Kit Carson Witnessed Some Of The Most Brutal Horrors In American History D
When Kit Carson and his rescue party failed to save a beautiful woman named Ann White from her indigenous kidnappers, he was distraught. But fate had another horror in store for him. As he moved through the Apache camp, what he stumbled upon was deeply disturbing. Kit Carson was the American frontiersman whose epic adventures in the wilderness inspired thousands of settlers to follow in his footsteps.
From run-ins with grizzly bears to brutal, blood-soaked encounters with natives, Carson’s exploits made him one of the first true American folk heroes or villains. Born on Christmas Eve in 1809 near Richmond, Kentucky, Christopher Kit Houston Carson could have passed into obscurity.
As one of 15 children, he was part of a sprawling, blended family. His father, Lindsey Carson, had previously had 10 children from a first marriage and then had another five with Kit’s mother, Rebecca Robinson. The spirit of the frontier was in his bones. Carson’s father, Lindsey, embodied the hard edge of early America.
He was a Scots-Irish Presbyterian farmer, cabin builder, and veteran of America’s earliest conflicts with the Mexicans and the Native Americans. Lindsey even lost two of his fingers fighting the Fox and Sauk peoples. However, it doesn’t seem like his father’s scars deterred Carson’s own frontier spirit. Before Kit Carson could walk, his family moved to Missouri, and the move brought Carson close to another famous frontier family.
Once in Missouri, the Carsons settled on land that had once been owned by Daniel Boone’s sons. After that, the families became close, even intermarrying, and Carson developed a childhood friendship with his cousin, Adeline Boone. However, there would be little time for child’s play. When Carson was a child, Missouri sat on the edge of westward expansion.
In other words, danger lurked at his doorstep. As Carson later recalled, “For two or three years after our arrival, we had to remain forwarded, and it was necessary to have men stationed at the extremities of the fields for the protection of those that were laboring.” The real threat, however, was from nature itself.
In 1818, Kit Carson had his first brush with true dangers of life on the American frontier. Tragedy struck when a fallen tree limb crushed his father, ending the elder Carson’s life instantly. Suddenly, alone and penniless, Carson’s mother held the family together with all the grit of a true frontier woman.
After four hard years, she finally remarried. But for Carson, fatherlessness was better. Filled with teenage angst, Carson clashed with his new stepfather. In fact, things got so intense that his parents sent him off to Franklin, Missouri at 14 to apprentice with the saddler David Workman. Thankfully, Workman provided Carson with a better example, and he later called Workman a good man who treated him kindly.
Still, the great outdoors seemed like more of a home to him than a saddler’s workshop. Business at the saddlery was booming, but Kit Carson didn’t seem to care. Just a few years earlier, the Santa Fe Trail going west had opened up, and Franklin, Missouri sat at the eastern gateway, buzzing with excitement of the wild, untamed west.
With the call of the wild screaming his name, Carson later said, “The business did not suit me, and I concluded to leave.” What lay beyond the frontier would challenge him. At just 16, and against his mother’s wishes, Carson made good on his promise and ditched the saddlery. Setting off with little more than his two hands could carry, he slipped away with a caravan of trappers in August 1826 and entered the unknown.
Tending livestock, he followed the Santa Fe Trail west. The world he had left behind would try to claim him back. Workman responded to Carson’s decision with characteristic grizzled humor. As a kind of joke, Workman took out a notice in the newspaper offering a 1 cent reward for Carson’s return. The ad, describing Carson as a boy about 16 years old, small of his age, but thick set, light hair, would be Carson’s first brush with fame.
His legend had already begun. Instead of going back, Kit Carson settled in Taos and became determined to learn the ways of life on the frontier. Pairing up with the seasoned trapper Matthew Kincaid, who had served alongside Carson’s older brothers in 1812, Carson learned the trapping skills and trade languages that would help him navigate the untamed wilderness, and he learned quickly.
Kit Carson never learned to read or write English, but thanks to Kincaid, he learned even more valuable languages for life on the frontier. In addition to Spanish, Carson became fluent in multiple native tongues and could even communicate through indigenous sign language. Still, life on the frontier wasn’t easy.
Between 1827 and 1829, Carson did whatever survival required. He cooked, translated, drove wagons, and even labored at a copper mine near the Gila River to support himself. While these odd jobs weren’t glamorous, they hardened him for life in the Southwest’s unforgiving margins. So, by age 19, he was ready for more.
Equipped with the trapping skills he’d learned from Kincaid and a plucky sense of adventure, Kit Carson set off for the mountains. His first big expedition took place after the winter of 1828 to 1829. He had been working as a cook for the trapper and trader Ewing Young. So, when Young set off into the wild that spring, Carson was right there with him.
What he experienced on that first expedition would change his life. In the late summer of 1829, Young’s party entered Apache territory, and they weren’t exactly made to feel welcome. The Apache attacked the party, giving a still teenage-aged Carson his first taste of the brutality of the wilderness.
Records of the encounter are scarce, but many suggest that this was the first time Carson claimed a Native American scalp. There would be many, many more. Bloody or not, Carson’s first expedition left him wanting more. So, in 1831, he joined another trapping and hunting party under Thomas Fitzpatrick and William Leaven.
This time, the expedition took Carson deep into the central Rocky Mountains, where, over the next decade, his legend as a reliable man and a good fighter quietly grew. A legend written in blood. A January 1833 incident perfectly encapsulated both Carson’s grit and industriousness and his brutality.
After a group of Crow warriors took nine horses from his camp, Carson embarked on a punishing pursuit. In his memoirs, he recalled that he had managed to recapture the horses, saying, “The success of having recovered our horses and sending many a red skin to his long home, our sufferings were soon forgotten. His penchant for extreme brutality verged on a bloodlust.
Throughout his years on the frontier, Kit Carson had many run-ins with the Blackfoot. His last fight with the famously strong natives came in 1838 while he was traveling with Jim Bridger and nearly a hundred mountain men. After encountering a village devastated by smallpox, the party hunted down the rest of the Blackfoot and engaged them in battle.
Carson later described it chillingly as the prettiest fight I ever saw. The real danger on the frontier, however, was the frontier itself. Exploring the untouched wilderness of the Rocky Mountains had its fair share of dangers like grizzly bears. In 1834, while hunting alone, Carson learned this the hard way when he incidentally crossed paths with two grizzlies and barely escaped by scrambling up a tree.
One of the bears even tried shaking him loose before losing interest and walking away. Carson, by then a hardened mountain man, later admitted he had never been so scared in his life. At the 1836 Green River rendezvous of frontiersmen, Carson won the hand in marriage of an Arapaho woman named Wanabey or Singing Grass.
But it almost cost him his head. To win Wanabey, he had a dramatic horseback duel with another trapper coming so close to losing that his opponent’s bullet whipped right by his hair. Sadly, the frontier took just as quickly as it gave. Carson and Wanabey had a brief period of marital bliss welcoming their daughter Adaline into their frontier life.
Sadly, it all changed in an instant. After giving birth to their second daughter, Wanabey passed on. An even worse tragedy followed when Carson’s second child fell into boiling soap tallow and succumbed to her injuries. The frontier, it seemed, was telling him that it was time to move on. By 1840, Carson’s personal tragedies mirrored a change in the frontiersman’s lifestyle.
The last trapper’s rendezvous wrapped up just as beaver hats were falling out of fashion. And not a moment too soon, with beaver populations decimated. Carson himself later admitted, “Beaver was getting scarce. It became necessary to try our hand at something else. Or perhaps, someone else.” In 1841, Kit Carson married a woman known as Making Out Road.
But the only making out that Carson would be doing was with the road. For unknown reasons, Making Out Road ended the marriage abruptly and in style. She placed Carson’s belongings and his daughter, Adeline, outside the tent. No paperwork, no lawyers, just divorce. Fortunately, he had work to keep him busy. Later that same year, Carson found work at Bent’s Fort, the largest settlement on the Santa Fe Trail at the time.
Working for the respectable wage of a dollar a day, he put his frontier skills to work in hunting buffalo, antelope, and deer to feed the fort’s population. He later took his daughter, Adeline, to stay with relatives in Missouri and spare her the hardship of frontier living. On his way home, he had an encounter that would change his life.
After dropping off his daughter with relatives, while aboard a Missouri River steamboat, a Kit Carson met the US Army officer and explorer, John C. Fremont. The conversation between the two men unfolded naturally, with Fremont later writing about the encounter, that he was pleased with Carson.
Fremont described Carson as a man of medium height, broad-shouldered, and deep-chested, with a clear, steady blue eye, and frank speech and address, quiet and assuming. In other words, he was exactly what Fremont was looking for. Fremont hired Kit Carson almost immediately, offering him $100 a month, effectively tripling his salary, to serve as his guide.
Fremont, as it turns out, had special orders from Washington to map out the frontier and encourage westward expansion. With his background, Carson was the perfect fit, and he was about to spark a westward craze like the young United States had never seen before. Carson and Fremont wasted little time getting out into the wilderness.
Starting in 1842, Carson took Fremont on what would become their first expedition together, guiding the US Army officer on the Oregon Trail all the way to South Pass, Wyoming. When Fremont published his reports, he did more than just chart the geography. He made the name Kit Carson a household name.
That same year, Kit Carson met Josefa Jaramillo, and sparks began flying. She was just 14 years old at the time, in keeping with the marrying age of the era. But, Carson didn’t seem like a good fit for other reasons. Jaramillo’s father was reluctant to agree to the match, given that Carson was not Catholic and couldn’t read to save his life.
But, the bonds of love proved stronger. To help put his young bride’s mind at ease, Carson converted to Catholicism in January 1843, but he still couldn’t read or write. Illiterate or not, he tied the knot with her just a few weeks later. Their union marked a brief pause in Carson’s constant exploration of the American wilderness, but only briefly.
Domestic life did not keep Carson grounded for long. In 1843, he joined Fremont’s second expedition, guiding the party to the Columbia River. Along the way, Carson explored one of the frontier’s best kept secrets, the Great Salt Lake, testing its waters aboard a fragile rubber raft.
But the expedition wasn’t all fun outdoor activities. The frontier was just as dangerous as it had ever been. On that same expedition, Kit Carson and his party encountered a boy and a Mexican man who told him that their party had been brutally ambushed by Native Americans who made off with 30 of their horses. By that time, Carson was accustomed to the only law of the frontier, revenge.
He tracked those responsible, charged their camp, and reclaimed what they had taken, along with two scalps. His rampage of revenge wasn’t over yet. In the spring of 1846, rumors spread through the Sacramento Valley that settlers faced an imminent Native assault. Acting on those claims, Fremont’s party, with Carson’s guidance, approached a Wintu village and launched an unprecedented attack that would later become known as the Sacramento River Massacre.
Carson and the other frontiersmen cut down between 120 and 300 men, women, and children in what Carson himself later described as a perfect butchery. Revenge, however, goes both ways. Weeks later, Fremont’s camp suffered a nighttime revenge strike for their attack on the Wintu village. While only two or three men perished in the attack before the attackers made a run for it, it was enough to spark Carson’s rage.
Carson took out his frustration on the body of a fallen enemy, with Fremont later writing that Carson knocked his head to pieces with an axe. But he still wanted revenge. Days after the incident, Kit Carson and the rest of Fremont’s men descended on a Klamath settlement along the Williamson River to exact their own revenge.
The bloody attack, later known as the Klamath Lake Massacre, resulted in 14 natives losing their lives. Worst of all, Carson and the Fremont posse burned the village to the ground. Ironically, there was no evidence that anyone at the village had been involved in the previous attack. That summer, Kit Carson and Fremont’s reign of blood and brutality on the frontier continued.
This time, against the Mexicans. Joining Fremont in the Bear Flag Revolt against Mexican rule in California, Carson carried out dark orders. During the uprising, Fremont instructed Carson to end the lives of Jose de la Rey Berreyesa and his two nephews to prevent word from reaching Mexico. Carson obeyed.
Karma would have its day. Carson’s actions in the Bear Flag Revolt would have consequences elsewhere. In January 1847, rebellion erupted against US occupation. Governor Charles Bent was attacked in his own home and scalped in front of his family. Carson’s wife was staying with them at the time, only narrowly escaping with her life.
Suddenly, the frontier was bathed in blood. Just weeks earlier, during the Mexican-American conflict, Carson followed orders from General Stephen Watts Kearny to guide him and his troops from New Mexico to California. Mexican forces struck Kearny’s column, leaving the Americans battered and stranded deep in hostile territory.
survival would demand sacrifice. Fearing another attack for which they were not prepared, Carson, Edward Fitzgerald Beale, and a Native American scout slipped away from Kearny’s camp under the cover of darkness. Their goal was to seek reinforcements in San Diego, 25 mi away. To avoid detection on their secret mission, they had to take off their shoes.
Carson later wrote, “Had to travel over a country covered with prickly pear and rocks barefoot.” This was just preparation for what came next. From 1846 to 1848, Carson put his tracking and scouting skills to use, serving as a long-distance courier. Racing messages between California and Washington D.C.
, he had no way of knowing that he was about to spark one of the biggest rushes in American history. One of the messages that he carried was official confirmation that gold had been discovered in California. The gold rush ensued. Sadly, he wasn’t fast enough for everyone. In 1849, Carson joined in the pursuit to recover a captive settler named Ann White, along with her infant daughter and servant.
The Jicarilla Apaches and Utes had captured White and the other civilians during an attack near Point of Rocks, New Mexico. Carson, more than anyone, knew the importance of immediate action and urged the rest of the posse to act swiftly. They would ignore his advice at their own peril. The party’s commanding officer ignored Carson’s advice.
While they’d managed to catch the Jicarilla Apaches and Utes off guard, they failed to seize their advantage. As Carson later put it, “In about 200 yd pursuing the Indians, the body of Mrs. White was found, perfectly warm, had not been executed more than 5 minutes, shot through the heart by an arrow.
Chillingly, Carson concluded, “I am certain that if the Indians had been charged immediately on our arrival, she would have been saved.” It was a devastating blow and a personal one for Carson. While moving through the Apache camp after finding Mrs. White’s body, Carson stumbled upon something deeply unsettling.
A dime novel about himself. By that time, thanks in large part to Fremont’s accounts, Carson had unwittingly become a legend. A larger-than-life frontier savior, slaying Indians by the hundreds. Instead of basking in his own glory, however, Carson reflected bitterly that Ann White may have read that dime novel hoping that he would be there to save her.
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