XIIIA.D. 1843KIT CARSON
OnceColonel Inman, an old frontiersman, bought a newspaper which had a full page picture of Kit Carson. The hero stood in a forest, a gigantic figure in a buckskin suit, heavily armed, embracing a rescued heroine, while at his feet sprawled six slain Indian braves, his latest victims.
“What do you think of this?” said the colonel handing the picture to a delicate little man, who wiped his spectacles, studied the work of art, and replied in a gentle drawl, “That may be true, but I hain’t got no recollection of it.” And so Kit Carson handed the picture back.
He stood five feet six, and looked frail, but his countrymen, and all the boys of all the world think of this mighty frontiersman as a giant.
At seventeen he was a remarkably green and innocent boy for his years, his home a log cabin on the Missouri frontier. Past the door ran the trail to the west where trappers went by in buckskin, traders among the Indians, and soldiers for the savage wars of the plains.
One day came Colonel S. Vrain, agent of a big fur-trading company, with his long train of wagons hittingthe Santa Fe trail. Kit got a job with that train, to herd spare stock, hunt bison, mount guard and fight Indians. They were three weeks out in camp when half a dozen Pawnee Indians charged, yelling and waving robes to stampede the herd, but a brisk fusillade from the white men sent them scampering back over the sky-line. Next day, after a sixteen mile march the outfit corraled their wagons for defense at the foot of Pawnee Rock beside the Arkansas River. “I had not slept any of the night before,” says Kit, “for I stayed awake watching to get a shot at the Pawnees that tried to stampede our animals, expecting they would return; and I hadn’t caught a wink all day, as I was out buffalo hunting, so I was awfully tired and sleepy when we arrived at Pawnee Rock that evening, and when I was posted at my place at night, I must have gone to sleep leaning against the rocks; at any rate, I was wide enough awake when the cry of Indians was given by one of the guard. I had picketed my mule about twenty paces from where I stood, and I presume he had been lying down; all I remember is, that the first thing I saw after the alarm was something rising up out of the grass, which I thought was an Indian. I pulled the trigger; it was a center shot, and I don’t believe the mule ever kicked after he was hit!”
At daylight the Pawnees attacked in earnest and the fight lasted nearly three days, the mule teams being shut in the corral without food or water. At midnight of the second day they hitched up, fighting their way for thirteen miles, then got into bad trouble fording Pawnee Fork while the Indians poured lead and arrows into the teams until the colonel and KitCarson led a terrific charge which dispersed the enemy. That fight cost the train four killed and seven wounded.
It was during this first trip that Carson saved the life of a wounded teamster by cutting off his arm. With a razor he cut the flesh, with a saw got through the bone, and with a white-hot king-bolt seared the wound, stopping the flow of blood.
In 1835 Carson was hunter for Bent’s Fort, keeping the garrison of forty men supplied with buffalo meat. Once he was out hunting with six others and they made their camp tired out. “I saw,” says Kit, “two big wolves sneaking about, one of them quite close to us. Gordon, one of my men, wanted to fire his rifle at it, but I would not let him for fear he would hit a dog. I admit that I had a sort of idea that these wolves might be Indians; but when I noticed one of them turn short around and heard the clashing of his teeth as he rushed at one of the dogs, I felt easy then, and was certain that they were wolves sure enough. But the red devil fooled me after all, for he had two dried buffalo bones in his hands under the wolf-skin and he rattled them together every time he turned to make a dash at the dogs! Well, by and by we all dozed off, and it wasn’t long before I was suddenly aroused by a noise and a big blaze. I rushed out the first thing for our mules and held them. If the savages had been at all smart, they could have killed us in a trice, but they ran as soon as they fired at us. They killed one of my men, putting five shots in his body and eight in his buffalo robe. The Indians were a band of snakes, and found us by sheer accident. They endeavoredto ambush us the next morning, but we got wind of their little game and killed three of them, including the chief.”
It was in his eight years as hunter for Bent’s Fort that Kit learned to know the Indians, visiting their camps to smoke with the chiefs and play with the little boys. When the Sioux nation invaded the Comanche and Arrapaho hunting-grounds he persuaded them to go north, and so averted war.
In 1842 when he was scout to Fremont, he went buffalo hunting to get meat for the command. One day he was cutting up a beast newly killed when he left his work in pursuit of a large bull that came rushing past him. His horse was too much blown to run well, and when at last he got near enough to fire, things began to happen all at once. The bullet hitting too low enraged the bison just as the horse, stepping into a prairie-dog hole, shot Kit some fifteen feet through the air. Instead of Kit hunting bison, Mr. Buffalo hunted Kit, who ran for all he was worth. So they came to the Arkansas River where Kit dived while the bison stayed on the bank to hook him when he landed. But while the bison gave Kit a swimming lesson, one of the hunters made an unfair attack from behind, killing the animal. So Kit crawled out and skinned his enemy.
One of his great hunting feats was the killing of five buffalo with only four bullets. Being short of lead he had to cut out the ball from number four, then catch up, and shoot number five.
On another hunt, chasing a cow bison down a steep hill, he fired just as the animal took a flying leap, so that the carcass fell, not to the ground, but spiked ona small cedar. The Indians persuaded him to leave that cow impaled upon a tree-top because it was big magic; but to people who do not know the shrubs of the southwestern desert, it must sound like a first-class lie.
One night as the expedition lay in camp, far up among the mountains, Fremont sat for hours reading some letters just arrived from home, then fell asleep to dream of his young wife. Presently a soft sound, rather like the blow of an ax made Kit start broad awake, to find Indians in camp. They fled, but two of the white men were lying dead in their blankets, and the noise that awakened Carson was the blow of a tomahawk braining his own chum, the voyageur, La Jeunesse.
In the following year Carson was serving as hunter to a caravan westward bound across the plains, when he met Captain Cooke in camp, with four squadrons of United States Cavalry. The captain told him that following on the trail was a caravan belonging to a wealthy Mexican and so richly loaded that a hundred riders had been hired as guards.
Presently the Mexican train came up and the majordomo offered Carson three hundred dollars if he would ride to the Mexican governor at Santa Fe and ask him for an escort of troops from the point where they entered New Mexico. Kit, who was hard up, gladly accepted the cash, and rode to Bent’s Fort. There he had news that the Utes were on the war-path, but Mr. Bent lent him the swiftest horse in the stables. Kit walked, leading the horse by the rein, to have him perfectly fresh in case there was need for flight. He reached the Ute village, hid, and passed the place atnight without being seen. So he reached Taos, his own home in New Mexico, whence the alcalde sent his message to the governor of the state at Santa Fe.
The governor had already sent a hundred riders but these had been caught and wiped out by a force of Texans, only one escaping, who, during the heat of the fight, caught a saddled Texan pony and rode off.
Meanwhile the governor—Armijo—sent his reply for Carson to carry to the caravan. He said he was marching with a large force, and he did so. But when the survivor of the lost hundred rode into Armijo’s camp with his bad news, the whole outfit rolled their tails for home.
Carson, with the governor’s letter, and the news of plentiful trouble, reached the Mexican caravan, which decided not to leave the protecting American cavalry camped on the boundary-line. What with Texan raiders, border ruffians, Utes, Apaches, Comanches, and other little drawbacks, the caravan trade on the Santa Fe trail was never dull for a moment.
During these years one finds Kit Carson’s tracks all over the West about as hard to follow as those of a flea in a blanket.
Here, for example, is a description of the American army of the Bear Flag republic seizing California in 1846. “A vast cloud of dust appeared first, and thence, a long file, emerged this wildest wild party. Fremont rode ahead—a spare, active-looking man, with such an eye! He was dressed in a blouse and leggings and wore a felt hat. After him came five Delaware Indians, who were his body-guard, and havebeen with him through all his wanderings; they had charge of the baggage horses. The rest, many of them blacker than the Indians, rode two and two, the rifle held in one hand across the pommel of the saddle. Thirty-nine of them there are his regular men, the rest are loafers picked up lately; his original men are principally backwoodsmen from the state of Tennessee, and the banks of the upper waters of the Missouri.... The dress of these men was principally a long loose coat of deerskin, tied with thongs in front; trousers of the same, which when wet through, they take off, scrape well inside with a knife, and put on as soon as dry. The saddles were of various fashions, though these and a large drove of horses, and a brass field gun, were things they had picked up about California. They are allowed no liquor; this, no doubt, has much to do with their good conduct; and the discipline, too, is very strict.”
One of these men was Kit Carson, sent off in October to Washington on the Atlantic, three thousand miles away, with news that California was conquered for the United States, by a party of sixty men. In New Mexico, Kit met General Kearney, and told him that the Californians were a pack of cowards. So the general sent back his troops, marching on with only one hundred dragoons. But the Californians were not cowards, they had risen against the American invasion, they were fighting magnificently, and Fremont had rather a bad time before he completed the conquest.
It was during the Californian campaign that Carson made his famous ride, the greatest feat of horsemanship the world has ever known. As a despatchrider, he made his way through the hostile tribes, and terrific deserts from the Missouri to California and back, a total of four thousand, four hundred miles. But while he rested in California, before he set out on the return, he joined a party of Californian gentlemen on a trip up the coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Two of the six men had a remount each, but four of them rode the six hundred miles without change of horses in six days. Add that, and the return to Kit Carson’s journey, and it makes a total of five thousand, six hundred miles. So for distance, he beats world records by one hundred miles, at a speed beyond all comparison, and in face of difficulties past all parallel.
For some of us old western reprobates who were cow hands, despising a sheep man more than anything else alive, it is very disconcerting to know that Carson went into that business. He became a partner of his lifelong friend, Maxwell, whose rancho in New Mexico was very like a castle of the Middle Ages. The dinner service was of massive silver, but the guests bedded down with a cowhide on the floor. New Mexico was a conquered country owned by the United States, at intervals between the Mexican revolts, when Kit settled down as a rancher. The words settled down, mean that he served as a colonel of volunteers against the Mexicans, and spent the rest of the time fighting Apaches, the most ferocious of all savages.
Near Santa Fe, lived Mr. White and his son who fell in defense of their ranch, having killed three Apaches, while the women and children of the household met with a much worse fate than that of death.The settlers refused to march in pursuit until Carson arrived, but by mistake he was not given command, a Frenchman having been chosen as leader.
The retreat of the savages was far away in the mountains, and well fortified. The only chance of saving the women and children was to rush this place before there was time to kill them, and Carson dashed in with a yell, expecting all hands to follow. So he found himself alone, surrounded by the Apaches, and as they rushed, he rode, throwing himself on the off side of his horse, almost concealed behind its neck. Six arrows struck his horse, and one bullet lodged in his coat before he was out of range. He cursed his Mexicans, he put them to shame, he persuaded them to fight, then led a gallant charge, killing five Indians as they fled. The delay had given them time to murder the women and children.
Once, after his camp had been attacked by Indians, Carson discovered that the sentry failed to give an alarm because he was asleep. The Indian punishment followed, and the soldier was made for one day to wear the dress of a squaw.
Kit Carson
Kit Carson
We must pass by Kit’s capture of a gang of thirty-five desperadoes for the sake of a better story. The officer, commanding a detachment of troops on the march, flogged an Indian chief, the result being war. Carson was the first white man to pass, and while the chiefs were deciding how to attack his caravan, he walked alone into the council lodge. So many years were passed since the Cheyennes had seen him that he was not recognized, and nobody suspected that he knew their language, until he made a speechin Cheyenne, introducing himself, recalling ancient friendships, offering all courtesies. As to their special plan for killing the leader of the caravan, and taking his scalp, he claimed that he might have something to say on the point. They parted, Kit to encourage his men, the Indians to waylay the caravan; but from the night camp he despatched a Mexican boy to ride three hundred miles for succor. When the Cheyennes charged the camp at dawn, he ordered them to halt, and walked into the midst of them, explaining the message he had sent, and what their fate would be if the troops found they had molested them. When the Indians found the tracks that proved Kit’s words, they knew they had business elsewhere.
In 1863 Carson was sent with a strong military force to chasten the hearts of the Navajo nation. They had never been conquered, and the flood of Spanish invasion split when it rolled against their terrific sand-rock desert. The land is one of unearthly grandeur where natural rocks take the shapes of towers, temples, palaces and fortresses of mountainous height blazing scarlet in color. In one part a wave of rock like a sea breaker one hundred fifty feet high and one hundred miles in length curls overhanging as though the rushing gray waters had been suddenly struck into ice. On one side lies the hollow Painted Desert, where the sands refract prismatic light like a colossal rainbow, and to the west the walls of the Navajo country drop a sheer mile into the stupendous labyrinth of the Grand Cañon. Such is the country of a race of warriors who ride naked, still armed with bow and arrows, their harness of silver and turquoise....
They are handsome, cleanly, proud and dignified. They till their fields beside the desert springs, and their villages are set in native orchards, while beyond their settlements graze the flocks and herds tended by women herders.
The conquest was a necessity, and it was well that this was entrusted to gentle, just, wise, heroic Carson. He was obliged to destroy their homes, to fell their peach trees, lay waste their crops, and sweep away their stock, starving them to surrender. He herded eleven thousand prisoners down to the lower deserts, where the chiefs crawled to him on their bellies for mercy, but the governor had no mercy, and long after Carson’s death, the hapless people were held in the Boique Redondo. A fourth part of them died of want, and their spirit was utterly broken before they were given back their lands. It is well for them that the Navajo desert is too terrible a region for the white men, and nobody tries to rob their new prosperity.
In one more campaign Colonel Carson was officer commanding and gave a terrible thrashing to the Cheyennes, Kiowas and Comanches.
Then came the end, during a visit to a son of his who lived in Colorado. Early in the morning of May twenty-third, 1868, he was mounting his horse when an artery broke in his neck, and within a few moments he was dead.
But before we part with the frontier hero, it is pleasant to think of him still as a living man whose life is an inspiration and his manhood an example.
Colonel Inman tells of nights at Maxwell’s ranch. “I have sat there,” he writes, “in the long winterevenings when the great room was lighted only by the crackling logs, roaring up the huge throats of its two fireplaces ... watching Maxwell, Kit Carson and half a dozen chiefs silently interchange ideas in the wonderful sign language, until the glimmer of Aurora announced the advent of another day. But not a sound had been uttered during the protracted hours, save an occasional grunt of satisfaction on the part of the Indians, or when we white men exchanged a sentence.”