SKETCH OF CARSON’S LIFE
Christopher or “Kit” Carson was born in Madison County, Kentucky, in
December, 1809. The great state had been opened only a few years and
was, in many parts, still a trackless wilderness.
Kit was reared in the log house of the frontier; and like most noted
frontiersmen grew accustomed to the rifle at an early age.
But however primitive Kentucky may have been there were apparently too
many settlers to please the elder Carson; for a year after the birth of
Kit, he packed his effects upon the backs of his horses, and with his
family took up the trail for the more distant west. They crossed the
Mississippi and settled in that vast country later ceded by Napoleon to
the United States, and then known as Upper Louisiana.
Here Kit grew up among the wild spirits of the border, accustomed to
the idea of danger and renowned even in his boyhood as a rifle shot, a
hunter and the possessor of invincible resolution. He served two years
as apprentice to a saddler; then the stories of the Santa Fé trail, the
dangers and wonders thereof, appealed to him so strongly that he joined
a party about to start over it.
This was the day when vast herds of buffalo roamed the great plains,
when the Rocky Mountains were almost a thing of fable. And at the age
of eighteen we find Kit Carson in the Mexican city of Santa Fé, with
the whirl of the wonderful southwest all about him. The fur trade was
approaching its height and the commerce of the prairies had centered
about the town. To it came all the wonderful characters of the border,
and from it started more expeditions than from any other city in the
west.
Young Carson fell in love with the wild country; with rifle, hatchet
and knife, he penetrated the hills to the north and there fell in
with Kin Cade, an old mountaineer who taught him much of the lore of
the West which afterward proved so useful to him. Later, Kit joined
the train of a trader going back to Missouri. The Santa Fé trail was a
thousand miles long, and through a savage region of wolves and Indians,
and waterless deserts. But Kit did not mind this; he liked the toil
of it and the danger. But, half-way over the trail, the thought came
to him that he was going back “East.” At a ford on the Arkansas River
they encountered another band of traders on their way to the west; Kit
joined them and returned to Santa Fé. Reaching the fur market once
more, Young Carson engaged with a Colonel Trammel, who was leading a
trading expedition southward to the rich mines of Chihuahua. Having
learned Spanish from Kin Cade, he was now to serve as interpreter.
Returning from this venture he went to Taos, a trapper’s town about
a hundred and fifty miles north of Santa Fé. Here he met the trapper,
Ewing Young, for the first time, and was engaged as a camp cook. But
Young was not long in seeing the qualities of his youthful recruit, and
when he took up his march for California, where we find his party in
the first chapter of “In the Rockies with Kit Carson,” Kit was a full
fledged trapper.
After the great battle with the Blackfeet, as related in the last
chapter of the story, Kit Carson joined a body of trappers at the
summer rendezvous. Later he joined a trading party going into the
country of the Navajos, a highly intelligent tribe who cultivated the
arts and were quite rich. After a profitable venture among these people
he became the hunter, or meat provider for the fort on the Platte River.
But he preferred trapping, it would seem; and after some smaller
ventures joined a large party and once more ventured into the
Blackfoot country. In the winter traces of Indians were seen near their
camp; knowing that the savages must be in large force to venture so
near to them, Kit Carson proposed that the whites strike the first
blow, and so plant terror in the hearts of the Blackfeet.
Forty trappers took the trail; Kit was given the command. A band of
savages were encountered and attacked. They fled, falling back upon
a still larger band. A desperate battle followed, fought from behind
trees and rocks, and as night fell, the Blackfeet, with many of their
braves dead or disabled, retired across a frozen stream to an island in
its middle, where they had erected a log fort. Under the cover of the
darkness, however, the Indians left even this and hurried away.
Returning to camp a council was held. The trappers were sure the
savages would return in great numbers, and they began to prepare for
them. Intrenchments were prepared; trees, brush, stumps, fallen logs
and boulders were cleared away from the camp upon every side. If the
savages advanced, they must do so in the open.
At daybreak one morning the Indians came, a thousand or more in number,
and advanced to crush the whites for good and all. But at the verge
of the cleared space they halted, astonished. They could not advance
without exposing themselves to the deadly fire of the long rifles; to
take the fort meant an awful sacrifice. A council was held in which
there was much speech-making. Then the host broke into two bands and
moved away over the mountains; and after this that particular body of
trappers were troubled no more.
But Kit was destined to have many encounters with the Blackfeet and
other hostile tribes; and at the same time there were numerous others
with whom he became quite friendly; indeed, many was the village into
which he could ride and be greeted as a brother. In spite of all the
opposition of the Indians of the mountains, the trappers persisted. But
at length the price of furs fell to such a degree that hunting them
grew unprofitable. And so Kit abandoned the pursuit and began a career
as a hunter, during which he pushed his acquaintance with the nations
of the Cheyennes, the Kiowas, the Arapahoes and the Comanches. Once he
was instrumental in preventing a deadly war between the powerful Sioux
people and the Comanche. The Sioux had intruded upon the hunting ground
of the other tribe; this was resented; fights followed; the Comanches
were beaten. Kit Carson was the friend of both peoples; he went to
their chiefs; he parleyed and argued. The result was that the Sioux
left the Comanche hunting ground, their chiefs giving their word that
they’d never return.
Among the Comanches, Kit Carson found a wife--a beautiful Indian girl
with a mind much superior to that of the women of her race. They had
a daughter. Afterward the wife and mother died of a plague which had
broken out; and when the child grew a little older, Kit took her to St.
Louis to be educated and brought up amidst civilized surroundings.
Bound up the Missouri River from St. Louis, Kit fell in with Lieutenant
John C. Frémont, of the Topographical Engineers Corps. This officer had
been sent by the War Department to explore on the line of the Kansas
and Great Platte Rivers, and between the South Pass in the Rockies and
the frontier of Missouri. Frémont had a party of twenty-one boatmen who
knew the western life; he had also engaged a guide, but this latter
man had failed him. Learning this, Kit Carson offered his services
as one who knew the mountains and streams, having trapped among them
for sixteen years. He was accepted; and thus began that series of
explorations that made the name of Frémont, the pathfinder, known the
country over, and that of Kit Carson, frontiersman, famous throughout
the world.
Three separate expeditions into the wilds were required before Frémont
completed his work, and in each of these Kit Carson acted as his guide.
They were expeditions crowded with Indian battles, with perils and
escapes by flood and field.
After years of adventure, Kit began to farm and raise sheep, organizing
a hunting party of his old friends now and then; later the government,
because of his knowledge of the tribes, made him an Indian agent.
This difficult post he filled as probably it had never been filled
before. During the rebellion he was of much service to the government
on the border; and at the close of the war was breveted a brigadier
general of volunteers. He died at Fort Lyon, Colorado, in May, 1868, in
the sixtieth year of his age.
Another Book in this Series is:
IN KENTUCKY WITH DANIEL BOONE
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.