The Epic Exploits of Kit Carson
Episode Stats
Summary
Within the space of just three decades, monumental episodes of exploration, expedition, politics and violence, including the mapping of the Oregon Trail, the acquisition of California, and the Mexican-American Civil War, forever changed the history of the United States and the shape of the American west. And one man, an illiterate trapper scout and soldier, was there for it all.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast within the space
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of just three decades monumental episodes of exploration expedition politics and violence
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including the mapping of the oregon trail the acquisition of california and the mexican-american
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civil wars forever changed the history of the united states and the shape of the american west
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and one man an illiterate trapper scout and soldier was there for it all kit carson in his book blood
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and thunder the epic story of kit carson the conquest of the american west author and historian
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hampton sides follows carson as a through line in this extraordinary period of american history
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today on the show hampton i discuss how kit carson became a living legend through embellished accounts
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of his heroics and yet undertook real-life exploits that were nearly as unbelievable as the tall tales
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told about him we explore how carson joined the grizzled fraternity of mountain men in his youth
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and the wide array of skills that helped him excel as a trapper we discuss how carson then parlayed
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those skills into becoming a scout on expeditions that took him from st louis to california over the
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rocky and sierra mountains and all throughout the wild rugged west hampton shares how these expeditions
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turned carson into a national celebrity and what this frontiersman thought of his fame hampton also
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impacts carson's complex relationship with american indians now he respected and adopted the ways of
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some tribes and yet fought viciously against others and we end our conversation with why he decided to
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become an officer in the union army during the civil war he's initially reluctant and then brutal
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campaigns against the navajos in his legacy today after the show's over check out our show notes at
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aom.is carson hampton joins me now via clearcast.io
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all right hampton sides welcome back to the show it's good to be with you
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so we had you on a couple years ago to talk about your book on desperate ground which was about
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the greatest battle of the korean war the chosen reservoir brought you back on because i want to
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talk about a book you wrote it's almost 13 years ago and i think you started it even like back in 2002
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it's called blood and thunder and it's about the famed trapper mountain man scout soldier kit carson
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i'm curious what drew you to kit carson as a subject
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well blood and thunder isn't really a biography of kit carson is you know it's using kit carson
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as a through line to tell a much bigger story and what drew me to kit carson was that this one man
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and in the span of one lifetime went everywhere did everything knew everybody somehow intersected with
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history in this consequential way and enabled me as a writer to tell this bigger story of the conquest
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of the american west in in a single generation the western third of the continent became the united
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states what's amazing about carson is that even though he wasn't a general west pointer a writer
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a big time politician you know he's essentially a nobody an illiterate frontiersman he knew everybody
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and when you start charting the the big events of of manifest destiny and the conquest of the west
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somehow or another he was there he was always there or if he was not there he missed it by five minutes
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you know his best friend was there his wife was there or his you know so it's a great through line
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to write about this much bigger story which is really what i was interested in because i had
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moved to the west i moved here to santa fe and i was looking for a big canvas kind of story to sink
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my teeth in to try to understand this this land out here and how it became part of the united states
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it's really then becomes the story of native americans it becomes the story of spanish americans
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the mountain men who were mostly french and these sort of spiral of events that led to
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finally the mexican-american war and also the civil war which most people don't realize there were
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actually some pretty consequential battles that took place here in the west during the civil war
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so it's got all these different chapters and episodes but that through line that keeps returning
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is this one man who is very controversial he was an indian lover and he was an indian killer
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he married into his first wife was arapaho his second wife was cheyenne he spoke six or seven
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different indian languages but he also fought against different tribes and especially is famous for his
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conquering the navajo and leading them on their notorious long walk so i i was drawn to that part
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of carson's life too the fact that he was so controversial so conflicted had sort of this deep
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love and appreciation for native american culture but also fought against native americans in big ways
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that still have ramifications today so yeah i think yeah when i read this book i was like this is just
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it's it's epic i mean the stuff that happened in like in a short amount of time from like
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the 1840s till the 1860s i mean it's mind-boggling like how much happened i think what we've been
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going through in the past decade here in the modern age think oh man things are just going so fast but
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like big changes monumental changes happened in a matter of years back then yeah yeah well especially
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during the the mexican-american war when when uh president polk took office he cast his eye west
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and you know he decided he wanted all of it you know he wanted the oregon territory which is
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or oregon and washington now he wanted california which was nominally part of mexico that was kind of
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semi-independent he wanted the new mexico territory which was part of mexico and he wanted texas and you
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know everything in between he wanted he wanted ports on the pacific he wanted this relatively small
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country to become an empire and he wanted he wanted it all in in in one fell swoop and he got it all
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during the mexican-american war it was a it was a brutal and relentless land grab it was pretty
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shameful in many in many respects but he achieved what he sought out to do he after one term in office
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he went home to tennessee and in a few months he was dead james k polk kind of came out of nowhere and
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achieved what he said he was going to do and suddenly the united states had grown
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by about the size of continental europe it's just yes and those events that led to all that just
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happened so fast and furious and it's so hard to even keep track of them all and all the different
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characters but one person just kind of treads right through the middle of it and that's kit carson and
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that's why he became such an interesting kind of connective tissue for this larger story well let's
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look at the life of kit carson and along the way we can talk about some of these big events that he
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was involved with with in american history so let's start off when he was born what was america like
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when kit carson was born well he was born in kentucky but moved very very soon thereafter to kentucky
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and you know there was there was this slow but steady march westward to find you know untouched land
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and he he was part of that movement his parents were he was distantly related to daniel boone and
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these were true frontiersmen they moved to missouri but beyond missouri you know it was wilderness
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and the notion was that sort of the middle third of the country was going to be set aside for the
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native american tribes many of whom had been relocated forcibly relocated during uh the trail of tears and
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another another forced relocation sagas like that but then beyond the plains there was this all
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there's a whole other part of the continent that was not very well understood it was part of it was
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in you know part of mexico part of it was um just wilderness that had been not you know had not been
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mapped or explored very much and then you finally get to the pacific coast and you get a different
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continental powers that are vying for and interested in controlling particularly the pacific northwest
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the british are interested in it and have lots of little tentacles in uh in that part of the world
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the russians are still trapping and exploring up around alaska and and working their way down the
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coast california was part of mexico and that you know and and by extension part of the greater kind of
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spanish empire so everyone had their eyes on this great prize of of kind of the virgin far west and
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the united states was beginning to express its interest and and having all that and so carson's
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family moved from kentucky to missouri which was that was the end of the line i mean you know st louis was
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kind of the gateway to wilderness and there was a a trail that was formed from independence
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missouri to santa fe known as the santa fe trail and that was kind of the one little tentacle that
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you know where there was some trade and there you know there were there was expeditions west and carson
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as a young boy his father died when he was eight and uh he his stepfather he butted heads with his
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stepfather and he wanted to get the hell out of his home environment he became an apprentice to a
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saddle maker but then he started you know hearing these stories about these mountain men these people
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out west that came west on the santa fe trail and went into the mountains and trapped beaver there was
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tremendous amount of money to be made doing that it was an adventurous life it was a dangerous life
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but he wanted to be part of this fraternity of greasy grizzled old mountain men and he ran away
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uh when he was about 16 i ran ran away to santa fe and really never looked back he went up into the
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mountains up around taos and he slowly but surely worked his way into this fraternity of of men and
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became in the end one of the most famous mountain men of all so that's how he got his start in the
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west trapping beaver which was an incredible incredibly valuable asset because really because
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uh for some reason people back in london and paris and new york had decided that a that a beaver hat was
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the finest hat you could you could have it was a fashion statement and so you know really these men
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became so proficient at trapping beaver that beaver became nearly extinct in many parts of the west
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but along the way they learned how the rivers you know how the drainages flowed you know where which
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you know the big rivers this little rivers they learned essentially if not formally to map the west
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at least to get around and sort of made a mental map of of the west and these mountain men with all
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this knowledge of this territory that was otherwise unexplored then went on to become scouts and guides
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in various topographical expeditions into the west and uh so this was valuable information that they
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had and carson was and proved to be the very best one of all of the mountain men to make that transition
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from trapping beaver to guiding formal expeditions into the west one thing you talk about and you you
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quote people who talked about the skills that carson had i mean he was just any in any situation in the
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west and the wilds like he could handle himself and what were some of the skills that he was famous
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for that he had it wasn't any one thing that carson had that made him so competent at what he did it was a
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kind of a panoply of skills he knew when to fight he knew when to bluff he knew when to negotiate he was
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cool under pressure he was really you know he was he was a great horseman although most of these guys
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didn't have horses they had mules they really trusted their mules and the you know they always say you
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know the horse won the west it actually wasn't a horse it was a mule that won the west but uh he
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carson was uh you know good with a knife he was good in a fight he was a expert marksman a good hunter
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he was a decent cook he was a um just somebody you wanted on your side and when you're out in the
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wilds and it's kind of extraordinary given how many scrapes he got into with different native american
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tribes over the decades that he he lived to uh fairly ripe old age in those days and died of
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natural causes he um somehow knew where to be and had a sixth sense for you know when to fight and
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when to avoid a fight he also had a really remarkable even though he was illiterate a remarkable gift for
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language he was fluent in spanish he was barely fluent in french and he knew multiple native
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american languages and sign language so he was great at communicating and all the different
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expeditions remark about that that you know he was the guy that came forward and you know figured out
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what was going on and communicated with the local tribes and you know was able to negotiate whatever
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it is they wanted or needed at the time so those are some of his those are some of his skills um he
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certainly had a temper and if you if you riled him he would not back down he was ferocious and he was
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relentless he would pursue you and and i guess that's his other famous skill is was pursuing people he was
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an amazing tracker and would sometimes track a fugitive or in one famous case a a woman who'd been
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kidnapped for days and days and days and days and he could read you know read the signs on on on the
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ground and was quite famous for for this skill which is really uh almost mystical skill you know to look
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at the grass and try to determine how old a particular footprint is you know i don't know how people do
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that but he was apparently phenomenal at that skill well and it was during his time as a mountain man
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where his complex relationship with native americans began this is when he married he married two native
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american women during this time yes his his first wife singing grass was arapaho and a lot of people
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say that those were his happiest years was when he lived with her tribe her band of arapaho indians and
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really lived more like an indian than than a white guy than an anglo and had two children with her
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unfortunately she died in child in childbirth he raised their children and along the way married
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a cheyenne woman that marriage did not did not work out very well and it ended in what they call the
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cheyenne divorce where she basically kicked him out of her teepee but you know all this is just to say
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that he was somebody who respected and you know found a lot of power in native american traditions
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and language and lived with great respect for certain native american tribes there were other tribes that
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he seemed to spend much of his life fighting against and uh maybe foremost among those were the blackfeet
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and also the comanches and sometimes the kiowas so he didn't really look at native americans in a
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monolithic way like indians you know out there he he was very specific in his allegiance to certain
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tribes and his often lifelong antipathy to other tribes so it's very interesting um his third and his
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final wife was spanish came from an old spanish family in taos josefa jeremio and so he then sort of
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just organically morphed again into kind of like a spanish guy he spoke spanish he converted to
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catholicism he raised his kids to speak spanish and as catholics and uh lived in taos and viewed himself
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as allied you know aligned with spanish new mexico which of course they've been there for hundreds of
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years so it's interesting this guy just keeps kind of like a zealot figure you know he keeps kind of
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changing into whatever you know and he's like he's like a cat had nine lives he you know he went from
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being a mountain man to you know being a rancher to being a scout and a hunter and then he became a
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finally joined the regular army the union army and fought against the confederates
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in several battles and then then became uh at the end of his life he became a brigadier general
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so he and there's a couple other incarnations i did i just skipped over like a an inter
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across continental courier he rode to washington to give messages and he was you know he's a scout
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and he was a guide and he was so many other things so he had this real talent for sort of
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rebooting himself as soon as uh one lifestyle seemed to dry up or one set of opportunities
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evaporated he would just recreate himself anew we're gonna take a quick break for your words
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from our sponsors and now back to the show well so as a trapper he started to make a name for himself
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but like where this where he became like almost a living legend was when he became the scout for
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fremont john fremont so for those who aren't familiar who was john fremont and why was he
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exploring the west yeah well john c fremont was a a botanist and a a cartographer in living in
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washington very talented very ambitious young man very good-looking dude ladies seemed to think he was
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extremely handsome and dashing and he had his ambition really knew no bounds he he was all those
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things i mentioned but he really wanted to be president someday and like a lot of ambitious
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young men he just he married a woman who is the daughter of a very very powerful man and this man
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was senator thomas hart benton from missouri one of the architects if not the principal architect
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of manifest destiny john c fremont knew that benton was his sort of ticket to to get to where he wanted
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to go which was to explore the west map the west and then somehow use his fame and celebrity to uh
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catapult into a political career well it worked out pretty much the way he envisioned it he married
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jesse benton's daughter jesse fremont who was herself just a remarkable woman who you know was
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educated pretty much the way you know if the senator had had a son this is the way he would have educated
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his son she didn't go to finishing school or anything like that she she got a rigorous education
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and was a just a very shrewd political creature herself and they became john c fremont and jesse
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became kind of like a washington's original power couple he would go on these expeditions
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and come back and she would do most of the writing because she was a very talented writer and understood
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kind of um the pr aspect of all this it's like one thing to go and describe a bunch of plants and
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the topography and try to do it in a scientific fashion but those reports that fremont wrote were
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rather dull and rather dry she would take these reports and turn them into great stories that became
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best-selling books and that ensured her husband's fame and fortune and in these books fremont was
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you know a dashing hero but perhaps even more dashing a hero as depicted in those books was kit
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carson and that's really how kit carson became famous it seems like you know on every page carson was
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doing some something daring something bold you know that he was plucky and resourceful and got the
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expedition out of innumerable scrapes so carson kind of owed his fame to john c fremont and and
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and fremont's wife jesse carson however didn't understand that celebrity he didn't like that
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celebrity he he was a pretty shy and awkward guy he didn't he didn't understand why people back east
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seemed to know his name he had spent his youth trying to get away from america and suddenly
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he was uh this almost like a action figure hero he became then the subject of all these
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pulp novels that were written i mean really bad most of them very bad novels but they were kind of
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precursors to what we now call a western and often kit carson was the star of these books the
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protagonist and you know somehow they turned him into like six foot eight blonde blue-eyed you know
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aryan viking or something and uh he was like five four not particularly handsome shy and awkward around
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the ladies he just didn't you know they they turned him into something else a kind of a caricature
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and he spent much of his life trying to live that caricature down trying to understand it and he didn't
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get any money from these books they didn't get his permission to use his name and the ultimate
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irony was he couldn't read these books you know because he was illiterate uh so he had to have other
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people read to him these exploits that were completely i mean carson had an amazing life and he did amazing
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things but uh of course that wasn't good enough for these novelists who had to exaggerate it would say
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like kid carson would kill two indians before breakfast and which presumably was a good thing
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back then considered a good thing and it really it really set up this mythology that carson spent the
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rest of his life trying to live down but all of it goes back to fremont's expeditions which benton
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senator benton was instrumental in commissioning they left from st louis there was three main fremont
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expeditions so fremont's expeditions west really were important historically because he kind of
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charted and mapped the oregon trail which was then a very crude and dangerous route west to towards the
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towards the northwest across the great plains and after his books came out books that were largely
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written by his wife this kind of ignited this great migration of of pioneers and people said well
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it's maybe it's not so dangerous uh let's all you know then in mass began to to migrate west along the
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oregon trail so this is an instance in which cartography and exploration led directly to settlement
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on a big scale all part of a kind of a master plan of of benton and and the others who wanted
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really wanted the united states to be a continental empire from shore to shore from sea to shining sea and
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uh it it basically worked you know the first the first act of occupation and settlement is
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first exploration and fremont led those early expeditions and carson was his guide and their
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friendship is also a very interesting dynamic in the book is that you know the these two guys were
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kind of codependent that fremont and carson two people who seem to really need each other you know
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carson very self-reliant guy but also very conscious of the fact that he was illiterate
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that there was a whole world back east of educated people powerful people that he was curious about
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fremont was quite educated and you know carson seemed to defer to him in many ways when fremont asked
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him to go do something some sometimes a very unsavory thing carson would do it he was dutiful
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to a fault and fremont meanwhile he just he needed a guide he needed somebody who really knew the west
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he needed someone who was really proficient in all those skills of of survival in a in extreme
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environment that carson already had having been a mountain man for for all those years so these two men
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very much were i guess in modern parlance we'd say they were codependent or they you know they very
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much relied on each other and they they did remain friends for for the rest of their lives so it's an
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interesting part of carson's life is is the extent to which he identified with fremont and needed fremont
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somehow to um almost like a father figure that carson seemed to need to have well going back to that you
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know this the celebrity in the books that were written back carson one of the most like poignant
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moments in the the book is when you describe this this is like after i think this is during
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after the civil war when he was basically fighting native americans there was a a family of settlers
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they were kidnapped white was their last name yeah yeah yeah and carson went to go hunter you know find
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her from these i think it was a native american tribe that kidnapped her and he found her but she was
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already she's already dead uh but amongst her possessions she had a book about kit carson
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you know who came and saved people and you know that was just like one of those moments like he he
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couldn't live up to the legend and right yeah yeah yeah that's that is a famous story and it's it's
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a hundred percent true it's almost it's a fabulous you know like something that seems so it seems like it is a
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made-up story but it is true he got the assignment essentially to go find this woman who had been
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kidnapped by hickory apaches on the on the plains and he spent nearly a week tracking her across
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the staked plains and he found her but unfortunately she'd been killed as you say in her possessions they
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found uh the very first blood and thunder book this these these horrible pulp westerns and in that
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book in that particular story he was the protagonist and in the weird plot line of the book was that he
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had gotten the assignment to go find a woman who'd been captured who had captured and kidnapped by
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native americans and he went and found her and saved the day and won her you know back and brought her
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back to her family that's that's in the novel so and you know but he couldn't in real life live up to
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that legend and you know of course he couldn't read the story either someone read it to him and he was
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like it just uh it was like first time that he ever became aware of his own legend you know that he was
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some kind of mythological figure back east that these novels were and of course this was the first
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of many of these terrible novels but it is an amazing story and and ann white was her name you can't
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make this up that her name was white her she'd be coming down the santa fe trail with her family
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all the men in her group were killed but she and her african-american slave and her daughter
00:29:27.740
or baby daughter were kidnapped and so yeah it's it's an it's just one of you know this is the thing
00:29:35.120
tracking down stories about kid carson is just you know it's a full-time job it took kept me busy for
00:29:42.200
years and years because you know there's just so many of them and many of them are false many of them
00:29:48.080
were exaggerated but just as many of them are true and you know it's like if something like that
00:29:54.280
happened in my life i would say you know that was like probably the biggest thing that ever happened
00:29:58.360
to me the most well he had like dozens and dozens and dozens of those kinds of stories
00:30:02.860
all in one life so it really is kind of an extraordinary thing to think about just all the
00:30:09.060
episodes and incarnations and just tall tales that actually proved to be true that happened to this
00:30:17.400
one man so we talked about so he's a scout for fremont the the expeditions to california that
00:30:23.960
eventually morphed into the mexican-american war there's some crazy stuff in that chapter of like
00:30:28.380
insurrections going on and just nutty stuff the mexican-american war happened carson got roped into
00:30:34.680
that he started working with it was kearney was the general of the army west started fighting the
00:30:41.120
mexican-american war but then after the mexican-american war carson continued to be a soldier and he
00:30:47.220
actually became an officer for the union army during the civil war you know he was rather
00:30:52.300
reluctant to to do that and it was kind of complicated in the sense that you know he was
00:30:58.240
originally from missouri and most of his brothers had sided with the confederacy and you know why he
00:31:05.960
decided to become union officer is kind of interesting but he but he did and he and one of the many reasons
00:31:13.880
he did is because there was an army coming from texas to try to claim new mexico and colorado for
00:31:20.620
the confederacy and new spanish new mexicans for generations and generations had had this
00:31:27.500
fear and loathing of texans in some in some senses they we still do texanos you got to watch out for
00:31:34.860
the texanas yeah right the texanas yeah and uh there you know so he was able to recruit very
00:31:40.100
quickly a pretty large army of spanish new mexicans that he commanded and fought against those texans
00:31:48.220
when they came up the rio grande at a place called val verde a really important battle and one that i
00:31:54.420
think most americans don't even know happened at all and you know after the texans were sent back
00:32:01.580
to texas where they belong you know carson harry was still in the union army and he he basically
00:32:08.080
wanted to go back to taos and be with his wife and family but a general by the name of carlton came
00:32:14.300
along and said no well we're on a war footing now why don't we now go after some of these
00:32:21.160
tribes that keep attacking the settlements along the rio grande the wandering tribes the
00:32:28.680
raiding tribes and foremost among those at that time were the navajo the dene and this general
00:32:35.820
carlton came up with this plan to round up all the dene one of the largest tribes even then and
00:32:43.760
certainly now in in america and move them to a reservation on the pecos river where they could
00:32:52.420
be watched and where they could be taught to be sedentary christian farmers like completely rewire
00:33:00.240
their society because they were what they really were were semi-nomadic sheep herders and you know
00:33:07.640
moving over a huge piece of land the dene country was just massive all over the four corners region of
00:33:15.420
what we call them the four corners now of the united states and when general carlton came up with this
00:33:21.360
ambitious plan to sort of rewire the navajo he decided that he had to have carson to actually
00:33:27.400
lead it and carson tried to resign he didn't really want any part of this he said he had he had joined
00:33:34.800
the union army to fight texans not native americans but uh in the end he signed on and he thus began
00:33:43.380
really the chapter of his life the episode of his life for which he is now widely reviled and you know
00:33:51.300
hated by native americans and and hated for just the ferocity of this scorched earth campaign that
00:33:59.360
he led into navajo country to break their spirit break their back you know break the back of their
00:34:05.660
nation and to march them to this kind of like a prison camp on the pecos river this is probably what
00:34:12.960
he's most famous for now and this long life of many twists and turns comes down to one of the last
00:34:19.700
chapters of his life the navajo campaigns and i thought this was i mean this was this was happening
00:34:24.960
during the civil war but i thought it was interesting because most people think you know after the civil
00:34:28.880
war the union army started they started the american indian wars i mean sherman was a big part of that
00:34:34.140
like this was the precursor to that yeah well carson found that it was almost impossible to fight
00:34:41.440
the navajo you know that they they didn't fight pitched battles you know they would raid and retreat
00:34:48.920
raid and retreat and navajo country is so wrinkled and full of canyons and you know they would just
00:34:56.180
disappear they would vanish into this massive wilderness and uh so the only way carson could
00:35:01.780
fight them was to starve them to death was to kind of even before sherman led his scorched earth campaign
00:35:08.680
across the american south carson was doing this and perfecting it burning every cornfield destroying
00:35:17.220
every orchard slaughtering every sheep every cow every horse that they came across poisoning water
00:35:24.920
sources destroying salt sources literally starving the navajo slowly but surely to death and uh you know
00:35:33.800
this is one of the reasons why the navajo you know they never forgot and they never forgave it's like
00:35:39.640
it happened yesterday because it really had a psychic effect because not only were they being
00:35:46.840
attacked but it was their very land their sacred land was being attacked and carson proved to be very
00:35:53.660
good at this he didn't want to do it he tried to resign several times but once he signed on
00:35:59.660
you know he was brutal and and it worked because of in tens and twenties and then finally by the hundreds
00:36:09.680
and thousands the navajo surrendered and they went on their long walk this experiment on the pecos river
00:36:16.920
did not go well they hated it they were miserable they refused to plant their crops they didn't want to
00:36:24.700
become christian farmers they wanted to go back to their their you know their beloved land and after
00:36:33.900
the civil war actually sherman who you mentioned does come out to negotiate some treaties and decides that
00:36:40.420
this experiment was a abject failure and the navajo after much discussion they decided to return them
00:36:48.480
back to their homeland which is one of the very rare instances in our history where you know no one
00:36:56.160
no one apologized but they admitted the failure of relocating a people forcibly and they actually
00:37:04.760
returned them to their ancestral lands which is instead of oklahoma or some other place hundreds of
00:37:10.820
miles thousands of miles from where they actually are from so the navajo were returned in this
00:37:17.380
another long walk but a joyous one back to the dinay country where they they are now the largest the
00:37:25.460
largest uh reservation in the in the country and one of the largest native american tribes in in the in
00:37:32.060
the country so but you know carson like i've said several times he was illiterate we don't really know
00:37:39.780
what he thought and felt about all of this i think he felt there there are some indications that he
00:37:48.760
he certainly felt reluctant to do it in the first place and then he felt obviously um he recognized that
00:37:55.000
it was a failure that it didn't work and many you know thousands of navajo died there was outbreaks
00:38:00.860
of different diseases and you know it was you know just a great tragedy that didn't really need to
00:38:07.900
happen and again carson was kind of at the center of it but he did spend the rest of his life really
00:38:14.480
quite directly advocating on behalf of various native american tribes and establishing treaties
00:38:22.180
with particularly he was very close to the utes and went all the way to washington with a group of
00:38:28.620
ute elders and negotiated a treaty that was quite successful for for and led to the creation of
00:38:35.900
their own sovereign lands but this navajo campaign i think just remained a stain on his career for the
00:38:43.720
rest of his life and really is the thing that he's most famous for all these many years later
00:38:50.060
yeah i mean i thought you said how carson like he ever since he was a trapper like like the
00:38:58.600
way he looked at native americans he looked at he viewed native americans as native americans viewed
00:39:03.020
native americans right like instead of a white person a european at the time like think of native
00:39:08.280
americans as a monolith and they're all the same carson understood no like they like they they all
00:39:14.520
think they're the best people like they are like the comanches are the people or the utes are the
00:39:19.320
people and every other tribe and carson kind of had that worldview as well right he did he did and
00:39:26.140
to his credit i mean i i think that he isn't you know in a completely different class of figures in
00:39:32.520
the american west i mean this was no sheridan this was no chivington famous for his massacres
00:39:39.920
this was no custer this was a guy who really actually understood a lot about native american life
00:39:45.680
and saw that most of these clashes that were happening out in the west were happening because
00:39:52.200
white settlers white miners you know mormons and missionaries were changing the west and encroaching
00:39:59.780
on native american territory and he hated what was happening and i think maybe on some level he
00:40:07.260
understood that he himself had brought this on by virtue of leading those expeditions to the west and
00:40:15.160
you know he had sort of fouled his own nest because he loved the american west and you know the pristine
00:40:22.240
west that he roamed over when he was in his 20s as a mountain man had been ruined by by igniting these
00:40:33.140
mass migrations of of europeans anglo anglo americans so you know in his later years as he's negotiating
00:40:41.240
treaties and giving testimony to congress you see a very different carson he's he's quite
00:40:48.100
contrite uh uh he hates what has happened to the west and he hates you know i mean there's just a lot
00:40:55.980
you know a lot of of course don't forget the gold rush which he actually is thought to have played a
00:41:03.420
bit bit of a role in himself he uh he may have he was transmitting some messages to washington and
00:41:10.400
and in one of the saddlebags what it's thought that the very first mention of gold being found in
00:41:16.820
california was in one of those saddlebags so i mean even even the gold rush he may have helped ignite
00:41:22.240
and you know i i think the real tragedy of carson's life story is that he kind of ruined his own paradise
00:41:30.780
in one lifetime and you know near the end of his life the transcontinental railroad has come
00:41:37.860
and i mean the old west that he knew is over and it's a whole it's a whole different world when he died in
00:41:45.800
1868 well hampton where can people go to learn more about this book and the rest of your work
00:41:51.120
well obviously you know anywhere where books are sold but i always encourage people to go to
00:41:57.260
independent bookstores which are struggling and suffering during this pandemic or my website which
00:42:03.520
has legit all kinds of information which is hamptonsides.com fantastic well hampton sides
00:42:10.020
thanks for your time it's been a pleasure i really enjoyed it thanks so much my guest today was hampton
00:42:14.660
sides you talked about his book blood and thunder the epic story of kit carson the conquest of the
00:42:19.200
american west it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find out more
00:42:23.000
information about his work at his website hamptonsides.com also check out our show notes at
00:42:27.080
aom.is slash carson where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic
00:42:32.060
well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at artofmanliness.com where
00:42:43.840
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00:42:47.300
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00:43:14.140
reminding you not only listen that way in podcast but put what you've heard into action