The Way to the West / and the Lives of Three Early Americans: Boone-Crockett-Carson

which led across the waters; the epoch wherein fell the closing days of Western adventure properly so called, and the opening days of a Western civilization fitly so named. Kit Cars

it is the case, that Kit Carson

John Colter, Jim Bridger, Bill Williams, the mulatto Beckwith or Beckworth; the great generals of the fur trade, Lisa, Ashley, Henry, Smith, Sublette, Fitzpatrick, all that comp

ctically an outlived thing. For ten years the fur trade had been virtually defunct. For more than a decade the early commerce of the prairies had been waning. The West had been tramped across from one end to the other by a race of men peerless in their daring,

"American Desert" a dozen times, back and forth; had seen every foot of the Rockies from the Forks of the Missouri to the Bayou Salade; had seen all of New Mexico; had visited old Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California as we now know them; had ca

of "pathfinder." Yet this was something to which he himself would not have listened, for well enough he knew that he was not the first. Ahead of him were other apostles of the fur trade, so that even Kit Carson took

place where these qualities made one a marked man. Yet throughout the length and breadth of the Indian country this little man was more feared, single and alone, than any other trapper or Indian fighter in all the West. He was respected as well as feared. One who kn

rcing eye" is something that, as we have noted, the average writer on Western themes and Western adventures will not willingly let die. As a matter of fact, however, we are to be

life, Carson was clad in a fringed buckskin shirt, with leggings of the same material, also befringed. The shirt was handsomely embroidered with quills of the porcupine, and as

have been the typical early American rifleman of the Alleghanies. Under his right arm rested his powder horn and bullet pouch. A heavy knife for butchering hung at his belt, as we

Spanish love of display in the trappings of his horse. His saddle and bridle had trace of Mexico in their gold and silver ornamentation. His horse, be sure, was a good one

n was the greatest of all American travelers. It is almost unbelievable, the distances he traversed along with his wild fellows during those vivid years in which he forced the wil

as brought to Howard County, Missouri, by his parents. The father of Carson was a good farmer, according to the lights of his time, and a good hunter, the life of Missouri during those early times being practically that known by the blockhouse farmers of Kentucky in t

til commercial principles into the mind of Kit Carson. To his father it seemed important that he should be apprenticed to a saddler. From the saddler's stool Kit promptly fell off. It was the out-of-doors that appealed to him; the West that spoke to him, just as it had to Boone and Crockett. He

taught him something of the lore of the mountains. Perhaps a little homesick, in the spring of 1827 he started back for the East, without a penny in his buckskin pockets. He worked back homeward on the lon

Ewing Young, and continued in this interesting capacity until the spring of 1828. Again he started East, again failed to win farther than before, and joined another west-bound party, to reach Santa Fé a third time. Now he could do a b

ll his life. All this time it was Carson's ambition to be something better than a cook, or a teamster, or even an interpreter. The adventurer's blood was in his veins. It was April of 1829 when he joined Young's party of trappers, and so

then reported to abound in fur. On the seventh day's journey to the west and southwest, they reached the Grand Ca?on of the Colorado, now admitted to be one of the wonders of the

they succeeded in reaching San Gabriel Mission of California, and thence-by some very wonderful geography on the part of one or two biographers-they reached the Sacramento River. I

ses for the return East. The Indians of the Sierra foothills promptly stole certain numbers of these horses. Witness augury of the future of Kit Carson, when we read that he was detailed as the leader of a little party se

n Pedro. There was some more horse stealing, a little exchange on both sides between the whites and Indians in this line. The whites needed horses, for they had no other meat. Yet in some fashion they won up the Gila River to the copper mines of New Mexico; which, we

of one year being twenty-four thousand dollars. Kit Carson was now twenty-one years of age, and he was fully initiated in his calling. We can not appreciate these journe

Thence, along good beaver waters, they moved over to the Green River, Pacific waters, also historic in the fur trade. We find them later in Jackson's Hole, east of the range, even today the center of a great game country. Thence they moved west to the Salmon River, into a country still one of the wildest

, we see him now on the Green River, again in the "New Park" of Colorado, on the plains of Laramie, again on the long South Fork of the Platte, and presently on the Arkansas. Beseech you, let your finger ever follow on the map; and accept warrant that if your following has been honest, your ey

umber of horses. It was Carson once more, we may be sure, who was elected to lead the pursuit. Twelve Indians were killed by the young lea

These operations were carried on in the heart of the most dangerous Indian country of the West. Heretofore it had been the custom of the trappers to go in parties of considerable size, so that they might successfully meet the Indians, who even thus made affairs dangerous enough.

Kit joined him for the time, and in October of 1832 they pushed on, traveling part of the time on the old Spanish trail to California. They reached the White River, the Green River, the "Windy" River, and here, as though by special

rom the tree. The ever-wise biographer Abbott, who gravely informs us that Crockett killed "voracious grizzly bears" in the cane-brakes of Tennessee, with equal accuracy advises us that the "grizzly bear can climb a tree as well as a man." Herein we find some mystery about Carson's bear adventure. Carson

iver, a country then well known in the organized fur trade of St. Louis. We do not discover that he ever went into the regular employ of any of the fur traders. No engagé or ordinary "pork eater" he, but a companion nearly always of these independent fur traders, the ind

een, the Colorado, the Platte, the Missouri, the Yellowstone, the Arkansas,-you shall hardly name any well-known Western region, any remote mountain park, any accurately mapped Western stream whic

us. It will suffice us and serve us to remember that Carson practically closed his life as a trapper in 1834,[28] this date marking the end of eight years steadily employed by him in trapping and trading and in learning the West. In 1834 he and such companions as Bill Willi

me a place far lower in estimation. Our bold, befringed mountaineers learned that it would no longer pay to pursue it into the remote fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains. Yet the beaver had served its purpose. Following its tooth-marks on

during his eight years of hunting killed thousands of buffalo, elk, and deer. He saw the plains in all their ancient undimmed splendor, and whether he most loved the mountains or the plains he himself never could tell. Carson at an earlier time had married an Indian girl, and during h

his Western life and was ready for the third. In that year he joined a wagon train bound eastward, having determined to revisit his old home in Missouri, which he had not seen for

ce met young Frémont, then bound West to "explore" the Rocky Mountains, more especially that part of the Rockies in the vicinity of the South Pass. Frémont's guide did not materialize at

rson, a man of much greater experience and reliability, having not as yet come into his own as a guide, though forsooth there was small need of guiding on this journey. Frémont engaged Ca

e Sioux. Frémont rode across the gentle summit so long known to the fur traders, climbed the mountain that was later named for him, and returned to Fort Laramie in September, 1842. Thus e

h a message to Governor Armijo with a warning for the latter, but one hundred of the Mexicans connected with Armijo's wagon train were killed by the Texans on the historic wagon road up the Arkansas R

he habits of the wild men and wild animals of the West. Yet he seems to have gained something of that forcefulness and self-confidence which sooner or later is bou

ental expedition, by no means the first, though one of the most widely acclaimed, made its way over grounds new to Frémont but old to Carson. The first part of the journey was among the old trapping grounds along the North Fork of the Platte and on the Sweetwater, t

ver, known as the Buena Ventura, which rose on the west side of the Rocky Mountains at a point directly opposite the headwaters of the A

e was six feet of snow, and with a party the total number of which counted only two men that had ever before worn snowshoes in al

Carson, quiet, not boasting, openly confessing his ignorance of a country he had never seen, none the less in these hard conditions proved serviceable as a guide. He pushed on ahead, and from a peak of the Sierras got a glimpse of the Coast Range. H

k, such as in all his trapping experience Carson never saw equalled. Yet at last they did reach Sutter's Fort, on March sixth, 1844, two thousand miles from Fort Ha

ley, over the Sierras to the Mojave River, country long known to the traveling trappers. Here Carson and his friend Godey conducted a little enterprise of their own, undertaken in sheer knight-errantry, in behalf of

e mysterious "Great Desert," and for eight months had never been out of sight of ice and snow. Frémont was able to report upon the great Columbia River, and he and his contemporar

lue. If we were asked what was the most valuable result of this second expedition of Frémont, we should be obliged to answer that it was his mention of the great

any one else. It was to be first the fur trade, then the mining trade, then the cattle trade in the trans-Mississippi West; and after that the a

of the trans-Mississippi population. After the close of the second Frémont expedition, and during the year 1845, Carson tried to be a ranchman or farmer, pitching his tents for the time about fifty miles east of Taos. It was of no avail. Frémont called for him once more. The farm was sold f

pass over the Sierras into the valley of the San Joaquin. At last they won across, as did the earlier trappers, and again they reached Sutter's Fort in due time. A branch of the main party, that headed by Talbott, did not appear at the appoint

nant Gillespie, hot on their trail, brought the message that hostilities had broken out. In Oregon, in the Tlamath country, came the night attack in which Basil Lajeunesse and three others of the party were killed. Carson saw his companion, a brave Delaware Indian, stand

mountain man to his leader and to his country, we can scarcely overestimate them. Some idea of the confidence in which he was now held may be gathered from the fact that, aft

ime when there was not a foot of railway west of the Missouri, and when all the country from the Pacific to the Missouri was more or less occ

ked: "As the General pleases." He did not stop to visit his own family at Taos, but went back once more to lead the west-bound flag. By December third the slow column had reached California, and here it met more warlike experien

and after a perilous journey arrived at San Diego and secured the desired help. This sort of thing was nothing new to Carson. It was so severe for Beale that he went deranged, and it took him t

1847, Carson was sent once more as despatch bearer to Washington. He went light and speedy as before, met the Indians on the Gila, fought them and won through. This time he reached Washington, after his lo

way, was never ratified, although he did not know this for some months. He was sent back, four thousand miles, to bear despatches in return. He crossed the Missouri River, fought the Comanches at the Point of Rocks, got through them, pushed on west as steadily as e

ad been by all these journeyings too far racked to enable him to make this long and hazardous trip. The souls of most men would have failed them long ere this. Yet this

visit home about once in three years. It is here that he learns that he is not a lieutenant, after all; but that does not check his loyalty to the flag. He go

e, as chief actor in a quarter of a century of such traveling as was done by Kit Carson. His travels are given thus in detail that we may ha

as once more a man without an occupation. There was a lull in fighting and scouting. Having no profession except that of trapper and of guide, he cast about him and once more determined to be a ranchman. He and his friend Maxwell established a ranch fifty miles west of Taos, at what is known as Rayado or Rezado. Again he joined an expedition against the Apaches, a day and a half t

Laramie, a journey of five hundred miles.[32] After this followed some more horse stealing on the part of the Indians, yet more punitive expeditions, and consider

Cheyennes, always ambitious to acquire tax title of the plains to such valuable property as this. Carson knew that the protestations of these Cheyennes were not to be believed, and told the Indians that they could neither deceive him nor frighten him; yet with diplomacy equal to his courage, h

men was made up; and thus they sallied forth, with rifle and ax and pack and jingling trap chains, in the fashion of the past, making once more deep into the heart of the Rockies. They visited the Arkansas, the Green, the Grand, all the loved and lovable parks of the mountains. They came back through the Raton Mountains, bearing with them abundant fur. They said that it was their last trail; that

t to be the unusual one of a sheep drive to far-off California. He assembled a band of six thousand five hundred sheep, and following by easy stages along the old mountain trails with which he was so familiar, at length arrived with h

ncisco of fifty thousand souls spring up as by magic within sight of those two little hills of the Coast Range that had marked the land of salvation for Frémont and his party in their starving journey across the Sierras. He found himself a hero in this new and busy S

n was familiar with the doings of this quiet little man of New Mexico, and it was suggested that he would make a good Indian agent for the district of New

oke up the coalition between the Utes and the Apaches. It was Carson, old Indian fighter, who was one of the first to say that the Indians must be "rounded up and taught to till the s

ver a wide range of country. Behold now, therefore, our trapper, guide and scout fairly settled in life. Remember also that he was not the guide of Frémont in that last fatal, starving expedition when, blundering foolishly once more into the w

Carson's when he saw the two little peaks, far away in the Coast Range, in that other starving march of this same leader. It was to Taos that the enfeebled survivors of Frémont's di

unteers, during the War of the Rebellion. He was brevetted brigadier-general of volunteers. In the closing years of his life h

a bad fall, and had been dragged for a distance by his horse. From this hurt he never fully recovered. "Were it not for this," said he, meaning his mishap, "I might live

row escapes of this man, and then look at the quiet, modest, retiring but dignified little man who had done so much. He was one of nature's noblemen, a true man in all that constitutes manhood, pure, honorable,

ssed away. There was a struggle and a fatal hemorrhage. "Doctor-compadre,-adios!" he cried. "This

ountain men to put up the rifle. The day

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osing scenes of the fur trade, the waning of the wild West, the beginning of the new

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life story, is said to have died in N

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lorers of the Trans-Missouri. The O

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s earlier. V. Chapter IV, Vol. III; "E

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ranch of the Long Trail, later to