On the 13th of February, having laid in a supply of provisions from the quartermaster's department, being facilitated by the generous kindness of the army officers, and having hired muleteers and a train of mules to take us down to Albuquerque, we set out for Santa Fé.
KIT CARSON, LAST OF THE TRAIL-MAKERS
By Charles M. Harvey
In his various activities, Carson played many parts, including those of hunter, ranchman, and miner.
As historians and writers of Western romance picture him, Kit Carson was solely an Indian-fighter and scout. Frontier exigencies, indeed, compelled him to be these, but he was much more. He was a sagacious civic chieftain as well as intrepid leader in war, Indian, foreign and civil; a wise counselor of red men and white; a man who touched the West's wild life at more points than any other person of any day; a man who blazed trails on which great commonwealths were afterward built, and who helped to build some of them.
Born in Kentucky ten months later than Lincoln, and seventy-five miles east of Lincoln's birthplace, Kit Carson, at an early age, was carried to Missouri by his parents. He received little school education, but learned to ride, to handle a rifle, and to trap bear and beaver on that borderline of civilization. He was set to work at a trade which had no attractions for him; and his imagination was fired by the tales of the strange and stirring scenes and deeds in the vast expanse off toward the sunset that came to him through passing hunters and traders. The Missouri Intelligencer, a weekly newspaper published in Franklin, on the Missouri River, in its issue of October 12, 1826, tells the sequel:
Notice is hereby given to all persons that Christopher Carson, a boy about sixteen years old, small for his age, but thick-set, with light hair, ran away from the subscriber, living in Franklin, Howard County, Missouri, to whom he had been bound to learn the saddler's trade, on or about the 1st 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 assist said boy, under penalty of the law. One cent reward will be given to any person who will bring back the said boy.