Born Christopher Houston Carson on Christmas Eve, 1809, in Madison County, Kentucky, Kit Carson was raised in Missouri and ran away from home at the age of fifteen to become an iconic trapper, frontiersman, and Indian agent of the Old West. Leaving an apprenticeship as a saddle-maker, Carson moved west to New Mexico and then into the Rocky Mountains, where he gained a reputation as a hunter and a trapper. Kit Carson’s word, according to his contemporaries, was his bond: as dependable as the sunrise on a new day. Moreover, in a rough and tumble world of none-too-polished frontiersmen, Carson was known for his temperance and virtue. He was likened by one acquaintance to be as clean as the proverbial hound’s tooth, while his courage was a by-word of Western virtue. Carson was employed as a hunter, trapper, and guide by notable explorers William Bent and John C. Fremont, and his expeditions took him all the way to California and back. Along the way, Carson became conversant with the ways of the Native Americans of the region, and indeed married not one but two indigenous brides, one a Cheyenne and the other an Arapaho.
It was his service with Fremont, however—whose journals became fodder for widespread popular publication—that was to ensure Kit Carson an abiding place in the pantheon of heroes of American folklore and legend. Along the way, Carson’s name became indelibly associated with the Santa Fe Trail along which he guided many newcomers to the West. Carson was an active military player in the 1847 seizure of the California Territory from Mexico, and subsequently led scores of settlers west into that region during the 1849 gold rush. Carson also led the First New Mexico Volunteers on the Union side of the American Civil War (1861–1865), beginning as a colonel and rising to the rank of brigadier general. Throughout the war Carson coordinated scouts and fought against Native American tribes in the vicious frontier war well west of the most famous actions of the day. Kit returned to peacetime duty as an Indian agent and was appointed superintendent for Indian affairs for the Colorado Territory in early 1868. Kit Carson died in Colorado on May 23 of that year.
Christopher “Kit” Carson achieved fame for leading American settlers in the conquest of the western territories. As a trail guide, military commander, and ultimately Indian affairs agent, Carson’s career was entwined with the establishment of American authority throughout the Rocky Mountains and the southwestern region, and his feats have been celebrated in songs, books, and films. (Library of Congress)
Although not quite a touchstone American icon of the stature of Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett, Kit Carson continues to reside in the American legendary imagination, and even figures in significant place names: notably Carson City, the capital of Nevada, is named after Kit. Moreover, Carson is not simply a figure of history and frontier folklore: he has become enshrined as a figure of American literature, featured in Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, Harvey Ferguson’s Wolf Song, and in several works by Stanley Vestal. Kit Carson was also an ideal subject for nineteenth-century pulp fiction, to a certain extent taking over the mantle of James Fenimore Cooper’s Hawkeye of the Leatherstocking tales as the “Great Scout” to the new frontier of the far West. Such works idealized Carson as a sort of knight in shining armor. He was the symbol of American expansion, an Indian fighter with a heart of gold. Thus Kit Carson made the leap from historical figure to full-blown American legend, and as such appeared in a number of large-screen and small-screen adaptations of his life, times, and adventures. In perhaps the earliest rendition, Johnny Mack Brown played the title role, portraying a Depression-era version of the Old West hero in Fighting with Kit Carson (1933). A few years later, Kit was the subject of a 1940 feature film of the same name starring Jon Hall, Dana Andrews, and Lynn Bari. Perhaps the cinematic Carson reached the height of his popularity in the Golden Age of television series The Adventures of Kit Carson (1951–1955), which starred Bill Williams as the legendary figure.
More recently, however, Carson’s legacy has been tarnished by his participation in such controversial historical episodes as the “Long Walk,” the forcible relocation in 1864 of the Navajo from their ancestral lands in Arizona to Fort Sumner in New Mexico. Carson’s scorched-earth policy, which left Navajo women and children, as well as warriors, starving and vulnerable, ensured that the tribe was unable to stave off their traditional enemies. Moreover, the Long Walk itself comprises an especially brutal chapter in the long history of such coerced migrations of Native Americans. Carson also advocated the development of reservations, which, though considered a bigoted and imperialistic policy today, was a moderate position by nineteenth-century standards. He believed that Native American attacks upon white settlers were often the result of the tribes’ growing frustration with seemingly endless incoming floods of land-hungry settlers. Reservations were meant to mollify such anxieties by closing some lands to white settlement. It is arguable that Carson’s attitude showed empathy and a certain respect for the response of the Native Americans in increasingly untenable conflict with the burgeoning United States. Whatever the case, such a reexamination of the actions and motives of an American legend of Carson’s status thrusts such figures headlong into an ongoing debate concerning Native Americans and the frontiersmen with whom they came into contact and often conflict. The debate casts light on the larger question of what being an American hero truly does and should mean.
C. Fee
See also Boone, Daniel; Bridger, Jim; Crockett, Davy; Mountain Men
Further Reading
Guild, Thelma S., and Harvey L. Carter. 1988. Kit Carson: A Pattern for Heroes. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Hopkins, Virginia. 1988. Pioneers of the Old West. New York: Crown.
Kit Carson Home and Museum website. http://www.kitcarsonmuseum.org. Accessed August 25, 2015.
Roberts, David. 2001. A Newer World: Kit Carson, John C. Fremont and the Claiming of the American West. New York: Touchstone.
Weiser, Kathy. 2015. “Kit Carson.” Legends of America website. http://www.legendsofamerica.com/nm-kitcarson.html. Accessed August 25, 2015.