Born on December 24, 1809 in Madison County, Kentucky, Carson was the sixth of ten children. The family moved to Missouri when Carson was two years old. He was nine years old when his father was killed by a falling tree limb, and at the age of fourteen was apprenticed to a saddler in Franklin, Missouri.
Carson became disenchanted with the saddle trade and joined the first party bound for the Rocky Mountains. In 1826, he ran away, following a wagon train bound for Santa Fe and settled in Taos, New Mexico.
Kit Carson the Mountain Man
For the next two years, he held jobs as a cook, a copper miner and wagon driver. In 1829, he joined a trapping party bound for California led by Ewing Young. The expedition trapped beaver, first in Arizona, later moving into the San Joaquin and Sacramento valley’s of California.
After returning to Taos, Carson joined another fur trapping expedition led by Thomas Fitzpatrick to trap in the central Rocky Mountains. For the next decade, Carson roamed the unexplored west, trapping and hunting across much of the mid-west.
In 1836, he married an Arapaho woman, Waanibe, which translated to Singing Grass. She bore him two daughters, but passed away sometime around 1841.
Kit Carson and John C. Fremont
Because of his reputation as a mountain man and explorer, Carson was chosen as a guide by John C. Fremont for an Army expedition to survey a route to Oregon. Beginning in June of 1842, Carson led the expedition along the Platte River to Fort Laramie. The party proceeded to cross the Rockies, planting an American flag on one of the Wind River peaks.
Carson returned to Taos after the expedition and married Josefa Jaramillo in January of 1843. She bore him seven children.
Carson guided Fremont’s second expedition to Oregon and California. They explored the Great Salt Lake in a rubber boat, traveled through the Great Basin, and crossed the Sierra Nevada Mountains during the dead of winter, eventually arriving in the Sacrament Valley.
It was the publication of Fremont’s reports on the first two expeditions that brought Kit Carson to the recognition of the American public.
Carson served on Fremont’s third expedition in 1845. After exploring the Great Salt Lake again, the party proceeded to California across the desert and Sierra Nevadas and arrived in California. Mexican authorities ordered them to leave.
Kit Carson the Soldier
Carson served in the volunteer California Battalion, occupying San Diego and Los Angeles. Later, Carson led General Stephen Watts Kearny and a force of United States dragoons to California and fought at San Pasqual.
From 1847 until 1849, Carson carried government dispatches across the continent and was appointed first lieutenant in the United States Army by President James Polk. However, the senate did not confirm the nomination.
Kit Carson the Indian Agent
In early 1854, he began distributing government supplies to Indian tribes in the Taos area, primarily the Utes. Although he couldn’t read or write, Carson possessed a gift for speaking different languages, a skill which served him well among the Indians.
Carson sided with the Union during the Civil War and was commissioned a colonel in a New Mexico volunteer regiment. He fought invading Confederates at Valverde, New Mexico.
During the remainder of the war, he attempted to pacify hostile Indian tribes. He pacified the Navajo and forced them onto a government reservation. In November of 1864, he fought at Adobe Walls, where he led three hundred troops against as many as three thousand Kiowa and Comanche. He was forced to withdraw.
After serving as commander of Fort Garland in Colorado, he resigned his commission and was appointed superintendant of Indian affairs for Colorado territory. His health began to decline, and Carson died on May 23, 1868 from an aortic aneurysm.
Source:
Volpe, Vernon L., “Kit Carson”, Explorers. Vol 1 Salem Press, Inc. Pasadena, CA, 1998
