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SOME PAGES FROM MY ‘BOOK
KIT CARSON, THE PATHFINDER.
By William S. Birge, M. D.
The Fascinating Story of a Great American—
He Preceded Governor John C. Fremont
—A Brave and Patriotic Man—
He Saved a Command.
CHAPTER I.
There are two tests of true heroism. One
is that of time, and the other that of friend
ship. Kit Carson stood the test of both—he
is as heroic today as he was yesterday, espe
cially in aie eyes of men living today who
knew him.
He was born in Madison county, Kentucky,
December 24, 1809. His father moved to Mis
souri when Kit was but one year oid. His
life witnessed the closing days of Western
adventure, so-called, and the opening days of
Wetsern civilization.
Fremont has been called the “Great Path
finder,” yet he did not begin his explorations
till 1842. For a decade before that the West
had been tramped across by a race of men
peerless in their daring, chief among whom
was a small, gentle, modest, blue-eyed man.
who was really their leader. This men was
Kit Carson, he might better have had the
title, “Pathfinder.”
Carson was great in many ways—as an ex
plorer, as a guide, as a hunter, as a fighter,
and as a peacemaker with the wild tribes
He is also entitled to be called one < f the
greatest of American travelers. The West in
those days was tremendous in extent, and dif
ficult of access. Some of the jorneying in
those days were well calculated to educate him
for those deeds which later gave him a na
tional fame.
Kit was apprenticed to a saddler near his
home in Hartford county, Missouri, in 1826.
He soon tired of this life, and while still but
a boy he ran away from home and joined a
party of hunters and traders and made his
way with them to Santa Fe, which he reached
in the late fall of that year. He spent the
winter with an old hunter, and in the spring,
feeling somewhat homesick, he started back
East without a penny in his pockets. Five
hundred miles east of Santa Fe, he met an
other band of traders westbound; hired out
to them as teamster, and presently reached
Santa Fe again. He next hired out as cook
to Ewing Young, and continued in this posi
tion until 1828. Again he started East, again
failed to get farther than before, and joined
another westbound party, to reach Santa Fe
for the third time. He had acquired a fair
knowledge of Spanish and engaged as inter
preter for Colonel Tramell, and wagoned it
as far south as Chihuahua, in Old Mexico.
There he hired out at teamster to Robert Mc-
Knight, moved over to the copper mines on
the Gila River, and thence moved back once
more to the Taos, which latter place was to
serve as his headquarters for the remainder
of his life. In April, 1829, he joined Young’s
party of trappers, who worked toward the
THE JEFFERSONIAN.
west, trapped on the Salt River, and reached
the head of the San Francisco. We cannot
realize today what such an undertaking meant.
Carson always remembered it, for it was on
this journey, near the Grand Canon of the
Colorado, that they bought a horse of some
wandering Indians and ate it. They were very
hungry.
This party was probably one of the first
to cross California in mid-continent. They
succeeded in reaching San Gabriel mission,
and afterwards worked north and found the
Sacramento River. They also visited the San
Joaquin Valley, and their trapping operations
were so successful that Ewing Young sold out
a large quantity of furs to the captain of a
trading schooner at San Rafael. He then
purchased a number of horses for the return
of his party eastward. A good horse band is
highly tempting to the Indians, and one night
half of their horses were stolen. But Carson
was equal to the emergency. Taking only
three men with him, he crept upon the unsus
pecting horse thieves under the cover of dark
ness, killed eight of the Indians, and brought
back all of the horses.
After many days of hard travel the party
reached Santa Fe in April, 1830, and Young
disposed of his furs, the product of the catch
on the journey home alone amounting to $24,-
000, to be divided among eighteen men. Kit
Carson was now twenty-one years old and had
already seen something of life.
In the fall of 1830 he joined the noted
Western fur trader, Fitzpatrick, with a strong
band, which visited the Platte River, after
ward moving over to Green River, on the
Pacific side of the Great Divide. From there
they moved to the head of the Salmon River,
even now one of the wildest parts of Amer
ica, and here they spent the winter. The
Blackfeet, those stern warriors of the plains,
harassed the trappers at every opportunity,
and once four of his companions were killed.
Tn retaliation for this, Carson and his men
killed seventeen Indians and captured a dozen
horses. He was accepted as one of the cap
tains of the trails. Although scarcely more
than a youth, he had fully learned his bold
and difficult trade.
The Bayou Salade, or Ballo Salade, as it
was sometimes called in those days, was in
the heart of the most dangerous Indian coun
try of the West, and on this account it was
customary for parties of considerable size to
hunt and trap there. Carson’s disposition
and fearless nature may be seen when we find
him, with only two companions, hunting the
beaver in the mountains of the range. Yet
these men were fortunate, for they returned
to Taos in the fall of 1832 well laden with
furs.
It was while trapping in the Bayou Salade
that Kit had his historical adventure with the
two bears which chased him up a tree and
which he repelled by beating them over the
noses with a branch broken from the tree.
These could not have been grizzly bears, nor
cinnamons, and it is seldom that a black bear
will climb a tree; but there is no question but
that he did have some kind of an adventure
with some kind of bears at that particular
time.
Later on we find him with fifty men pushing
on to the head waters of the Missouri River.
He was not in the employ of any company,
but was what was known as a “free trader”
in all that term implies. Bound to no one, he
was free to roam as his fancy might dictate,
a gentleman of the wilderness. You shall
hardly name any well-known western region,
any remote mountain park, any accurately
mapped western stream, which you shall not,
provided you have faithfully followed the
wanderings of Kit Carson, discover to have
been well known to this man before geogra
phies were dreamed of west of the Missouri
River.
In 1834 Kit Carson practically gave up the
life of a trapper. The beaver, that animal of
such immense importance in the fur history
of the American continent, was destined to
assume a place of far lower estimate. He,
therefore, took to hunting rather than trap
ping, and for eight years served as a hunter
at Bent’s Fort, on the Arkansas River. Here
he fed forty men regularly on the wild meat
of the plains. During these eight years he
saw the plains in all their old-time splendor,
and killed thousands of buffalo, elk and deer.
A few years previous to this Carson had mar
ried the daughter of an Indian chief, and dur
ing his engagement at Fort Bent he sent his
only child, a daughter, to St. Louis for the
purpose of acquiring an education. At a later
date this daughter married, went to Califor
nia, and apparently was lost from the scene.
Carson’s marriage later on was with a Mex
ican woman some ten years younger than him
self.
Eight years at trapping and eight years as
a professional hunter had clashed since young
Kit Carson ran away from home. He con
cluded at last that he would return and once
more visit his family. Alas! when he again
made his way back to Missouri, he found that
sixteen years had wrought many changes in
the old home, his parents were dead and for
gotten, the old homestead in the hands of
strangers, and not a friend remained to take
him by the hand. He returned to St. Louis,
where his daughter was staying, but could
not content himself there. It was during his
passage up the Missouri River by steamboat
that he first met young Fremont, then about
to start on his first trip to “explore” the
Rocky Mountains. Kit engaged at this time
to accompany him as guide, although there
was really little need of him in that capacity,
unless it was from danger of the Sioux In
dians along the highway up the Platte, as the
Oregon Trail was at that time, 1842, a plain
and well-marked highway which could have
been followed in the night. The South Pass,
which it had been Fremont’s purpose to “ex
plore,” had been well known for more than
a score of years to the traders and trappers
(Continued on Page Fourteen.)
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