If you were to close your eyes right now and
try to conjure up the ultimate image of the American
West, the absolute archetype of the frontiersman,
what enters your mind? I'm guessing it's a silhouette
against a blazing sunset. Well, certainly a towering
figure. Exactly. You're likely picturing someone
six foot four, shoulders like an ox, a booming
voice that echoes across the canyon. Maybe he's
wrestling a grizzly bear with one hand and firing
a long rifle with the other. A real life superhero
clad in buckskin. It is the image that has been
sold to us for over 150 years. The dime novel
hero. The man who, you know, single -handedly
conquered the wilderness. But today, we're doing
something a little different. We're going to
peel back that layer of buckskin and look at
the actual human being underneath. And the reality,
well, it is jarringly different from the movie
poster. We were talking about Christopher Kidd
Carson. And physically, the man was about 5 '5".
On a good day, perhaps, yeah. Right. Accounts
from the time describe him as stoop -shouldered,
bow -legged from a lifetime in the saddle, and
completely illiterate. General Sherman, who wasn't
exactly known for his poetic flourishes, described
Carson as having soft blue eyes and a voice that
was, quote, soft and gentle as a woman's. It's
a striking contrast, isn't it? You have this
legendary reputation as a ring -tailed roarer,
a man who supposedly slew hundreds of enemies
and tamed the continent, yet the man himself
was quiet. modest, and by all accounts, incredibly
understated. That's the central paradox of Kit
Carson. And that is our mission for this deep
dive. We have a massive stack of sources here,
biographies, military reports, historical reassessments,
and we are going to unpack the reality behind
the myth. We're going to look at his evolution
from a runaway teen apprentice to a mountain
man, then to an accidental national celebrity,
and finally to a controversial military commander
who is central to some of the most painful chapters
in American history. It's a complicated legacy,
to put it mildly. We are going to see a man who
evolves significantly over time, whose life intersects
with almost every major turning point of the
American West. But to understand how he became
a symbol both of expansion and, you know, of
oppression, we have to start where it all began.
Which surprisingly isn't in the Rocky Mountains.
It's a saddle shop in Missouri. Right. But before
the saddle shop, let's quickly ground his origins.
He was born in Kentucky in 1809, but his family
moved to the Missouri frontier, specifically
a place called Boone's Lick when he was just
a baby. Now, when we say frontier in 1810, we
need to be clear about what that means. This
wasn't just rural farmland. No, this was the
absolute edge of the map. It really was. They
were living in what amounted to a war zone. The
cabins were forted with stockades to protect
against attacks from local tribes. It was a life
defined by constant vigilance and just... brutal
hard labor. And tragedy struck his family really
early on. It did. His father, Lindsey Carson,
died when Kit was only eight years old. A tree
limb fell on him while he was clearing a field.
That feels like such a harsh, grim way to go.
No glory, just the environment itself crushing
you. And it threw the family into immediate poverty.
And that poverty is really the key driver of
his early life. It's what forced Kit, at age
14 or 15, into an apprenticeship. He was bound
to a man named David Workman. To learn the saddler's
trade. So imagine being that kid. You're a teenager
just full of energy and you're stuck indoors
stitching leather all day while the entire world
is happening right outside your door. And that
shop was a hub. I mean, who's coming in? Trappers,
traders, explorers. They're getting their gear
fixed before heading out on the Santa Fe Trail.
So he's hearing all these stories. Oh, absolutely.
Stories of the Shining Mountains, of buffalo
herds that take three days to pass a single point,
of dangerous encounters and, you know, incredible
freedom. It was interesting. Intoxicating. Carson
hated the work. He couldn't handle the confinement.
So in 1826, at 16 years old, he runs away. Against
his mother's wishes, he joins a caravan heading
west. And this leads to my absolute favorite
detail from his early years. Usually, when an
apprentice runs away, the master is furious.
He wants his labor back. So... David Workman
puts an ad in the newspaper. Right, offering
a reward for Kit's return. A very specific reward.
One cent. One cent. Just a single penny. To anyone
who brings back the boy. And that ad actually
gives us the first printed description of him.
Thick set, light hair. It was basically a joke.
Nobody was going to chase him down for a penny.
It tells you exactly how much value he was perceived
to have at that moment. But that penny bought
his freedom. He makes it to Santa Fe and eventually
settles in Taos, New Mexico. And Taos really
becomes his home base for the rest of his life.
This is where the mountain man phase begins,
right? The part of his life we all think we know.
Exactly. From about 1829 to 1841, Carson is living
the life that we see in movies. But he didn't
just stumble into it. He had to learn the trade.
He had mentors. He did. He was mentored by some
of the legends of the era, guys like Ewing Young
and Matthew Kincaid. He was like a sponge. He
learned trapping, sure. but he also learned languages.
He picked up Spanish, French, and multiple Native
American dialects. For an illiterate man, his
linguistic capacity was extraordinary. And the
sources paint a picture of a life that was just
incredibly brutal. We tend to romanticize the
mountain man as this free spirit, you know, answering
to no one, but the economics of it. The economics
were terrible. They were effectively gig workers
in a very harsh corporate system. They were part
of what was called the rendezvous system. How
did that work exactly? Well, they'd spend all
year trapping beavers, usually alone or in small
pairs, waist deep in freezing streams, facing
constant danger. Then, once a year, they'd all
meet the company wagons from St. Louis at a designated
spot, the rendezvous. And that's where the traps
snapped shut. That's a good way to put it. The
company set the price for the pelts, which was
always low. And then they set the price for the
goods the trappers needed to survive another
year. Flour, coffee, gunpowder, fish hooks, which
was astronomically high. It's the classic company
store model. You spend your entire year's earnings
just to buy the supplies to survive the next
year. You're always in debt. Exactly. Most trappers
were. But for Carson, it was still a world away
from the saddle shop. And the physical danger
was constant. You mentioned the bear earlier.
That wasn't just a hype. There is a famous account
from 1834 where Carson is out hunting elk alone.
Can you set the scene for us? Sure. He spots
some elk, fires a shot, but then immediately
realizes he's not alone. He runs into two grizzly
bears. And these aren't the bears you see at
the zoo. These are hungry, aggressive apex predators.
And they chase him. They do. He has to scramble
up a tree just in time, a little aspen tree,
so not exactly a fortress. One bear eventually
gave up, but the other stayed for hours, clawing
at the bark, trying to shake him down. Carson
later dictated in his memoirs that he had never
been so scared in life. But beyond nature, the
defining struggle of this period was his relationship
with Native American tribes. And this is where
we have to be really careful not to simplify
things. It wasn't just Carson versus the Indians.
No, not at all. It was a complex web of alliances
and enmities. The mountain men were intruders,
certainly, but they inserted themselves into
existing geopolitical rivalries. Carson lived
among tribes, he traded with them, and he married
into them. But he also fought certain tribes
with lethal efficiency. Specifically the Blackfoot.
Right. The Blackfoot were viewed as the mortal
enemy by many trappers, largely because the Blackfoot
fiercely and effectively defended their territory
against this economic... extraction. There's
a really disturbing account from 1838. Carson
is traveling with Jim Bridger, another titan
of the era. They come across a Blackfoot village
that has been decimated by smallpox. So this
is a horror show. Bodies in the teepees. The
village is literally dying. It is. And Bridger,
who was a pragmatist, wanted to move on. He was
likely afraid of the disease, if nothing else,
but Carson. Carson and the younger men wanted
a fight. They attacked the village. An already
dying village. Yes. And Carson later called it
the prettiest fight I ever saw. That quote is
so difficult to digest. The prettiest fight?
It shows a kind of... A callousness that was
typical of the mountain man culture of that specific
time. It was a sport to them. It was, but then
you have to juxtapose that violence with his
personal life, especially his marriages, which
suggests a very different kind of integration.
His first wife was an Arapaho woman named Waniba,
or Singing Grass. And that relationship wasn't
casual. He didn't just take a wife in the way
some trappers did. He actually fought a duel
for her. This is a scene straight out of a Western.
A French trapper named Chouinard was harassing
Wanibi, making unwanted advances. Carson didn't
just tell him to knock it off. He challenged
him to a duel. They rode at each other on horseback,
pistols drawn. Talk about high stakes. Incredibly
high. Carson shot the Frenchman's thumb off.
The Frenchman's bullet grazed Carson's face and
singed his hair. It was inches from ending his
story right there. But he won her hand, so to
speak. Wanibi and Carson had a daughter, Adeline.
But sadly, Wanibi died after childbirth a few
years later. He then married a Cheyenne woman
named Making Out Road, but that was short -lived.
Very short -lived. And I love the detail about
how that marriage ended. It says a lot about
the agency of Native women at the time. She divorced
him, according to a Cheyenne custom. Which was?
She simply put all his property and their child,
Adeline, outside the tent. Universal sign for
you're out. A very clear message. There was no
ambiguity there. But his third marriage to Josefa
Jaramillo in 1843 was the one that lasted. She
was from a prominent Hispano family in Taos.
He was 33. She was just 14. Not uncommon for
the time and place. Correct. And to marry her,
he actually converted to Catholicism and was
baptized. This marriage was a huge step for him
socially. It connected him deeply to the established
culture of New Mexico. It moved him from being
an outsider, a gringo trapper, to being part
of the fabric of Taos society. So by the early
1840s, the bottom has fallen out of the beaver
market. Completely. Silk hats became the fashion
in Europe, and the demand for beaver pelts just
evaporated. The era of the mountain man was effectively
over. Carson needed a new job. He started working
as a hunter for Bent's Fort for a dollar a day.
He's a respected, capable guy, but nobody outside
the frontier knows who he is. Until a chance
meeting on a steamboat changes everything. Enter
John C. Fremont. The Pathfinder. Or, as some
historians might argue, the Great Self -Promoter.
In 1842, Carson is on a boat on the Missouri
River heading back to visit his daughter. He
runs into Fremont, who is an ambitious lieutenant
in the Army's Corps of Topographical Engineers.
Fremont's looking for a guide for his expedition
to map the Oregon Trail. And Carson just happens
to be there. Right place, right time. Carson
introduces himself, modestly saying he has some
experience in the mountains. Fremont likes his
quiet, capable demeanor and hires him on the
spot for $100 a month. Which was huge money compared
to hunting buffalo for a dollar a day. It was
life -changing. But the money wasn't the real
payoff. The real payoff was the publicity. Fremont
was a meticulous record keeper, and his wife,
Jessie Benton Fremont, was a brilliant writer
and political operator. She took Fremont's dry
government reports and polished them into these
romantic, high -adventure narratives that absolutely
captivated the American public. And Carson was
the co -star of these stories. He was the hero,
really. These reports were bestsellers. They
fueled what was called organ fever, encouraging
thousands of settlers to head west. And in these
stories, Carson is the steady hand. the fearless
scout. When Fremont is impulsive or in over his
head, Carson is the rock. He's the one who knows
what to do. We have to talk about some of the
specific exploits from these expeditions because
they are what made him famous. There's the rescue
in the Mojave Desert in 1843. This is the quintessential
hero moment. It's almost too cinematic to be
true, but it happened. Fremont's party comes
across a Mexican man and a boy who are in shock.
Their party had been ambushed by a group of Native
Americans. The men in their group had been killed
and the women were. While they were staked to
the ground and mutilated, it was a scene of absolute
horror. And Carson reacts instantly. Instantly,
he and another scout, a man named Alexis Godey,
rode after the attackers, just the two of them.
They tracked them for miles, found their camp,
killed two of them in a surprise attack, scalped
them, and recovered the stolen horses. When people
back east read that, it solidified him as this
avenging angel of the West. But looking at the
sources, the Fremont expeditions also have a
very, very dark side. There are incidents that
look less like heroism and more like massacres.
We cannot ignore this part of the story. The
Sacramento River Massacre in 1846 is a key event.
Fremont's party, feeling an attack based on what
seems to be very shaky intelligence, launched
a preemptive strike on a Wintu village. A village
that might not have even been hostile. Exactly.
They killed somewhere between 120 and 300 men,
women, and children. And Carson himself, in his
own memoirs, later described it as a perfect
butchery. Perfect butchery. He recognized the
slaughter for what it was. And then there's the
Klamath Lake incident. Yes. Fremont's camp was
attacked at night by a group of Klamath warriors
and three of his men were killed. In retaliation
the next day, they found a nearby Klamath village,
which again likely had nothing to do with the
initial attack, and destroyed it. Carson was
reportedly so enraged over the death of his friends
that he took an axe and knocked the head of a
dead Native American to pieces. It's visceral
and brutal. It shows a rage that really contradicts
the gentle voice descriptions we heard earlier.
It does. And then a little later, during the
Bear Flag Revolt in California, under Fremont's
orders, Carson executed three unarmed civilians.
An old Californian man named Beresa and his two
nephews. They were just carrying a message. And
the order was to take no prisoners. Fremont told
him, I have no room for prisoners, so Carson
executed them. It suggests a man who, for all
his personal courage and skill, was also a soldier
following orders. He could shut off his moral
compass when the chain of command was involved.
But speaking of that courage, though, we have
to mention the barefoot run during the Mexican
-American War. This is arguably his most famous
military feat, and it's pure heroism. This is
the Battle of San Pascual, December 1846. General
Kearney's Army of the West is surrounded by Mexican
Lancers. They are pinned down on a hill, starving
and running out of water. They're making tea
out of mule urine. It's a desperate situation.
And they need to get a message to the American
forces in San Diego. Right. It's a suicide mission.
So Carson, along with a lieutenant named Beale
and an Indian scout, volunteer. They sneak out
at night, crawling through the Mexican lines.
To be quiet, they had to take their shoes off
and tie them around their necks. And they lost
them. They lost the shoes, so they had to walk
25 miles barefoot through a landscape filled
with cactus and sharp volcanic rock. Carson said
later that his feet were so full of prickly pear
spines he could hardly walk for weeks after.
But they made it. They got through. They delivered
the message, and the relief column arrived. And
the irony is just incredible. After all that,
Carson gets sent to Washington, D .C. as a courier
to deliver news of the victory in California.
He thinks he's just a scout delivering the mail.
He arrives in the capital and he discovers he's
a national superstar. The accidental celebrity.
By the late 1840s, the dime novel industry was
taking off and these sensationalist writers needed
a hero. They latched onto the name Kit Carson
from Fremont's reports. This brings us to the
myth versus man section of our deep dive. The
dime novels are, well, they're hilarious. They
depict him as this giant, a six foot tall Hercules
slaying Indians by the hundreds. One author,
Charles Averill, wrote a book called Kit Carson,
The Prince of the Gold Hunters. And Carson hated
them. He was a practical, modest man who valued
competence and truth. He found the stories embarrassing.
When he was shown one of these books, he famously
said, every statement made is false. But there
is a really tragic side to this fame, too. The
story of Anne White. This one. This one really
hit me when I was reading the sources. It's a
haunting story. It's 1849. Carson is guiding
a group of soldiers to rescue a woman named Anne
White and her child, who had been captured by
Hickorilla Apaches. The soldiers spotted the
Apache camp, and Carson, with his experience,
urged the commanding officer to attack immediately.
But the officer hesitated. He wanted to be more
cautious, to get organized. He dallied. And in
that delay, the Apaches killed Anne White. By
the time the soldiers finally charged, it was
too late. And they were going through the abandoned
camp. Carson found a book lying on the ground
near her body. It was one of those dime novels,
a book featuring a fictional superhero version
of Kit Carson. That is just devastating. He was
haunted by it for the rest of his life. He was
tormented by the thought that Anne White might
have read that book during her captivity, that
she might have held on to hope thinking the real
Kit Carson is coming and he never fails. And
then the real human Carson arrived. But he was
bound by the hesitation of a superior officer
and he failed her. The weight of his own myth
actually crushing him in a way. It stayed with
him. And it's funny, even his own memoirs were
subject to this kind of polishing. Carson, as
we said, was illiterate. He threw down my spelling
book to fight Indians, as he put it. So he dictated
his memoirs. But they were rewritten by others,
specifically a man named Dr. DeWitt Peters, to
be more moral and flowery. And Carson didn't
like that either. No. He complained that Peters
laid it on a little too thick. He just wanted
the plain facts, but the world wanted the legend.
So we move into the 1850s. The fur trade is long
dead. The Mexican -American War is over. Carson
decides to settle down in Taos with Josefa and
takes a government job. He becomes a federal
Indian agent. This is a crucial pivot in his
life. For seven years, from 1854 to 1861, his
job is not to fight Native Americans, but to
be the intermediary between the U .S. government
and the Ute, the Hickory Apache, and the Paz
Pueblo people. A completely different role. Completely.
And because he couldn't read or write, he had
to hire a secretary to handle all the paperwork.
But he was apparently very effective in the field.
His duties were things like preventing conflict,
distributing food and clothing, and negotiating
disputes over stolen livestock. And the sources
suggest his views were really evolving here.
He wasn't the young man looking for the prettiest
fight anymore. Not at all. He advocated for fair
treatment. His official reports are filled with
complaints that the government wasn't sending
enough food or clothing. He saw the corruption
in the system up close. But, and this is a big
but, he also came to a firm conclusion about
the future of Native Americans. The reservation
policy. Yes. Carson looked at the flood of white
settlers, the miners, the farmers, and he decided
that the traditional nomadic way of life was
doomed. So in his mind... He thought he was saving
them. He absolutely did. He viewed it as the
only humane alternative to what he saw as inevitable
genocide. He believed that if they stayed in
the path of American expansion, they would simply
be wiped out. But that belief, however well -intentioned
he thought it was, led him to participate in
actions that many today view as cultural genocide.
Which brings us to the Civil War and the Navajo
campaign. This is the heavy stuff. When the Civil
War broke out, Carson sided with the Union. He
did. He commanded the first New Mexico volunteer
infantry. What's interesting here is that his
troops were mostly Hispanic volunteers from New
Mexico. The regular Army command, particularly
a Colonel Candy, was very skeptical of them.
They didn't think these volunteers would actually
fight. But they did. They did. At the Battle
of Valverde in 1862 against Confederate Texans,
Carson and his men held their ground while other
regular army units faltered. He was fiercely
proud of them and defended them against the prejudice
of the regular army officers. But once the Confederates
were pushed out of New Mexico, the Union army
there turned its attention back to the tribes.
And a new commander arrived, General James Carlton.
And Carlton was intense. Carlton was a hardliner.
He believed in a scorched earth policy. He wanted
a final solution to the Indian problem in New
Mexico. He decided all tribes would be moved
to a single reservation called Bosque Redondo.
First, he ordered Carson to round up the Mescalero
Apache. The order was explicit. kill all the
men you can, and capture the women and children.
And Carson did it. He executed the order efficiently,
and by 1863, the Mescalero were moved. And then
Carlton turned his full attention to the Navajo.
The Navajo Campaign of 1863 to 1864. This is
the defining controversy of Carson's legacy.
It is. Carlton ordered Carson to take no prisoners
until the Navajo surrendered. Carson knew he
couldn't chase the Navajo through their vast
territory. They knew the land. They were too
fast. So he changed tactics. He stopped hunting
men and started hunting their livelihood. Exactly.
He waged economic warfare. He didn't chase the
people. He destroyed their economy. He burned
their hogans, destroyed their cornfields, and
slaughtered their livestock, thousands of sheep
and goats. The most symbolic and painful moment
of this campaign was the invasion of Canyon de
Chelly, which was a sacred stronghold for the
Nava, a sacred place and their agricultural heartland.
Carson's troops marched into the canyon in the
middle of winter, and they cut down thousands
of peach trees. Peach trees that had been cultivated
there for generations. It wasn't just destroying
food. It was destroying a connection to the land,
to their ancestors. It was a devastating psychological
blow, and it worked. The combination of cold
and starvation broke the Navajo resistance. They
began to surrender in droves, and that led to
what is known today as the Long Walk. Thousands
of Navajo men, women, and children were forced
to walk hundreds of miles across New Mexico to
this desolate reservation at Bosque Redondo.
Many died along the way from exposure and hunger,
and the conditions at the reservation were horrific.
The water was bad, disease was rampant, the crops
failed. It was a complete disaster. What was
Carson's role in this part? Did he try to stop
it? The sources show he was weary of it. He actually
tried to resign. He was tired. His health was
failing. And he didn't seem to have the stomach
for the kind of total war Carlton was demanding.
But he was a soldier. He followed orders. And
because he was the face of the campaign, he is
the one who carries the historical blame for
the long walk. It's so interesting that while
he is remembered for the brutality of the Navajo
campaign, his military career actually ended
with a battle where he saved his men by not attacking.
The first battle of Adobe Walls in 1864. This
is a fascinating tactical moment. Carson led
a force against the Kiowa and Comanche in the
Texas Panhandle. He thought he was attacking
a small village, but he stumbled into a massive
encampment. We're talking over a thousand warriors.
This is a Custer at Little Beadhorn situation
waiting to happen. It was almost exactly that
scenario, a decade before Custer. But unlike
Custer, Carson immediately realized he was massively
outnumbered and outmatched. He ordered a fighting
retreat. He used his two small howitzers to provide
covering fire and expertly withdrew his men.
It was considered a brilliant tactical retreat
that saved his command from annihilation. But
his health was catching up with him by this point.
It was. He was appointed a brigadier general,
then commanded Fort Garland in Colorado, but
he was declining rapidly. He had an aortic aneurysm
that was pressing on his windpipe, making it
hard to breathe. Yet he made one last trip to
Washington, D .C. in 1868. He did. He went with
a delegation of Ute chiefs to plead for government
assistance for their people. He saw himself as
their advocate. The long, hard journey just worsened
his condition. He returned to Colorado and then
tragedy struck his family again. His wife, Josefa,
died shortly after giving birth to their eighth
child. Carson was devastated and his own health
collapsed completely. He died just a month later
in May of 1868. His last words were fitting for
a man who straddled so many worlds. He said,
goodbye, friends. Adios, compadres. So when we
look at his legacy, it's just a roller coaster.
Let's trace that reputation shift. In the 19th
and early 20th century, he was the untarnished
hero. the symbol of manifest destiny. You had
statues, Kit Carson days, towns and rivers named
after him. The message was he led the way. And
then in the late 20th century, the pendulum swung
hard the other way. The bury my heart at wounded
knee era reassessed the history of the West.
Carson was recast as the villain, a genocidal
racist. There was a symposium in Taos in the
90s where people debated whether he was a hero
or just a butcher. And today, where do most historians
land? Today, there's more nuance. Historians
like Hamptonsides and David Roberts argue he
is neither a perfect hero nor a cartoon villain.
He was a complex man of his time who evolved.
He went from a young man who killed Blackfeet
for sport to an old man who defended the Utes.
And yet, he's the same man who executed the brutal
Navajo policy, believing it was the only alternative
to their total extinction. It raises a final,
really provocative question. If Kit Carson had
died in 1848, right after the Mexican -American
War, he would be remembered solely as the daring
explorer, the hero of Fremont's reports. Because
he lived to serve the government's policies in
the 1860s, he became a signal of oppression.
It makes you wonder how much of a historical
figure's legacy is defined by their own choices
versus the orders they are compelled to follow.
That is the central question of his life, isn't
it? Where does the man end and the historical
forces begin? That's it for this deep dive. Thanks
for listening.