Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson & the Conquest of the American West

by Hampton Sides

  In general, it was said that the Mexicans were better at stealing people, and the Navajos were better at stealing animals. Whatever the case, the attacks and reprisals were simply part of the grim metronome of life, swinging with the same logic of a feud. In truth there were some on both sides, most of them aggressive young men, who rather liked these cycles of violence: They relieved boredom, they tested courage and resolve, and honed warrior skills. The Navajos and their Mexican adversaries were not accustomed to the concept of all-out war or unconditional surrender or treaties that endured beyond a season—these were European concepts. The combatants in this centuries-old war did not observe tidy declarations or cessations of hostilities. A persistent, low-grade violence was always there, a possibility lurking on the horizon, like San Mateo. It was the only life they had known.

  The Navajos were immediately aware of Kearny’s departure from Santa Fe, and they interpreted it as weakness: The Americans were already quitting New Mexico, they thought. These “New Men” would not press their demands; the great general Kearny lacked staying power.

  Emboldened, the Navajos began raiding settlements along the Rio Grande, often right under the nose of Kearny’s army as it marched south in the last week of September. Between Albuquerque and Polvadera they killed eight settlers and stole thousands of horses, sheep, and cattle. Navajo raiders were even brazen enough to follow Kearny’s own beef herd, and near the town of Algodones managed to steal a few head.

  Kearny was livid when he heard the news. The Navajos were clearly testing him. It must have seemed to him, in theatrical terms, that the villain was stealing the limelight just as Kearny was exiting the stage. It chafed the general that the Navajos had been the only major tribe of New Mexico that had refused to send envoys to Santa Fe to confer with him, and he was embarrassed that he could not make good on his promise to protect the Mexican citizenry from their age-old enemy. But his dragoons could not afford to go hunting after Navajos right now—he was on a tight schedule and had to continue his march to California. Instead, Kearny distributed a proclamation in which he noted the “almost daily outrages committed by the Navajoes” and then “authorized” the people living along the Rio Grande to form their own “war parties, to march into the country of…the Navajoes, to recover Property, and to make reprisals and obtain redress for the many insults received from them.” Kearny stopped short of urging an all-out war, however: “The Old, the Women, and the Children of the Navajoes,” he warned, “must not be injured.”

  At the same time, Kearny immediately sent back a message to Alexander Doniphan in Santa Fe ordering the colonel to launch a foray into Navajo country as soon as possible. Doniphan, Kearny instructed, was to reclaim New Mexican prisoners and livestock and do whatever the colonel thought necessary to “secure a peace and better conduct from these Indians.”

  By October 6, Kearny and his three hundred dragoons had marched 150 miles down the Rio Grande. They were eleven days out of Santa Fe and enjoying the crisp radiance of Indian summer. It was a cool, clear day, with the cottonwoods and river willows yellowing in the thick bosque that lined the river. Sandhill cranes and geese flocked overhead—the Rio Grande was a major flyway for waterfowl. They were camped just below the village of Socorro, at a little place called Valverde, which had once been a Spanish village of some importance, but had been abandoned in the wake of Navajo and Apache raids. Kearny’s men were bivouacked among the town’s adobe ruins. They had come to the end of the first leg of their thousand-mile journey to California. They had been marching straight south, following the river, but from here on they would aim west, eventually striking the Gila River and crossing the solitudes of the Sonoran and Mojave deserts.

  Sometime around midday, a tiny brown cloud appeared on the western horizon. There was a sound of hoofbeats in the distance. Horsemen, a dozen or more, emerged from the contrails of dust. They seemed to be aiming straight for Kearny’s camp. The dragoons suspected for a moment that the riders might be Navajos.

  As they drew nearer, it became clear that although some were Indians, the party was being led by a group of Americans. It was a meeting of fellow countrymen, and soon the ruins of Valverde erupted in a ruckus of halloos and the tossing of hats.

  A small leathery man slid off his mule and greeted the dragoons. Like all of his comrades, he was haggard and sun-beaten and in bad need of food. He indicated that he and his party had come posthaste from California, bearing important messages for the East Coast.

  What is your name? someone asked.

  The little man grinned as he led his mule into Kearny’s camp. “I’m Kit Carson.”

  Kearny had never met Kit Carson, but he knew who he was. The general had read about him in Fremont’s exploration reports. Carson had a home in Taos, a little adobe not far from the town square, and he was the most famous American then living in the New Mexico territory. He had been away for more than a year, on his various errands in California and Oregon, but nearly everywhere General Kearny’s forces had been, they had heard stories about the famed scout. He was a friendly phantom presence: Along the Santa Fe Trail, at Bent’s Fort, in the mercantile shops and warehouses of the capital, Carson’s name had repeatedly cropped up, usually with a smile and a colorful tale of some wild exploit in the mountains.

  Carson and Kearny greeted one another as compatriots. They must have acknowledged the strange serendipity of their encounter. What were the odds that these two men trekking from nearly opposite sides of the continent would meet in this way, that of all the possible routes across the canvas of the West, theirs would intersect?

  Carson seemed surprised and puzzled to meet three hundred soldiers of the United States Dragoons, aimed in the same direction from which he had just come. Kearny explained that all of the New Mexico territory had been conquered, without a fight, that the American flag flew over the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, and that he was now pushing west to conquer California.

  The scout tried to absorb the implications of this news. His home for the past twenty years was now part of America. His wife in Taos and her proud Spanish family had all effectively become Americans. Even now he and the general were standing on American soil. His own brother-in-law was governor.

  Carson looked exhausted, and he was thickly coated in dust from a long overland journey. For twenty-six consecutive days Carson and his party of men had ridden more than eight hundred miles from Los Angeles. They had already worn out thirty-four mules, crossing some of the most infernal country imaginable on the Gila Trail, and they still had another two thousand miles to go. They were on their way to Washington City, Carson said, to deliver important dispatches to the president of the United States.

  General Kearny was perplexed. Carson went on to explain that he had been given a temporary commission as a lieutenant and was under orders from his commanders in California to ride to Washington in sixty days or less to deliver news on the progress of the war with Mexico. California, he said, was now in American hands; the Stars and Stripes “floated in every port.”

  Kearny’s reaction to this fabulous piece of intelligence was ambiguous. As a patriot he found these developments encouraging, but at the same time he must have been somewhat miffed to learn that his work had already been done for him. New Mexico had fallen without his firing a shot, and now, it seemed, California scarcely needed his services, either. A physician traveling with Kearny, Dr. John S. Griffin, summed up the general reaction to Carson’s news. “This created considerable sensation in our party,” Griffin wrote, “but the feeling was one of disappointment and regret—most of us hoped on leaving Santa Fe that we might have a little kick-up with the good people of California but this blasted all our hopes.”

  On the other hand, General Kearny understood that California was a vast realm and that insurgent locals could rise up at any time or place—or worse, that reinforcements might be rushed from Mexico to ignite a widespread resistance. The cautious general wondered whether the dispatches Carson was bearing might convey
an overly optimistic assessment of the situation there.

  Then Kearny’s thoughts began to turn. Whether or not the fighting had ended, his orders were to push on to California and institute a new government there, just as he had done in Santa Fe. The general, however, was seriously concerned about the unmapped desert ahead of him, uncertain which route to take and whether his animals could survive the journey. Carson had just crossed the same withered terrain over which his dragoons would soon be passing. The scout knew the lay of the land and the disposition of the Indians along the route. He knew the watering holes and the grassy spots where his horses and mules might graze. He could tell Kearny which stretches were suitable for wagons and rolling artillery pieces. He knew the best places to ford the creeks and rivers—especially the Colorado, the greatest obstacle before him.

  And so Kearny needed Carson. The general recognized something about this man, a certain aura of success, that would be indispensable to his Army of the West. The general ordered him to hand over the dispatches, to be placed in another able courier’s saddlebags and taken to President Polk. The great scout had more important work to do: General Kearny wanted him to make an about-face and go back to California, as his personal guide.

  This put Carson in a quandary. He had promised Fremont that he would rush the documents to Washington, no matter what. Not being a military man, Carson preferred to ignore the hard dictates of rank—that Fremont was only a Topographical Corps captain whose wishes paled before the will of a brigadier general like Kearny. Carson’s simple frontier sense of honor had been offended. His father in Missouri had always taught him his word was his bond, and here was a man telling him to ignore his earlier promise and give the messages to someone else.

  Carson briefly agonized over what to do—agonizing being something he rarely engaged in. He seriously considered a plan to escape from Kearny’s forces under cover of nightfall and speed to Washington as planned. He thought of Josefa, whom he had not seen for nearly two years. He had hoped to surprise her for one night in Taos on his way east. If he went west with Kearny, he feared he might not get a chance to see her for yet another year. For her sake, he wanted to get back to Taos and take the pulse of the town.

  Mostly, though, he kept thinking of Fremont and Commodore Stockton. “I was pledged to them,” he later said, “and could not disappoint them, and besides that I was under more obligations to Captain Fremont than any man alive.”

  But some of the men in his party persuaded Carson not to attempt an escape. The dragoons would catch up with him, they argued, and even if they didn’t, Kearny would have him court-martialed. Besides, the general had already decided to give the messages to a courier Carson knew well and trusted, Tom Fitzpatrick, who had accompanied Fremont on several of his expeditions. Fitzpatrick could blaze the way to “Washington City” just as well as he.

  At this, Carson began to soften. Besides, Kearny was a difficult man to say no to—even for someone as stubborn as Carson. Kearny had an iron will, and, as one account put it, he showed “a resolute countenance and cold blue eyes which there was no evading.” Carson began to feel the sheer weight of Kearny’s rank bearing down on him. “He made me believe,” Carson said, “that he had a right to order me.” Kearny later recalled that although Carson “was at first very unwilling to turn back,” he was “perfectly satisfied” with Fitzpatrick taking the messages, “and so told me.”

  So Carson relented. He handed over the letters and agreed to accompany the general. The following morning, October 7, 1846, Kearny gave the dispatches to Fitzpatrick and also sent two-thirds of his dragoons back to Santa Fe to reinforce the capital. If Carson’s own assessments and the reports in the dispatches were correct, then the situation in California did not require a large force. The general would continue on to Los Angeles leading a leaner, lighter contingent of only one hundred dragoons. Carson would guide them, and he would not look back. Lt. Abraham Johnston, a young officer serving under Kearny, admired Carson’s decision. “He turned his face to the west again,” Johnston wrote, “just as he was on the eve of entering the settlements, after his arduous trip and when he had set his hopes on seeing his family. It requires a brave man to give up his private feelings thus for the public good; but Carson is one such! Honor to him for it.” Capt. Philip St. George Cooke commended Carson: “That was no common sacrifice to duty.”

  Dr. John Griffin noticed that having Carson on board discernibly improved the morale of all the dragoons. He wrote in his diary, “We put out, with merry hearts & light packs on our long march—every man feeling renewed confidence in consequence of having such a guide. From the way the Genl marched today, I should say he was on his way in Earnest.”

  Later Carson tersely summed up his decision this way: “Kearny ordered me to join him as his guide. I done so.”

  Chapter 24: LORDS OF THE MOUNTAINS

  The bilagaana were coming. Narbona did not know if their intentions were peaceful or not, but according to his scouts, a small, well-armed group of Americans had entered Navajo country on horseback, aiming due west. They would be marching into Narbona’s domain in less than a week.

  It was now mid-October of 1846. The days were growing short and chilly in the high desert. The brilliant yellow blooms of the chamisa had faded to a drab brown and the aspens were losing their leaves. Frost powdered the ground in the mornings, and higher in the Chuskas fresh snow had fallen. Narbona was not well. Perhaps his recent trip to Santa Fe had taken a toll on his decrepit body. His arthritis had flared up in the biting cold, and he was so sore he could not sit a horse.

  He was not sure how to respond to the Americans, but he knew their incursion into Navajo land could not be a good development. Probably he was aware that the younger men had been out on raids over the past few weeks—word of their exploits could not have escaped him. It had been a successful raiding season, and there was much rejoicing in Navajo country. For with so many new sheep now in the tribe’s possession, it promised to be a fat and happy winter. The time of the great feasts and nightchants was at hand; now there would be plenty of meat for everyone.

  Narbona brooded, however. Like many of the older men, he understood the repercussions of raiding. That the young braves had ventured out and stolen from the hated New Mexicans was of minor concern to him—this was what braves always had done, what he himself had done as a young man. But if the young warriors had stolen from the Americans, too, then that was cause for great worry. He would like to know more, would like to intercept the Americans before they pierced the heart of the Diné territory. But since his health did not permit him to move toward the trouble, he would have to rest in his hogan and await further word from his sentinels.

  It must have been a shock for him to learn that these strange white men were now trespassing on the Dinetah, as the Navajo called their ancient lands. During his long lifetime, his wrinkled country had known few interlopers, except for occasional parties of Mexican or Ute raiders bent on some specific mission of theft or reprisal. These raiders typically made superficial incursions, however, creasing only the periphery of Navajo country and then leaving as quickly as they came. Navajo country was a landscape so forbiddingly large that few foreigners risked traversing it, a landscape so harshly intricate that it seemed to swallow up anyone not intimately familiar with its secrets.

  But these Americans, whoever they were, appeared to be making a deliberate penetration, as though they had some larger purpose in mind. Narbona was impressed and surprised by their small number: The reports said thirty men. What a tiny, vulnerable party! These Americans must be either extraordinarily brave or else oblivious to the reality that at any moment hundreds of Navajo warriors could descend on them and easily wipe them out.

  But now the boundary described by the four sacred peaks had been violated. The bilagaana had stolen past Blue Bead Mountain, and Narbona could only wait.

  The thirty American soldiers trekking westward were led by a Capt. John Reid. They had come from Santa Fe on a somewha
t quixotic mission. In mid-October, Reid’s men had broken off from the relative safety of a larger contingent of Missouri volunteers along the Rio Grande and ridden for ninety miles, boring straight into Navajo country. Reid’s assignment was to make contact with as many Navajos as possible and impress upon their headmen the importance of meeting in a few weeks for peace talks with the American commander, Alexander Doniphan. They were emissaries, in other words, dispatched to spread the word of the summit that General Kearny had ordered Doniphan to hold. The task seemed straightforward enough, at first, but the deeper they rode into Navajo country, the more Reid and his Missourians realized that this was an absurdly dangerous foray.

  People had said as much back on the Rio Grande. Volunteer John Hughes recalled that the New Mexicans they met were “amazed at the temerity of Capt. Reid’s proceeding,” for “to enter the Navajo country with less than an army was considered by them as certain destruction.”

  Now hundreds and possibly thousands of Navajo warriors were lurking in the surrounding hills and buttes. With every step of the journey Reid could sense their searching stares, could see them hiding in the shadows or watching from the high remove of the rimrock. Stone-faced and inscrutable, they let the Americans pass through their country, but Reid knew they weren’t happy about it. They must have been intensely curious about these intruders. For some, it was a moment of first contact; many of these Navajos had never seen white men before, certainly not on their home ground.

  On October 15 a group of Navajos came forward and suggested to Reid through a translator that the person he needed to see was an old man named Narbona, their great leader. Narbona was sick, they said, and could not travel. But the headman’s camp was only a day’s ride away. Encouraged, Reid decided to stay overnight and push to Narbona’s camp the next day.