Kit Carson
Christopher Houston Carson (born December 24, 1809 in Madison County , Kentucky , † May 23, 1868 in Fort Lyon , Colorado ), better known as Kit Carson , was an American pioneer. During his career in the Southwestern United States, he was trapper , guide, scout , ranchers , Indians Agent and soldier with the rank of Brevet - brigadier general .
Life
Carson went to the undeveloped western United States when he was 16. He was hired as a helper on a merchant train on the Santa Fe Trail . He spent a winter in the then still Mexican Taos and experienced the local fur trade . From 1829 he himself worked as a trapper and fur trader, first from Mexico, then from the mid-1830s for the American Fur Company . When the beaver hunt was peaking, he moved to the Arkansas River in 1840 and hunted bison from Bent's Fort .
Kit Carson became prominent as the leader of the expedition of officer John C. Frémont , who between 1842 and 1846 carried out the first measurements of the Oregon Trail through the Rocky Mountains and along the Columbia River and finally explored the Sierra Nevada . He created the first reliable map of the western land and river routes towards the Pacific . Frémont's well-written notes were very popular and made Carson a beloved hero.
Carson took part in the Mexican-American War of 1846/48 as a soldier . He served as guides and scouts for the Army of the West by Stephen W. Kearny and brought its 300 men from Santa Fe to the Colorado River, through today's Arizona and the Sonoran Desert to San Diego and Los Angeles . After the battle of San Pasqual , which the Americans lost , he succeeded in breaking through the Mexican lines together with Edward F. Beale and an Indian scout and summoning reinforcements for the trapped army. After the war he was appointed as an Indian agent for northern New Mexico. His tasks included negotiations, but also the accompaniment of campaigns against Indian peoples. In 1851 he led the negotiations, due to which the Jicarilla Apache did not quite voluntarily move to a reserve, which they soon left again. Carson then took part in a campaign against them in 1854, which ended with the defeat of the Indians with heavy losses. He achieved peaceful relations with southern bands of the Ute , the Arapaho and the residents of Taos Pueblo .
When the civil war broke out , he enlisted as an officer in a volunteer battalion in New Mexico. His unit was involved in the defense of the New Mexico campaign under Henry Hopkins Sibley , who had advanced from Texas for the Confederate to New Mexico in order to conquer the gold fields of Colorado.
The absence of the regular army due to the civil war used the Diné (Navajo) from 1861/62 for a guerrilla war against settlers and ranchers. Carson, called "Rope Thrower" by the Indians and favored by the indigenous tribes until then, was hired by the California Column , "Star Chief" James Henry Carleton, to put down their rebellion. Carson, who entered the service of the Union Army to fight the Confederates but not the Indians, initially refused the contract. He sent Carleton a resignation, but then gave in and made himself available. From the summer of 1863 Carson waged a brutal war of extermination in which he systematically destroyed the fields and the food sources of the Diné. In the winter of 1863/64 he besieged the last warriors in the Canyon de Chelly , into which they had retreated. In January the Diné gave up and were sent on the Long March . They had to walk around 500 km from northeast Arizona to the mandatory reserves in barren parts of New Mexico. Carson was not involved; he then led minor skirmishes in Texas in which the Kiowa , Komantschen and Cheyenne were subdued in late 1864.
The time of the great Indian Wars came to an end, and Carson was given command of Fort Garland, Colorado. He oversaw United States relations with the Ute Indians of the area and became their political advocate. He died on May 23, 1868 in Fort Lyon, Colorado.
Kit Carson was married twice, in 1841 to a Cheyenne who left him shortly afterwards. In 1842 he married the Spanish-born Josefa Jaramillo from a prominent family in Taos. They had eight children. Jaramillo died of puerperal fever after the last birth, just a month before Carson's own death.
Honors
The capital of the US state Nevada was named Carson City in his honor . In the east of the state of Colorado there is the Kit Carson County district , in Cheyenne County , Colorado, there is a small settlement called Kit Carson and in the south of the state the mountain peak Kit Carson Peak is named after him. In Spokane County , State of Washington , there is another Mount Kit Carson . Furthermore, the Carson National Forest and the Kit Carson Memorial State Park in the state of New Mexico were named after him. The Carson River flows from California to Nevada, and an army post in Colorado Springs is called Fort Carson .
In 1850 Carson became a member of the Freemasons ' Union , his lodge ( Montezuma Lodge No. 109 ) is located in Santa Fe .
media
The legend of Kit Carson began before his death. He has published over 25 novels from Kit Carson, Prince of the Gold Hunters (1849) to Kit Carson, King of Scouts (1923).
Even in the days of the silent movies , there were four westerns with Kit Carson's invented adventures. A serial from 1933 ( Fighting with Kit Carson ) was edited into several movies. In 1940, the movie Red Devils was made around Kit Carson by George B. Seitz . From 1951 to 1955, Kit Carson saw his adventures in the television series The Adventures of Kit Carson and Disney released Kit Carson and the Mountain Men in 1977
Various comic albums with invented adventures by Kit Carson were published in the USA from 1931 onwards, and over 350 different adventure stories were also published in England from the 1950s onwards. The German Walter Lehning Verlag published a biweekly comic book Wild West series entitled Kit Carson, Meisterscout des Wild Westens in 16 issues from 1966 to 1967.
literature
- Dee Alexander Brown: Bury my heart at the bend of the river. (Original title: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. An Indian History of the American West. Translated by Helmut Degner). Knaur, Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-426-62804-1 .
- Dietmar Kuegler : I'm moving with the eagles - Kit Carson - an American hero . Publisher for American Studies, Wyk auf Foehr 2016, ISBN 978-3-89510-140-3
- Carson, Christopher . In: James Grant Wilson, John Fiske (Eds.): Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography . tape 1 : Aaron - Crandall . D. Appleton and Company, New York 1887, p. 540 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
Web links
- De Witt C. Peters: The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself (1858) in Project Gutenberg
Individual evidence
- ^ Carson, Christopher . In: Eugen Lennhoff, Oskar Posner, Dieter A. Binder: Internationales Freemaurerlexikon . Revised and expanded new edition of the 1932 edition. Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7766-2161-3 , pp. 271, 951 pp.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Carson, kit |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Carson, Christopher Houston (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American pioneer and trapper |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 24, 1809 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Madison County , Kentucky |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 23, 1868 |
| Place of death | Fort Lyon , Colorado |