Excerpts from

Blood and Thunder --
The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West

by Hampton Sides

KIT CARSON'S PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
(p. 7-8)
At first glance, Kit Carson was not much to look at. He stood only five-feet four-inches, with stringy brown hair grazing his shoulders. His jaw was clenched and squarish, his eyes a penetrating gray-blue, his mouth set in a tight downturned construction that looked like a frown of mild disgust. The skin between his eyebrows was pinched in a furrow, as though permanently creased from squinting. His forehead rose high and craggy to a swept-back hairline. He had a scar along his left ear, another one on his right shoulder -- both left by bullets. He appeared bowlegged from his years in the saddle, and he walked roundly, with a certain ungainliness, his sense of ease and familiarity of movement tied to his mule.

PERSONAL HABITS AND CHARACTER
(p. 8-10)
He never would take a second shot at standing game if his initial shot missed -- this, he believed, was "bad medicine." He never began a project on a Friday. He was fastidious about the way he dressed and cleaned any animal he killed. He believed in signs and omens. When he got a bad feeling about something or someone, he was quick to heed his instincts. A life of hard experience on the trail had taught him to be cautious at all times, tuned to danger. His unfailing ritual when he prepared to bed down for the night: His saddle, which he always used as a pillow, formed a barricade for his head; his pistols half cocked were laid above it, and his trusty rifle reposed beneath the blanket by his side, ready for instant use. Kit never exposed himself to the full glare of the campfire. When traveling, Carson rarely spoke, and his eye was continually examining the country, his manner that of man deeply impressed with a sense of responsibility. When he did speak, Carson talked in the twangy cadence of backwoods Missouri -- thar and har, ain't and yonder, thataway and crick and I reckon so.

Out west, Carson had learned to speak Spanish and French fluently, and he knew smatterings of Navajo, Ute, Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Blackfoot, Shoshone, and Paiute. He also knew Indian sign language and could communicate with most any tribe in the West. And yet he could neither read nor write.

Although he was a mountain man, a fraternity legendary for swilling and profanity, Carson was a straight arrow, "as clean as a hound's tooth". He liked poker and often smoked a pipe, but he drank very little and was not given to womanizing. In all his actions he was unassuming, giving off none of the typical mountain man's swagger. An army officer once addressed him: "So this is the distinguished Kit Carson who has made so many Indians run." To which Carson replied, "Yes, but most of the time they were running after me." His sense of humor was understated and dry, usually delivered with a faint grin and a glint of mischief in his eyes. He spoke quietly, in short, deliberate sentences, using language that was "forcible, slow, and pointed, with the fewest words possible." A friend said Carson never swore more than was necessary.

Carson was a loveable man. Nearly everyone said so, He was loyal, honest, and kind. He acted bravely and with much physical grace. More than once, he saved people's lives without seeking recognition or pay. On the other hand, if you crossed him, he had a ferocious Scotch-Irish temper, and he would find you. He pursued vengeance as though it were his sacred duty. He was regarded not as an Indian killer but an Indian fighter. He also befriended them, loved them, buried them, even married them (his first wife was Indian). Most of his Indian victims died in what he judged to be fair fights.

FRONTIER SKILLS
(p. 77-78)
He had a panoply of talents. He was a fine hunter, an adroit horseman, en excellent shot. He was shrewd as a negotiator. He knew how to select a good campsite and could set it up or strike it in minutes, taking to the trail at lightening speed. He knew what to do when a horse foundered. He could dress and cure meat, and he was a fair cook. Out of necessity, he was also a passable gunsmith, blacksmith, liveryman, angler, forager, farrier, wheelwright, mountain climber, and a decent paddler by raft or canoe. As a tracker, he was unequaled. He knew from experience how to read the watersheds, where to find grazing grass, what to do when encountering a grizzly. He could locate water in the driest arroyo and strain it into potability. In a crisis he knew little tricks for staving off thirst -- such as opening the fruit of a cactus or clipping a mule's ears and drinking its blood. He had a landscape painter's eye and a cautious ear and astute judgment about people and situations. He knew how to make smoke signals. He knew all about hitches and rope knots. He knew how to make a good set of snowshoes. He knew how to tan hides with a glutinous emulsion made from the brains of an animal. He knew how to cache food and hides in the ground to prevent theft and spoilage. He knew how to break a mustang. He knew which species of wood would burn well, and how to split the logs on the grain, even when an axe was not handy. He was also cheerful on the a trail he already knew well, and had a few jokes up his sleeve and possessed an absolute honesty.

HIS TRACKING ABILITY
(p. 318-319)
On the trail of some Jicarilla Apaches who had kidnapped a mother and her baby -- No one was better than Carson at "reading sign". There was a narrative on the ground made by faint patterns imprinted on the land, by the individual blades of grass, and by the dung of the horses he was following. He might look for shiny compactions in the soil, or tiny cinders blown from a campfire, or curious gaps in the spiderwebs strung between trees. He might notice the broken-off limb of a cholla cactus and see a sticky liquid oozing from the wound; by assaying its amount tackiness, he might judge how long ago someone had passed through.

It was early November. The signs were almost impossible to read. Carson said it "was the most difficult trail that I ever followed." Not only were the tracks several weeks old, but they had been further obscured by a light snowstorm. Carson discovered that the Jicarillas had obscured their trail by splitting into different parties after breaking down their camps each morning. These smaller parties would vector off across the prairie in multiple directions, only to reconvene at some appointed place that evening. Piecing together these byzantine lines was slow and painstaking work, and several times they came close to losing the trail and abandoning the chase. But one day they came upon the residue of a Jacirilla camp, and Carson took heart: Lying in the prairie grass was an article of woman's clothing.

Several days later they passed the next former Jicarilla encampment, and again Carson found a woman's garment. He began to think that Ann White had deliberately left a trail of her belongings. They followed the trail for twelve days into the Staked Plains, a prickly expanse of mesquite, yucca, and cholla cactus. Then Carson spotted fires smoking on the horizon, an encampment of several hundred Jicarilla Apaches.

(p. 395-396)
In late May of 1954, Major James Henry Carleton hired Carson to guide him on a campaign to recover stolen horses from the Jicarilla Apaches. Carson was not overly optimistic, for the trail was cold and He considered the Jicarillas the hardest of all Southwestern tribes to track. But after several days the trail grew warm when he found a few discarded items. One morning after breakfast, Carson told Carleton that they would intercept the Jicarillas that very day. Then he went on further, saying it would be precisely at two that afternoon. Carelton was highly doubtful of Carson's specificity, so he proposed a little wager. If the tribe they were following proved to be Jicarillas after all, and the dragoon party overtook them without incident at two o'clock, he would buy Carson the finest beaver hat that could be purchased in New York city.

That afternoon they spotted the Jicarillas encamped in a natural grass amphitheater in the Raton Mountains, not far from the Sante Fe Trail. Major Carelton glanced at his watch and cursed under his breath. It was seven minutes past two.

The astounded major later wrote without hesitation that "Kit Carson is justly celebrated as the best tracker among white men in the world." Carson insisted he lost the bet by seven minutes, but Carleton ordered through the mail a beaver felt hat from a prestigious haberdasher in New York, and when it arrived in Taos (Carson's home town) a few months later, Carson could not stifle a grin. On the inside-band, the inscription read:
AT 2 O'CLOCK, FROM MAJOR CARELTON

CARSON'S FAMILY
(p. 352-353)
For most of the 1850s, Carson served as an Indian agent to the Ute tribe, with his own home in Taos serving as the agency office. He spent this time helping Josefa raise their growing family. The Carsons now had four children, plus they were helping Ignacia Bent raise several of her children. By all accounts he was a devoted father, someone who opened up to his children more readily than to adults. He could be whimsical with his kids. Carson used to lie down on an Indian blanket with his pockets full of candy and lumps of sugar. His children would then jump on top of him, and take the candy from his pockets. Carson derived great pleasure from these episodes. He had become a pillar of the community, a member of the local gentry, a good Catholic, a provider, a diplomat to the Indians.

(p. 428)
A note that Carson wrote to his wife, Josefa, when she was expecting their sixth child:
Beloved Wife --
Do not worry about me, because with God's help we shall see each other again. I charge you above all not to get weary caring for my children, and to give each one a little kiss in my name...I remain beggin God that I return in good health to be with you until death.
--Your husband who loves you and wishes to see you more than write to you

WHAT KIT CARSON BELIEVED ABOUT THE INDIANS
(p. 414)
Carson believed that most of the Indian troubles in the West were caused, as he once flatly put it, "by aggressions on the part of whites." Most of the raids, by Utes and other tribes, were visited upon the settlements only out of desperation -- "committed," he argued, "from the absolute necessity when in a starving condition." White settlers were increasingly encroaching on Indian hunting grounds. Describing  the situation among the Utes and Jicarilla Apache, Carson said that "their game is becoming scarce much of having been killed by the settlers, and a great deal of it driven from the country...they are unable to support themselves by the chase and the hunt.

At the same time, Carson believed there was no stopping the tide of Anglo-American immigration. Not even in moments of introspection did Carson question the legitimacy of American expansion into the West, a process that he and a few others had done more to set in motion than any other American. White were here now -- it was simply an irreversible fact. And their presence put the traditional life of all the Western Indians in jeopardy. Native Americans would have to change, he believed, or they would all die out. Predicted Carson, "If permitted to remain as they are, before many years they will be utterly extinct."

And so Carson throughout the 1850s advocated with growing vehemence the creation of reservations for the Utes and other tribes, where they might learn the arts of cultivation and husbandry while holding onto their own traditions. As he put it, the Indians must be "set apart to themselves." He truly believed that mingling with whites was ruining their culture. "They should not be allowed to come into the towns," Carson insisted, "for every visit an Indian makes is more or less and injury to him." In their encounters with whites, he said, "Indians generally learn the vices and not the virtues" of settled living. Perhaps the biggest problem was liquor -- Carson had seen alcohol rip the soul from whole bands of once-proud Indians. "They become accustomed to the use of ardent spirits," he said, and soon become "a degraded tribe." Carson preferred creating reservations within, or at least in the vicinity of, a given tribe's ancestral lands. Even among nomadic tribes, the familiar landmarks of one's homeland were profoundly sacred, in terms of ceremony and ritual, and central to a tribe's collective identity and its conception of the universe.

AN INJURY
(p. 353)
In 1860 he had an accident that nearly killed him. He was hunting elk in the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado, leading his horse on a steep scree slope, when the animal lost its footing. Somehow Carson became entangled in the reins and he tumbled down the mountain, with the horse apparently rolling over him several times. It's not clear what injuries he sustained in the fall, but he never felt the same again. He had an odd pain in his chest that never left him. Carson would die on May 23, 1868, from a ruptured aneurysm. He believed this aneurysm was caused by his tumble with that horse, but a specialist in New York by the name of Dr. Lewis Albert Sayre said that high blood pressure was the more likely cause.

HIS FAITH IN GOD
(p. 488)
One night, he had a dream that he was dying. He felt his breath leaving him, and the bed seemed to rise, bearing him toward heaven. He woke up with a sweat, with one of the Ute chiefs cradling his head. "You called your Lord Jesus," the chief said. Carson, who had always been private about his beliefs, had no knowledge of having called on Christ. "But," he said, "it's only Him that can help me where I stand now."

A FAVORITE QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK
(p. 20)
 "Late at night, sitting around the campfires, sucking their black clay pipes, [the Mountain men] competed in telling legendary whoppers about their far-flung travels in the West -- stories like the one about the mountain valley in Wyoming that was so big it took an echo eight hours to return, so that a man bedding down for the night could confidently shout 'Git up!' and know that he would rise in the morning to his own wake-up call."

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