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Published: December 7th 2020
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No trip to Trinidad, Colorado would be complete without a visit to the Kit Carson (city) park. The park is up a hill in nice trees including Colorado Blue Spruce. They have a full size bronze statue of Carson on a sturdy horse, placed there in 1913. There is a good view there of Fisher's Peak; a notable landmark on the Santa Fe Trail. I could sit there for hours enjoying the natural setting and thinking about the rich history of Trinidad and "Kit".
Christopher Houston (Kit) Carson (1809-1868) was a true American frontiersman and his exaggerated myth was told in the "dime novels" of the time. Kit Carson had very great physical and mental abilities that shaped the Westworld expansion of the USA to the Pacific Ocean, but at a great cost of the Native Americans and Mexico.
According to Wikipedia, Christopher Houston Carson got his lifetime nickname Kit for his light colored hair and his slender build. Kit Carson was born in 1809 in North Carolina. In 1810 his family moved him to Boone's Lick, Missouri where they settled on land owned by the sons of Daniel Boone. After Carson's father died (when a tree limb fell
on him), the teenage Kit was sent as an apprentice him to David Workman; a saddler in Franklin, Missouri at the Eastern end of the Santa Fe Trail. Many of the customers at the saddle shop were trappers and traders where Kit herd tales of the West; that stimulated Kit to want to move West for a life in the wilderness. In 1826 Carson joined a caravan of fur trappers on a trek on the Santa Fe Trail to Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico. Kit settled that year in Taos (where he was laid to rest in 1868). Carson lived with Mathew Kinkade, a trapper and explorer and learned skills of a trapper. Even though Carson could not read or write he became fluent in Spanish and several Native American languages. In 1827-1829 Kit worked as a cook, translator, and a wagon driver in the Southwest. He also worked at a copper mine near the Gila River in Southwest New Mexico. In 1829 Kit joined the the Ewing Young trapping expedition and traveled the West including working with Jim Bridger and Old Bill Williams. It was in Apache territory on the Gila River Kit experienced his first combat when the
Native Americans were defending their land. Kit sought adventure and was good at killing and scalping Native Americans. Kit considered the Crow, Blackfoot, Apache, Ute, Navaho, and other Native American nations as hostels, and committed direct killing of them (and leading Union armies for the same murder). Carson also burnt the crops and cut down their fruit trees to starve the Native Americans into submission. In 1842 Carson was hired by John Fremont as a guide over the Oregon Trail that spurred on the migration to Oregon. In 1845 Carson guided Captain Fremont to California (under orders of US president Polk to take possession of Mexican land of everything West of the Republic of Texas, including California, Nevada, Arizona, and parts of Colorado and New Mexico). Kit Carson in his late years developed empathy for some Native Americans and became an Indian Agent doing well for his tribes under his control. Carson's first wife was a Arapaho named Singing Grass, who bore him two daughters. Carson's second wife was a Cheyenne named Making-Out-Road; and she quickly divorced Kit. Then Carson married a Mexican named Josefa Jaramillo in Taos, New Mexico, who bore him eight children. Carson had a ranch near
Taos. In 1854 Carson became a Freemason in Taos. In 1909 the Masonic Lodge of New Mexico purchased and preserved Kit's home and burial plot.
Commentary: Kit Carson followed the ethics of European Americans of his time. Carson was directly responsible for the settling the West and making the USA what is is today. It is a shame that the cost of his greatness came at a large cost of human life. I personally feel that the history of the USA should not be "sanitized" and both the good and the bad events should be in our history books.
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