Kit Carson & His Three Wives: A Family History

by Marc Simmons

Book Overview

Kit Carson (1809-1868) has long held a prominent place in the popular imagination of the American West. However, little is known about his family life thanks largely to Carson's own guardianship of his privacy. After almost four decades devoted to researching Kit Carson's personal life, Marc Simmons provides information here to further our understanding of Carson. Viewing Kit Carson's career as a husband and father sheds new light on the life choices...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826332978
• ISBN13: 9780826332974
• Release Date: May 2011
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Good American Tale

I thoroughly enjoyed Marc Simmons' documentary of Kit Carson and his wives. It is a well-written, 146-page account of one of the most fascinating characters in American history. Simmons describes in detail the relationship that Carson had with his wives and children. Though absent much of the time, Carson loved his children, and even adopted and helped raise a young orphaned Indian boy. The book showcases the softer side of this legendary hero. If you are a Colorado history buff like me, then you will enjoy reading this book. I would also recommend another relatively obscure book "The Western Odyssey of John Simpson Smith" by Stan Hoig. It is about an Indian interpreter and frontiersman who lived in and around Colorado during the 1840's, 50's, and 60's. Both books make for great reading. Mitch Paioff, Author, Getting Started as an Independent Computer Consultant The Western Odyssey of John Simpson Smith: Frontiersman and Indian Interpreter Getting Started as an Independent Computer Consultant

Great history

Great history book detailing some of the little-known (or unknown) parts of Kit's life. Very well researched and very well written. Not "dry" research, but living information.

The Domestic Life of an American Frontiersman

Nobody in his era survived more adventures and did more hard traveling than Kit Carson. His dispatch duties during the Mexican War totalled 16,000 miles -- most of that by horseback. In the first six years of his marriage to his third wife, he spent only six months at home in Taos. Carson was restless, and also uniquely qualified to play a major role in the far-flung events taking place across the Western U.S. That is by way of saying that Carson was hardly domesticated. Based on very limited information this book looks into Carson's life with his three wives. With the first, Waa-nibe, an Arapahoe woman, he seems to have enjoyed domestic bliss. After she died he took up residence with Making Out Road, a beautiful and willful Cheyenne woman in what proved to a relationship from hell. After escaping from -- or being thrown out of the teepee by -- Making Out Road, he married Josefa, a Mexican woman of respectable family from Taos. It was apparently a good marriage -- although Carson was rarely there and, moreover, never earned any money. In the census of 1850, when he was 41 years old, the value of his property totalled just over $200. Carson, however, apparently was a loving and responsible parent. He put his half-Arapaho daughter in school in Missouri and raised not only his own children in Taos but adopted several Indian orphans. This is a good book, as much about the comings and goings of Kit Carson, as it is about his family relationships. The author tells of the fate of his wives and children and has included a number of photographs of family members. There's a large literature about Carson and little information about him that has not already been explored, but this book gives a different slant on his life than other biographies. Smallchief

The Whole Kit Carson Story

Kit Carson lived a life that many young men would have liked to have lived. He seemingly was in all the right places at the time that a nation was being born. He grew from a simple kid to being an American Patriot.Simmons book cpatures the real Kit Carson, the man, the family, the life and times--it is not a novel, it contains 35 pages of documented footnotes--by one of the best historians of the west.At a time when the slave trade was still happening, he raised several Indian children, along with his own, by buying the kids from the slave traders. It is a book that helps anyone understand time and place. The book has been nominated for a national award.