Kit Carson: A Pattern for Heroes

by Harvey L. Carter and Thelma S. Guild

Book Overview

Kit Carson was shown on the cover of an old dime novel slaying six Indians with one hand while protecting a fair maiden with the other. Stories about him, mainly apocryphal, circulated well before his death in 1868 and have been handed down in a multitude of biographies. Now Harvey L. Carter joins with Thelma S. Guild to present the fullest, most authoritative biography of Kit Carson ever written. Carefully separating myth from fact, the authors draw...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803270275
• ISBN13: 9780803270275
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Bison Books
• Length: 383 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Not as Poor a Work as Some Think

Few individuals of the nineteenth century have received more extended or favorable treatment from historians that Kit Carson. Frontiersman, fur trader, mountain man, guide, scout, Indian agent, and soldier were all appropriate descriptive terms for Carson. But the authors of this biography would attach the term "hero" to Carson as well. "He was and has remained one of America's most widely known and most deserving heroes," the authors assert (p. xi). Although there is a feeling of encountering a sacred relic, Guild's and Carter's "Kit Carson" is a fine biography. It is scholarly, well-organized, admirably documented, and certainly the most authoritative biography of Carson to appear by the 1980s. There is also a touch of humor in the wry way in which the authors describe certain incidents. In a description of Carson's sojourn as a mountain man Guild and Carter noted: "When the trapper were not hunting meat, feeding their horses cottonwood bark, cleaning their guns, mending saddles or bridles, sharpening knives or axes, building corrals or forts, or doing whatever other tasks they felt desirable or necessary, they did as they pleased" (p. 51). The humor of this statement is obvious. Could they have done otherwise? Certainly Guild's and Carter's "Kit Carson will find a place as a benchmark in the historiography of the subject for years. The authors take a standard approach toward their subject, organizing the material chronologically. They do not discount the years Kit Carson spent in the mountains learning its lore during the l820s and l830s, but they greatly emphasize the role he played later as guide and scout for John C. Fremont and as an expert on the Indian affairs of the Southwest. They credit Carson with much of the success of Fremont's expeditions during the mid-1840s, a recognition that seems apparent to most observers. They also commend Carson's actions as an advisor and guide for the Army during the Indian war of 1854-1855 and as commander of the difficult campaign against Navaho warriors in 1863-1864. Guild and Carter observe that Carson, although no friend of Indians, respected and in certain ways admired them. Always, they assert, he stood for just and reasonable relations between the two societies.

A History of the Man

Much like the pulp-novel persona that sprung from the legends of Kit Carson, the real man was a master of life in the West. From his early days as a mountain man to his later life as an Indian agent, Guild and Carter do a good job of illustrating the life of Carson and his role in the opening of the West. Throughout the book, the authors keep the focus on Carson and do not let the wider events in which he was involved overshadow the man. On one level this approach diminishes the importance of those events and Carson's role in them, but it also seems to provide a good illustration of how Carson viewed those events.