The Art of Manliness - The Epic Exploits of Kit Carson

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast within the space

00:00:11.660 of just three decades monumental episodes of exploration expedition politics and violence

00:00:16.760 including the mapping of the oregon trail the acquisition of california and the mexican-american

00:00:21.420 civil wars forever changed the history of the united states and the shape of the american west

00:00:25.660 and one man an illiterate trapper scout and soldier was there for it all kit carson in his book blood

00:00:31.380 and thunder the epic story of kit carson the conquest of the american west author and historian

00:00:35.700 hampton sides follows carson as a through line in this extraordinary period of american history

00:00:40.300 today on the show hampton i discuss how kit carson became a living legend through embellished accounts

00:00:44.620 of his heroics and yet undertook real-life exploits that were nearly as unbelievable as the tall tales

00:00:49.440 told about him we explore how carson joined the grizzled fraternity of mountain men in his youth

00:00:53.360 and the wide array of skills that helped him excel as a trapper we discuss how carson then parlayed

00:00:57.860 those skills into becoming a scout on expeditions that took him from st louis to california over the

00:01:02.520 rocky and sierra mountains and all throughout the wild rugged west hampton shares how these expeditions

00:01:06.960 turned carson into a national celebrity and what this frontiersman thought of his fame hampton also

00:01:11.260 impacts carson's complex relationship with american indians now he respected and adopted the ways of

00:01:16.040 some tribes and yet fought viciously against others and we end our conversation with why he decided to

00:01:20.660 become an officer in the union army during the civil war he's initially reluctant and then brutal

00:01:24.600 campaigns against the navajos in his legacy today after the show's over check out our show notes at

00:01:28.960 aom.is carson hampton joins me now via clearcast.io

00:01:33.560 all right hampton sides welcome back to the show it's good to be with you

00:01:49.500 so we had you on a couple years ago to talk about your book on desperate ground which was about

00:01:53.700 the greatest battle of the korean war the chosen reservoir brought you back on because i want to

00:01:58.680 talk about a book you wrote it's almost 13 years ago and i think you started it even like back in 2002

00:02:04.120 it's called blood and thunder and it's about the famed trapper mountain man scout soldier kit carson

00:02:12.700 i'm curious what drew you to kit carson as a subject

00:02:16.660 well blood and thunder isn't really a biography of kit carson is you know it's using kit carson

00:02:26.200 as a through line to tell a much bigger story and what drew me to kit carson was that this one man

00:02:32.940 and in the span of one lifetime went everywhere did everything knew everybody somehow intersected with

00:02:40.820 history in this consequential way and enabled me as a writer to tell this bigger story of the conquest

00:02:49.660 of the american west in in a single generation the western third of the continent became the united

00:02:56.320 states what's amazing about carson is that even though he wasn't a general west pointer a writer

00:03:03.860 a big time politician you know he's essentially a nobody an illiterate frontiersman he knew everybody

00:03:10.400 and when you start charting the the big events of of manifest destiny and the conquest of the west

00:03:17.540 somehow or another he was there he was always there or if he was not there he missed it by five minutes

00:03:25.820 you know his best friend was there his wife was there or his you know so it's a great through line

00:03:31.540 to write about this much bigger story which is really what i was interested in because i had

00:03:38.220 moved to the west i moved here to santa fe and i was looking for a big canvas kind of story to sink

00:03:46.020 my teeth in to try to understand this this land out here and how it became part of the united states

00:03:52.600 it's really then becomes the story of native americans it becomes the story of spanish americans

00:03:57.840 the mountain men who were mostly french and these sort of spiral of events that led to

00:04:05.180 finally the mexican-american war and also the civil war which most people don't realize there were

00:04:11.140 actually some pretty consequential battles that took place here in the west during the civil war

00:04:17.380 so it's got all these different chapters and episodes but that through line that keeps returning

00:04:23.360 is this one man who is very controversial he was an indian lover and he was an indian killer

00:04:31.440 he married into his first wife was arapaho his second wife was cheyenne he spoke six or seven

00:04:39.420 different indian languages but he also fought against different tribes and especially is famous for his

00:04:45.700 conquering the navajo and leading them on their notorious long walk so i i was drawn to that part 1.00

00:04:53.900 of carson's life too the fact that he was so controversial so conflicted had sort of this deep

00:05:00.220 love and appreciation for native american culture but also fought against native americans in big ways

00:05:06.600 that still have ramifications today so yeah i think yeah when i read this book i was like this is just

00:05:12.180 it's it's epic i mean the stuff that happened in like in a short amount of time from like

00:05:16.340 the 1840s till the 1860s i mean it's mind-boggling like how much happened i think what we've been

00:05:24.020 going through in the past decade here in the modern age think oh man things are just going so fast but

00:05:28.380 like big changes monumental changes happened in a matter of years back then yeah yeah well especially

00:05:36.180 during the the mexican-american war when when uh president polk took office he cast his eye west

00:05:44.520 and you know he decided he wanted all of it you know he wanted the oregon territory which is

00:05:51.600 or oregon and washington now he wanted california which was nominally part of mexico that was kind of

00:05:59.980 semi-independent he wanted the new mexico territory which was part of mexico and he wanted texas and you

00:06:08.860 know everything in between he wanted he wanted ports on the pacific he wanted this relatively small

00:06:17.080 country to become an empire and he wanted he wanted it all in in in one fell swoop and he got it all

00:06:25.620 during the mexican-american war it was a it was a brutal and relentless land grab it was pretty 1.00

00:06:33.260 shameful in many in many respects but he achieved what he sought out to do he after one term in office

00:06:40.860 he went home to tennessee and in a few months he was dead james k polk kind of came out of nowhere and

00:06:47.200 achieved what he said he was going to do and suddenly the united states had grown

00:06:54.200 by about the size of continental europe it's just yes and those events that led to all that just

00:07:02.360 happened so fast and furious and it's so hard to even keep track of them all and all the different

00:07:07.920 characters but one person just kind of treads right through the middle of it and that's kit carson and

00:07:13.920 that's why he became such an interesting kind of connective tissue for this larger story well let's

00:07:21.460 look at the life of kit carson and along the way we can talk about some of these big events that he

00:07:25.900 was involved with with in american history so let's start off when he was born what was america like

00:07:31.800 when kit carson was born well he was born in kentucky but moved very very soon thereafter to kentucky

00:07:39.420 and you know there was there was this slow but steady march westward to find you know untouched land

00:07:51.020 and he he was part of that movement his parents were he was distantly related to daniel boone and

00:07:57.920 these were true frontiersmen they moved to missouri but beyond missouri you know it was wilderness

00:08:05.400 and the notion was that sort of the middle third of the country was going to be set aside for the

00:08:12.780 native american tribes many of whom had been relocated forcibly relocated during uh the trail of tears and

00:08:19.500 another another forced relocation sagas like that but then beyond the plains there was this all

00:08:27.260 there's a whole other part of the continent that was not very well understood it was part of it was

00:08:33.980 in you know part of mexico part of it was um just wilderness that had been not you know had not been

00:08:40.220 mapped or explored very much and then you finally get to the pacific coast and you get a different

00:08:47.200 continental powers that are vying for and interested in controlling particularly the pacific northwest

00:08:54.880 the british are interested in it and have lots of little tentacles in uh in that part of the world

00:09:01.480 the russians are still trapping and exploring up around alaska and and working their way down the

00:09:08.260 coast california was part of mexico and that you know and and by extension part of the greater kind of

00:09:16.980 spanish empire so everyone had their eyes on this great prize of of kind of the virgin far west and

00:09:25.980 the united states was beginning to express its interest and and having all that and so carson's

00:09:34.820 family moved from kentucky to missouri which was that was the end of the line i mean you know st louis was

00:09:42.100 kind of the gateway to wilderness and there was a a trail that was formed from independence

00:09:50.980 missouri to santa fe known as the santa fe trail and that was kind of the one little tentacle that

00:09:57.860 you know where there was some trade and there you know there were there was expeditions west and carson

00:10:03.480 as a young boy his father died when he was eight and uh he his stepfather he butted heads with his

00:10:11.080 stepfather and he wanted to get the hell out of his home environment he became an apprentice to a

00:10:18.040 saddle maker but then he started you know hearing these stories about these mountain men these people

00:10:23.900 out west that came west on the santa fe trail and went into the mountains and trapped beaver there was

00:10:30.140 tremendous amount of money to be made doing that it was an adventurous life it was a dangerous life

00:10:34.920 but he wanted to be part of this fraternity of greasy grizzled old mountain men and he ran away

00:10:42.040 uh when he was about 16 i ran ran away to santa fe and really never looked back he went up into the

00:10:49.060 mountains up around taos and he slowly but surely worked his way into this fraternity of of men and

00:10:56.020 became in the end one of the most famous mountain men of all so that's how he got his start in the

00:11:01.300 west trapping beaver which was an incredible incredibly valuable asset because really because

00:11:08.920 uh for some reason people back in london and paris and new york had decided that a that a beaver hat was

00:11:16.800 the finest hat you could you could have it was a fashion statement and so you know really these men

00:11:24.500 became so proficient at trapping beaver that beaver became nearly extinct in many parts of the west

00:11:30.700 but along the way they learned how the rivers you know how the drainages flowed you know where which

00:11:36.280 you know the big rivers this little rivers they learned essentially if not formally to map the west

00:11:43.000 at least to get around and sort of made a mental map of of the west and these mountain men with all

00:11:50.340 this knowledge of this territory that was otherwise unexplored then went on to become scouts and guides

00:11:59.180 in various topographical expeditions into the west and uh so this was valuable information that they

00:12:06.620 had and carson was and proved to be the very best one of all of the mountain men to make that transition

00:12:11.940 from trapping beaver to guiding formal expeditions into the west one thing you talk about and you you

00:12:20.480 quote people who talked about the skills that carson had i mean he was just any in any situation in the

00:12:26.340 west and the wilds like he could handle himself and what were some of the skills that he was famous

00:12:31.120 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

00:12:38.000 kind of a panoply of skills he knew when to fight he knew when to bluff he knew when to negotiate he was

00:12:47.180 cool under pressure he was really you know he was he was a great horseman although most of these guys

00:12:54.700 didn't have horses they had mules they really trusted their mules and the you know they always say you

00:13:00.580 know the horse won the west it actually wasn't a horse it was a mule that won the west but uh he

00:13:06.680 carson was uh you know good with a knife he was good in a fight he was a expert marksman a good hunter

00:13:13.280 he was a decent cook he was a um just somebody you wanted on your side and when you're out in the

00:13:23.140 wilds and it's kind of extraordinary given how many scrapes he got into with different native american

00:13:30.120 tribes over the decades that he he lived to uh fairly ripe old age in those days and died of

00:13:37.820 natural causes he um somehow knew where to be and had a sixth sense for you know when to fight and

00:13:44.960 when to avoid a fight he also had a really remarkable even though he was illiterate a remarkable gift for

00:13:53.040 language he was fluent in spanish he was barely fluent in french and he knew multiple native

00:13:59.940 american languages and sign language so he was great at communicating and all the different

00:14:06.540 expeditions remark about that that you know he was the guy that came forward and you know figured out

00:14:13.220 what was going on and communicated with the local tribes and you know was able to negotiate whatever

00:14:19.540 it is they wanted or needed at the time so those are some of his those are some of his skills um he

00:14:25.900 certainly had a temper and if you if you riled him he would not back down he was ferocious and he was

00:14:33.860 relentless he would pursue you and and i guess that's his other famous skill is was pursuing people he was

00:14:40.560 an amazing tracker and would sometimes track a fugitive or in one famous case a a woman who'd been

00:14:50.440 kidnapped for days and days and days and days and he could read you know read the signs on on on the

00:14:59.920 ground and was quite famous for for this skill which is really uh almost mystical skill you know to look

00:15:09.960 at the grass and try to determine how old a particular footprint is you know i don't know how people do

00:15:19.100 that but he was apparently phenomenal at that skill well and it was during his time as a mountain man

00:15:24.220 where his complex relationship with native americans began this is when he married he married two native

00:15:29.580 american women during this time yes his his first wife singing grass was arapaho and a lot of people

00:15:36.240 say that those were his happiest years was when he lived with her tribe her band of arapaho indians and

00:15:43.040 really lived more like an indian than than a white guy than an anglo and had two children with her

00:15:50.120 unfortunately she died in child in childbirth he raised their children and along the way married

00:15:58.380 a cheyenne woman that marriage did not did not work out very well and it ended in what they call the 1.00

00:16:04.460 cheyenne divorce where she basically kicked him out of her teepee but you know all this is just to say

00:16:09.960 that he was somebody who respected and you know found a lot of power in native american traditions

00:16:19.740 and language and lived with great respect for certain native american tribes there were other tribes that

00:16:27.240 he seemed to spend much of his life fighting against and uh maybe foremost among those were the blackfeet 1.00

00:16:33.600 and also the comanches and sometimes the kiowas so he didn't really look at native americans in a

00:16:40.740 monolithic way like indians you know out there he he was very specific in his allegiance to certain 0.63

00:16:48.460 tribes and his often lifelong antipathy to other tribes so it's very interesting um his third and his

00:16:57.400 final wife was spanish came from an old spanish family in taos josefa jeremio and so he then sort of

00:17:06.460 just organically morphed again into kind of like a spanish guy he spoke spanish he converted to

00:17:15.580 catholicism he raised his kids to speak spanish and as catholics and uh lived in taos and viewed himself

00:17:24.120 as allied you know aligned with spanish new mexico which of course they've been there for hundreds of

00:17:31.080 years so it's interesting this guy just keeps kind of like a zealot figure you know he keeps kind of

00:17:38.060 changing into whatever you know and he's like he's like a cat had nine lives he you know he went from

00:17:45.640 being a mountain man to you know being a rancher to being a scout and a hunter and then he became a

00:17:53.160 finally joined the regular army the union army and fought against the confederates

00:17:58.660 in several battles and then then became uh at the end of his life he became a brigadier general

00:18:05.480 so he and there's a couple other incarnations i did i just skipped over like a an inter

00:18:11.720 across continental courier he rode to washington to give messages and he was you know he's a scout

00:18:19.780 and he was a guide and he was so many other things so he had this real talent for sort of

00:18:25.100 rebooting himself as soon as uh one lifestyle seemed to dry up or one set of opportunities

00:18:32.200 evaporated he would just recreate himself anew we're gonna take a quick break for your words

00:18:38.300 from our sponsors and now back to the show well so as a trapper he started to make a name for himself

00:18:44.940 but like where this where he became like almost a living legend was when he became the scout for

00:18:51.060 fremont john fremont so for those who aren't familiar who was john fremont and why was he

00:18:56.940 exploring the west yeah well john c fremont was a a botanist and a a cartographer in living in

00:19:05.680 washington very talented very ambitious young man very good-looking dude ladies seemed to think he was

00:19:13.660 extremely handsome and dashing and he had his ambition really knew no bounds he he was all those

00:19:21.740 things i mentioned but he really wanted to be president someday and like a lot of ambitious

00:19:29.180 young men he just he married a woman who is the daughter of a very very powerful man and this man

00:19:38.020 was senator thomas hart benton from missouri one of the architects if not the principal architect

00:19:44.860 of manifest destiny john c fremont knew that benton was his sort of ticket to to get to where he wanted

00:19:53.780 to go which was to explore the west map the west and then somehow use his fame and celebrity to uh

00:20:01.360 catapult into a political career well it worked out pretty much the way he envisioned it he married

00:20:06.880 jesse benton's daughter jesse fremont who was herself just a remarkable woman who you know was

00:20:14.840 educated pretty much the way you know if the senator had had a son this is the way he would have educated

00:20:22.120 his son she didn't go to finishing school or anything like that she she got a rigorous education 0.95

00:20:27.940 and was a just a very shrewd political creature herself and they became john c fremont and jesse

00:20:38.200 became kind of like a washington's original power couple he would go on these expeditions

00:20:43.560 and come back and she would do most of the writing because she was a very talented writer and understood

00:20:51.640 kind of um the pr aspect of all this it's like one thing to go and describe a bunch of plants and

00:20:59.660 the topography and try to do it in a scientific fashion but those reports that fremont wrote were

00:21:07.080 rather dull and rather dry she would take these reports and turn them into great stories that became

00:21:14.280 best-selling books and that ensured her husband's fame and fortune and in these books fremont was

00:21:23.360 you know a dashing hero but perhaps even more dashing a hero as depicted in those books was kit

00:21:30.480 carson and that's really how kit carson became famous it seems like you know on every page carson was

00:21:35.840 doing some something daring something bold you know that he was plucky and resourceful and got the

00:21:42.640 expedition out of innumerable scrapes so carson kind of owed his fame to john c fremont and and

00:21:51.700 and fremont's wife jesse carson however didn't understand that celebrity he didn't like that 0.92

00:21:58.000 celebrity he he was a pretty shy and awkward guy he didn't he didn't understand why people back east

00:22:04.320 seemed to know his name he had spent his youth trying to get away from america and suddenly

00:22:09.340 he was uh this almost like a action figure hero he became then the subject of all these

00:22:17.560 pulp novels that were written i mean really bad most of them very bad novels but they were kind of

00:22:24.320 precursors to what we now call a western and often kit carson was the star of these books the

00:22:33.180 protagonist and you know somehow they turned him into like six foot eight blonde blue-eyed you know

00:22:40.200 aryan viking or something and uh he was like five four not particularly handsome shy and awkward around

00:22:48.600 the ladies he just didn't you know they they turned him into something else a kind of a caricature

00:22:54.460 and he spent much of his life trying to live that caricature down trying to understand it and he didn't

00:23:01.320 get any money from these books they didn't get his permission to use his name and the ultimate

00:23:06.260 irony was he couldn't read these books you know because he was illiterate uh so he had to have other

00:23:13.820 people read to him these exploits that were completely i mean carson had an amazing life and he did amazing

00:23:21.800 things but uh of course that wasn't good enough for these novelists who had to exaggerate it would say

00:23:27.860 like kid carson would kill two indians before breakfast and which presumably was a good thing 1.00

00:23:34.680 back then considered a good thing and it really it really set up this mythology that carson spent the

00:23:42.940 rest of his life trying to live down but all of it goes back to fremont's expeditions which benton

00:23:49.840 senator benton was instrumental in commissioning they left from st louis there was three main fremont 0.92

00:23:57.840 expeditions so fremont's expeditions west really were important historically because he kind of

00:24:06.380 charted and mapped the oregon trail which was then a very crude and dangerous route west to towards the

00:24:15.320 towards the northwest across the great plains and after his books came out books that were largely

00:24:22.720 written by his wife this kind of ignited this great migration of of pioneers and people said well

00:24:29.800 it's maybe it's not so dangerous uh let's all you know then in mass began to to migrate west along the

00:24:36.760 oregon trail so this is an instance in which cartography and exploration led directly to settlement

00:24:44.480 on a big scale all part of a kind of a master plan of of benton and and the others who wanted

00:24:51.480 really wanted the united states to be a continental empire from shore to shore from sea to shining sea and

00:25:02.740 uh it it basically worked you know the first the first act of occupation and settlement is

00:25:08.780 first exploration and fremont led those early expeditions and carson was his guide and their

00:25:16.860 friendship is also a very interesting dynamic in the book is that you know the these two guys were

00:25:24.220 kind of codependent that fremont and carson two people who seem to really need each other you know

00:25:30.300 carson very self-reliant guy but also very conscious of the fact that he was illiterate

00:25:38.140 that there was a whole world back east of educated people powerful people that he was curious about

00:25:44.820 fremont was quite educated and you know carson seemed to defer to him in many ways when fremont asked

00:25:55.880 him to go do something some sometimes a very unsavory thing carson would do it he was dutiful

00:26:02.000 to a fault and fremont meanwhile he just he needed a guide he needed somebody who really knew the west

00:26:08.080 he needed someone who was really proficient in all those skills of of survival in a in extreme

00:26:13.740 environment that carson already had having been a mountain man for for all those years so these two men

00:26:19.800 very much were i guess in modern parlance we'd say they were codependent or they you know they very

00:26:26.540 much relied on each other and they they did remain friends for for the rest of their lives so it's an

00:26:32.420 interesting part of carson's life is is the extent to which he identified with fremont and needed fremont

00:26:40.160 somehow to um almost like a father figure that carson seemed to need to have well going back to that you

00:26:47.580 know this the celebrity in the books that were written back carson one of the most like poignant

00:26:51.500 moments in the the book is when you describe this this is like after i think this is during

00:26:56.200 after the civil war when he was basically fighting native americans there was a a family of settlers

00:27:02.400 they were kidnapped white was their last name yeah yeah yeah and carson went to go hunter you know find

00:27:10.060 her from these i think it was a native american tribe that kidnapped her and he found her but she was 0.91

00:27:16.120 already she's already dead uh but amongst her possessions she had a book about kit carson

00:27:21.520 you know who came and saved people and you know that was just like one of those moments like he he

00:27:26.140 couldn't live up to the legend and right yeah yeah yeah that's that is a famous story and it's it's

00:27:32.340 a hundred percent true it's almost it's a fabulous you know like something that seems so it seems like it is a

00:27:42.740 made-up story but it is true he got the assignment essentially to go find this woman who had been

00:27:50.580 kidnapped by hickory apaches on the on the plains and he spent nearly a week tracking her across

00:27:59.200 the staked plains and he found her but unfortunately she'd been killed as you say in her possessions they

00:28:07.020 found uh the very first blood and thunder book this these these horrible pulp westerns and in that

00:28:14.300 book in that particular story he was the protagonist and in the weird plot line of the book was that he

00:28:20.440 had gotten the assignment to go find a woman who'd been captured who had captured and kidnapped by

00:28:25.720 native americans and he went and found her and saved the day and won her you know back and brought her

00:28:33.240 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

00:28:39.220 that legend and you know of course he couldn't read the story either someone read it to him and he was

00:28:45.800 like it just uh it was like first time that he ever became aware of his own legend you know that he was

00:28:55.300 some kind of mythological figure back east that these novels were and of course this was the first

00:29:03.220 of many of these terrible novels but it is an amazing story and and ann white was her name you can't

00:29:11.960 make this up that her name was white her she'd be coming down the santa fe trail with her family 0.71

00:29:18.540 all the men in her group were killed but she and her african-american slave and her daughter 0.82

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 1.00

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 1.00

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 0.71

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 0.90

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 0.80

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 1.00

00:37:17.380 another long walk but a joyous one back to the dinay country where they they are now the largest the 1.00

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 0.99

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 1.00

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

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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

The Art of Manliness - February 03, 2021

The Epic Exploits of Kit Carson

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