Kit Carson Part I: The Enigmatic Hero

Just about everyone has heard of Kit Carson.  If nothing else, they know that towns in every Western State are named after him.  Carson City, Nevada;  Carson, California;  Carson, New Mexico.

Kit Carson

 Public buildings and thoroughfares throughout the West, including in the state of his birth, Missouri.

Fort Carson, the massive military installation outside Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Kit Carson Statute in Colorado

 He was everywhere in the West during his lifetime.  Just about every major historical event that occurred in the Western U.S. between 1840 and 1868 somehow involved Kit Carson.  He made his initial fame as a mountain man, trapper and scout, but his influence extended far into military and governmental affairs, having died while holding the rank of Brigadier General in the U.S. Army.


Most people don't know that he called Taos his home.  Although his travels took him far and wide on incredible adventures, he kept his home and family here.   In 1842 he married his third wife Josepha in Taos where they established their home and raised a family of 8 children just off of Taos Plaza.  He recognized that there was something very special about Taos, ancestral home to the Taos Indians for at least 800 years and to the descendants of Spanish settlers for some 300 years before he arrived.


I'm going to spend a few blogs talking about him and from time to time in the future sharing stories about Kit Carson, beginning with the enigmatic nature of his story to us in the 21st Century.


Hero or Murderer?  The answer to this question depends upon your perspective.  During his lifetime, he was the subject of over 70 "Blood and Thunder" novels depicting him as a larger-than-life hero.  While he still lived he was known to every American and most Europeans as the man who represented honesty, bravery and courage.  In his rare visits to Washington, D.C. he was treated as a conquering hero or a great celebrity.  In a sense he was one of our nation's first truly "famous" people.


But also during his lifetime he led or participated in the violence our nation inflicted on the Native Americans -- in particular, against the Navajo.  He became known to these Americans as a man who would take away all that they cherished.  His role in the forced relocation of the Navajo Nation across the rugged, wintry terrain of New Mexico was almost immediately seen as a cruel injustice.  At Bosque Redondo he participated in the formation and operation of one of the first "concentration camps" of the Western Hemisphere.   All this despite the fact that his first wife, Singing Grass, was an Arapaho Indian and his second wife, Making-Our-Road, was Cheyenne.

As his life wound down and he returned to Taos, he remained to the American public a famous trapper and trader.  Novels and histories, of the man were fictionalized beyond reality, and published by the dozens.  But the enigmatic Kit Carson was illiterate:  he couldn't read a word of any of those books and he couldn't sign his name with anything other than a single initial.


In his time and with his stature, his illiteracy was ignored, however, in part because he could fluently speak at least 8 languages including English and Spanish, as well as many Native American tongues.


One final enigma:  Kit Carson was just a little over 5 feet tall.  All of the books of his day, all of the histories written during his time that mentioned his name, described Kit Carson as a giant of a man.  Not so. 

Thus my title "Enigmatic Hero."  Love him or hate him, his story is the story of the American West.  Taos was his home -- his touchstone -- and each of his stories ends with his return, ultimately to his final resting place here against the Sangre de Christos.