In 1826 an advertisement appeared in the Missouri Intelligencer:
NOTICE: To whom it may concern: That Christopher Carson, a boy about sixteen years old, small of his age, but thickset, light hair, ran away from the subscriber, living in Franklin, Howard County, Mo., to whom he had been bound to learn the saddler’s trade, on or about the first day of September last. He is supposed to have made his way to the upper part of the State. All persons are notified not to harbor, support, or subsist said boy under penalty of the law. One cent reward will be given to any person who will bring back the said boy.
(Signed) David Workman
The measly reward leads one to suspect that Christopher’s master did not greatly value his services and had not seen any signs of future greatness in him.
Kit Carson was born in 1809. When he was still a child, his family moved from Kentucky to Missouri. In appearance Kit was unprepossessing, only about five feet four inches tall, but “endowed with extraordinary elasticity.” He had light-colored eyes and sandy, shoulder-length hair. Some said that he was bowlegged. His voice was as gentle as a girl’s. Kit was something of a dandy. His hunting shirt was fringed and richly embroidered with designs of beadwork and porcupine quills. His horses were always richly accoutered. Unlike his fellow trappers, Kit was clean-shaven.
The little chap was versatile—a sometime saddler’s apprentice, teamster, hunter, pathfinder, scout, guide, trader, Indian fighter, amateur surgeon, farmer, rancher, and soldier, rising to the rank of brigadier general. Above all else he was a beaverman, the very embodiment of a Rocky Mountain trapper.
When Kit was fifteen, his father apprenticed him to the worthy saddlemaker. He stood it for about two years, “but mourning over the awl, the hide of new leather, the buckle and strap” did not “shine” for him. The wee lad yearned, as his biographer said, “for the glorious shade of mighty forests; the wild battle with buffalo and bear; the crack of the unerring rifle, pointed at the trembling deer.” At age seventeen he abruptly fell off his saddler’s stool and lit out in search of adventure. He started inauspiciously as a teamster on the Santa Fe Trail, but soon became the eminent supertrapper, known as the “Monarch of the Prairie,” and the “King of Pathfinders.” Fanciers of other peoples’ horses called him the “Thief-taker.” At the height of his fame a prominent Londoner remarked that, as a result of books written about him while he was alive, Kit was better known in England than the Duke of Wellington, possibly a slight exaggeration. His fellow trappers simply called him Kit, which suited him fine.
He unceasingly roamed the whole length and breadth of the American West, covering immense distances without benefit of railroad or stagecoach. For years he never saw the face of a white woman or slept under a roof. Like many other western heroes, Carson was the subject of many “adorned” tales. An early writer described one of Kit’s scrapes with Indians:
Discharging his rifle and pistols at the first he came to, Carson raised himself in his stirrups, and swinging the former weapon over his head, with as much apparent ease as if it were a mere whisp, he brought it down upon the dusky horde around him with fatal effect. Not less than a dozen in the space of twice as many seconds bit the dust beneath its weight, while his horse, madly rearing and plunging, trod down some four or five more.
Swinging his heavy Hawken like a “whisp” must have been quite an effort for the diminutive Monarch of the Prairie, weighing all of 125 pounds.
On another occasion Kit’s small party was attacked by a band of over a hundred Comanches. As the distant drumming of their ponies’ hooves reached his ears and his eyes caught the glint of their lance points, Kit, quick as lightning, whipped out his bowie knife and slit the throat of his own horse, pulling the thrashing animal to the ground, using its still-twitching, blood-spurting body as a rampart behind which he crouched, resting his Hawken on the still-warm corpse. Instantly grasping his intent, Kit’s companions, just as quickly, cut the throats of their horses and mules, doing their ghastly work in such a way that the bodies formed a circle inside which they took cover. As the mass of Comanche horsemen charged upon their, as they thought, easy prey, they themselves fell prey to the trappers’ terrific volley, which toppled them by the score from their rearing, terrified ponies, maddened by the scent of reeking blood from the trappers’ slaughtered mules and horses. A second salvo convinced them that they had picked the wrong men to furnish trophies for their scalp poles, and they galloped off even faster than they had come.
There was romance mingled with danger in Kit’s life. “His heart had spoken,” as the Indians were wont to say, meaning that he had his eye on a dusky bundle of loveliness, an Arapahoe lass named Singing Grass. It happened during one of the annual rip-roaring, murderously exuberant rendezvous of the mountaineers, an occasion for drunken orgies, extravagant gambling, wild horse races, epic fisticuffs, and a frantic search for woman flesh.
There was a fly in Kit’s ointment in the shape of a gigantic, red-bearded Canadian voyageur, with a jaw like a bear trap, named Shunar. This unwholesome specimen, six and a half feet in his moccasins, was a much feared ruffian and fire-eater, always on the prowl for likely victims of his brutality, always boasting of the many men he had personally sent to the happy hunting grounds. He announced that he was wolfish, intent to crush some bones and bite some fellow’s head off. He was searching for a worthy subject. Frenchmen were too soft. He had already disposed of too many Injuns. Americans were no fun either. He’d get himself a pliant branch and switch them. Thus he went around swearing, cussing and bellowing, making a great nuisance of himself.
This blustering behemoth, likewise, had taken a shine to Singing Grass, trying to seduce her with baubles and foofaraw, such as glass beads and vermilion ribbons. When this did not have the desired effect, he tried to rape the girl. In this he also failed, despite his enormous size and strength, because of the hair rope the girl wore between her thighs as a sort of native chastity belt. He went at it like a mad bull, but he could not hold Singing Grass down while at the same time trying to untie the rope. His wolfish mood was not improved when he discovered that the Arapahoe girl had permitted Kit to get rid of the impediment.
Shunar swaggered around the camp, swearing to have Kit for breakfast, calling him a bougre and a berdache, a fellow playing the woman to degenerate trappers. Kit’s early biographer, Doctor De Witt Peters, discreetly omits all references to the Arapahoe beauty and describes what happened in his own Victorian way:
Among the men congregated at the rendezvous, there was a Captain Shunar, a powerful Frenchman. The Captain was exceedingly overbearing in his intercourse with all around him. Upon the slightest pretext, he was sure to endeavor to involve some of the trappers in a fight. The result was that he was heartily despised by all, although, for the sake of peace, he was allowed to go unmolested. One day his conduct was particularly offensive to the entire command; for, after having had two fist fights with a couple of weak and inoffensive men, he commenced boasting that he could easily flog all the Frenchmen present; and, as to the Americans, he said that “he could cut a stick and switch them.” Such actions and manners, at last, attracted Kit Carson’s notice and caused him to be greatly annoyed. He thought the matter over and concluded that if Captain Shunar was allowed to gather many more such detestable laurels, he would soon become even more bold and troublesome. As no other member of the company seemed disposed to put a check upon such unmanly behavior, he quietly determined to make the affair his own.
An opportunity soon presented itself. A number of the company had congregated together and were engaged in conversation, when Captain Shunar began anew his bullying language; this a little more boisterous than usual. Kit Carson, advancing into the centre of the company and placing himself in front of the Captain thus addressed him:
“Shunar, before you stands the humblest specimen of an American in this band of trappers, among whom there are, to my certain knowledge, men who could easily chastise you; but, being peaceably disposed, they keep alo
of from you. At any rate, I assume the responsibility of ordering you to cease your threats, or I will be under the necessity of killing you.”
To this Captain Shunar did not reply; but immediately after Kit Carson had closed his remarks, he turned upon his heel and walked directly for his lodge.
Kit Carson was too well versed in trapper rules not to read the meaning of this action. He, therefore, walked off also, but, in the direction of his own lodge. In a brief space of time, both men appeared before the camp, each mounted on their respective horses. The affair had drawn together the whole band, and they were now, quietly, so many witnesses of the facts here recorded.
Captain Shunar was armed with his pistol and rifle. Kit Carson had taken merely a single-barrel dragoon pistol which happened to be the first weapon that had fallen in his way, because of his hurry to be on the ground. The two men now rapidly rode towards one another, until their horses’ heads almost touched, when both horsemen reined up, and Kit Carson addressed Captain Shunar as follows:
“Am I the person you are looking for?”
Captain Shunar replied, “No!”
It was apparent that this reply of Captain Shunar was a falsehood; for, while giving it utterance, he raised his rifle in the act of shooting, bringing it to his shoulder and covering his antagonist. Before, however, Captain Shunar could discharge his gun, the ball from Kit Carson’s pistol shattered his forearm, causing the rifle to tilt upwards, which changed the direction of its contents in such a way that Kit Carson received a wound in his scalp while the powder severely burned his face.
It was the universal opinion of the spectators of this event that both parties of this unhappy scene fired nearly at the same instant. The facts of the case show very plainly, first, that Captain Shunar intended to kill his antagonist. Why did he aim at Carson’s breast? Second, that Kit Carson’s shot was delivered perhaps a second or two in advance of Captain Shunar’s; third, that Kit Carson did not desire to kill his antagonist, but merely to save his own life by disabling his adversary.
Things were not quite as neat and elegant as in this account. Shunar’s language was a good deal more colorful. Kit Carson, by his own account, did not say, “I will be under the necessity of killing you,” but instead offered to rip his opponent’s guts out. In addition, as some witnesses maintained, he reloaded his pistol and finished off the Frenchman for good.
A less bloody embroidered story tells of Kit’s pet beaver: “It war a whopper. That beaver slept ev’ry nite with Kit in his tent, an’ when Kit left for the day to do his trappin’, that doggone beaver fell to work and make a dam acrost the floor usin’ chists and possible bags and whatever foofaraw he could find. That thar beaver was as nigh human bein’ as any trapper.”
Eventually, Kit married his little Arapahoe squaw, who bore him a daughter whom he later had properly brought up in St. Louis. Singing Grass died of mountain fever when the child was still a baby. Carson then married a lively señorita from Santa Fe and settled down as a rancher in Taos. He died in 1869 at Fort Lyon, Colorado, of heart failure. Calmly awaiting the end, his last words were “I am gone, Doctor! Compadre, adiós!”
Kit Carson and the Grizzlies
One quiver ran through the frame of the beautiful elk when he breathed his last. The echoing sound of the rifle shot had hardly died away, to which the true hunter ever listens with unfeigned pleasure as the sweetest of music to his ear, when the last faint melody was broken in upon and completely lost in a terrific roar from the woods directly behind him. Instantly turning his head to note the source of this sound, the meaning and cause of which he well knew by his experienced woodman’s ear, educated until its nicety was truly wonderful, he saw two huge and terribly angry grizzly bears. As his eye first rested upon these unwelcome guests, they were bounding towards him, their eyes flashing fiery passion, their pearly teeth glittering with eagerness to mangle his flesh, and their monstrous forearms, hung with sharp, bony claws, ready and anxious to hug his body in a close and most loving embrace. There was not much time for Kit to scratch his head and cogitate. In fact, one instant spent in thought then would have proved his death warrant without hope of a reprieve. Messrs. Bruin evidently considered their domain most unjustly intruded upon. The gentle elk and deer mayhap were their dancing boys and girls; and, like many a petty king in a savage land, they may have dined late and were now enjoying a scenic treat of their ballet troupe. At all events Kit required no second thought to perceive that the monarchs of the American forest were unappeasably angry and were fast nearing him with mighty stride. Dropping his rifle, the little leaden bullet of which would now have been worth to him its weight in gold could it by some magic wand have been transferred from the heart of the elk back into its breech, he bounded from his position in close imitation of the elk, but with better success. The trees! he hoped and prayed, as he fairly flew over the ground with the bears hot in chase, for one quick grasp at a sturdy sapling. By good fortune, or special Providence, his hope, or prayer, was answered. Grasping a lower limb, he swung his body up into the first tier of branches just as passing Bruin brushed against one of his legs. Bears climb trees and Kit Carson was not ignorant of the fact. Instantly drawing his keen-edged hunting knife, he cut away for dear life at a thick short branch. The knife and his energy conquered the cutting just as Messrs. Bruin had gathered themselves up for an ascent, a proceeding on their part to which Mr. Carson would not give assent. Mr. Carson was well acquainted with Messrs. Bruin’s pride in, and extreme consideration for, their noses. A few sharp raps made with the severed branch upon the noses of the ascending bears, while they fairly made them howl with pain and rage, caused them hastily to beat a retreat. This scene of ascending, getting their noses tickled and again descending, howling with pain and rage now kept Messrs. Carson and Bruin actively busy for some time. The huge monsters and monarchs of the mountains were determined not to give it up so quickly. Such a full and fair chase and to be beaten by a simple white man on their own domain! This evidently galled their sensitive natures. It is true the roaring of the bears in his rear had stimulated Mr. Carson in the race, so much, that he undoubtedly ran at the top of his speed; and, being naturally, as well as by long practice, very fleet of foot, he had managed to outstrip his pursuers in the race. It is true he had made short work of climbing the tree and here again had very innocently beaten the bears at their own game and one in which they took great pride. It is more than probable that the bears were in too good a condition to run well. Had it been early springtime they would doubtless been much lower in flesh. That was their own fault too; they should have known that racing time cannot be made on high condition. After leaving their hibernating quarters they should have been less given to a sumptuous habit at the table.
Affairs were, however, by no manner of means settled. They had the daring trespasser on their domain treed, and almost within their reach; and, indeed, to keep out of the way of their uncomely claws, Kit was obliged to gather himself up in the smallest possible space and cling to the topmost boughs. The bears now allowed themselves a short respite for breathing, during which they gave vent to their wrath by many shrill screeches. Then they renewed their endeavors to force the hunter from his resting place. Mounted on their hind paws, they would reach for him; but, the blows with the stick, applied freely to their noses, would make them desist. In vain did they exhaust every means to force the man to descend; he was not to be driven or coaxed. The hard knocks they had sustained on their noses had now aroused them almost to madness. Together they made one desperate effort to tear Kit from the tree. As in all previous attempts, they were foiled, and their ardor dampened and cooled by the drumming operations upon their noses, which this time was so freely and strongly applied upon one of them as to make him lachrymate and cry out with pain. One at a time they had been out of sight and hearing for some time so that Kit considered it safe to venture down from the tree; when, he hastened to regain and immediately reload his rifle.
Thus ended an adventure in whic
h Kit Carson considers that he failed to lose his life and limb by the narrowest miss that ever occurred to him.
Run for Your Life, White Man!
The saga of John Colter is one of great courage, superhuman endurance, and a great deal of luck. Born in 1775, in Virginia, Colter moved to Kentucky and, in 1804, set out for the unknown, unmapped West as a member of Lewis and Clark’s famous scouting expedition, one of nine “Kaintuck fellers, blessed with an open and pleasing countenance.” He took to the prairies like a duck to water, possibly the first white man to get a glimpse of the Tetons and to cross a forbidding region of spouting geysers and bubbling, boiling sulphur springs known ever since as Colter’s Hell.
By 1807 John Colter had become a hardy, accomplished trapper, determined to make his fortune in beaver plews. At first, he did his hunting along the upper Missouri, but when this area became trapped out, he began looking for richer beaver grounds.
Beaver was plentiful in the country of the “Terrible Blackfeet,” so named because they would not suffer a white man to invade their hunting grounds and live. In 1808, in company with a fellow trapper named Lemuel Potts, Colter entered the forbidden land. He took more chances than others to have his hair lifted because, as one of Lewis and Clark’s men, he had shot and killed a Blackfoot brave whom he had caught in the act of horse stealing. The danger was great, but the lure of prime beaver pelts at five dollars a piece was greater. Colter and Potts exercised extreme caution, always setting their traps after nightfall and gathering in their catch before sunrise. During the day they remained hidden among the cottonwoods and underbrush lining the banks of all western streams. One morning at daybreak the two men were paddling their birchbark canoe along the Jefferson fork of the Missouri, examining their traps. On both sides rose riverbanks so high that they were not able to see the plains above.
Legends and Tales of the American West Page 12