson who led the forces of U.S. General Stephen Kearney from New Mexico into California when a Californio band led by Andr

 

[Gametracker]

In the history books, Fremont the "explorer" got all the glory, Kit Carson and Joe Walker did all the work.

Tom Fitzpatrick maybe even more so.


Carson was born in Kentucky in 1809. He worked with Ewing Young from 1828 to 1831 through southern Arizona and California.
In St. Louis, Freemont hired Lucien Maxwell as a hunter for his first expedition. Maxwell was good friends with Kit Carson, who Freemont met while ascending the Missouri River in the vicinity of Kansas City. Major Andrew Drips had been contacted first for the job of chief scout for Freemont's party. Failing to hire Drips, Carson ended up with the job.

Probably his most legendary feat occured on April 26, 1844 A Mexican man and an 11-year-old boy stumbled into Fremont's camp on the Mojave River two days prior. The two were part of a six-man party that came under attack by roughly 100 natives, who killed the other four and drove off about thirty horses. The following day, Carson and Alex Godey volunteered to search for the theives. They came into camp the following evening with the horses and two scalps. They had charged into an indian camp consisting of four lodges.

"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 defiles 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 against Mexicans whom they did not know. I repeat: it was Carson and Godey who did this- the former, born in the boonslick county of Missouri; the latter a Frenchman, born in St. Louis- and both trained to western enterprise from early life." -Freemont-

The story is confirmed in a practical sense by Charles Preuss's indignant version of what occured.

Apperantly Carson was a well-known figure by the time "Life in the Far West" was written. If I remember right, Carson appears in the story in a brawl with jealous Mexicans at a Taos shindig.