Blog Dog Dan: WHAT'S MAJOR TOM THINKING ABOUT TODAY?

I'm thinking it's time for me to mosey on in here and jump on this "bandwagon" to tell you all about Christopher "Kit" Carson (1809-1868). Born on Christmas Eve in 1809 in Kentucky, he spent most of his childhood in Boone's Lick, Missouri. The Carson family settled on a tract of land owned by the sons of Daniel Boone.

At the age of 16, he joined a group of traders that were on their way to Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was taught the skills of trapping by Matthew Kinkead and began learning the necessary languages, becoming fluent in Spanish, Navajo, Apache, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Paiute, Shoshone, and Ute. Through the next 15 years, he became an experienced frontiersman, guide, and fur trapper, traveling as far west as California, into the Rocky Mountains, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. He gained popularity as John C. Frémont's guide from 1842 to 1846, leading expeditions on the Oregon Trail and into the Sierra Nevada. During his expeditions in the Sierra Nevada, Frémont became the first American to see Lake Tahoe. Many of Carson's accomplishments were popularized in Dr. De Witt C. Peters' 1858 book, The Life and Adventure of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains (nestor meaning "a leader in his field").

In 1836, Carson married an Arapaho Indian woman named Singing Grass, and they had two daughters, only one of whom survived (Adeline, born in 1837). After his first wife died, he married a Cheyenne Indian woman named Making-Our-Road in 1841. Shortly afterward, she followed her tribe in migration, and Carson took his daughter back to St. Louis, Missouri. For the next eight years, Carson split his time between his daughter in St. Louis and his trapping duties in Taos, New Mexico. At age 34, Carson married his third wife, 14-year-old Josefa, on February 6, 1843. They had eight children together, the descendants of whom remain in the Arkansas Valley of Colorado.

Carson served in the American-Mexican War as a dispatcher from 1846 to 1848. By 1849, he had settled near Taos to farm and do occasional scouting for army units fighting hostile tribes. Carson also served in the Office of Indian Affairs, first as an agent and then as a superintendent of Indian affairs for the Colorado Territory. In 1854, he became the agent for several southwestern tribes. For years, Carson worked to keep peace and to ensure fair treatment of Native Americans.