The Westward Movement

by Unknown

David Workman.

Six years earlier than this, on the banks of the Missouri, and a hundred miles east of Franklin, died Daniel Boone. In the retrospect, Carson's name naturally associates itself with Boone's. On a broader field, in the face of obstacles and perils equally formidable, with a greater variety of resources, and with a far readier adaptability to rapidly changing conditions, Carson continued the rôle of empire-builder which Boone had begun.

Kit Carson.

In 1826, the only States west of the Mississippi were Missouri and Louisiana, and these, with the Territory of Arkansas, contained not much more than a third as many inhabitants as a single city of that region, St. Louis, has in 1910. Our present Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and California, with parts of Colorado and Wyoming, belonged to Mexico, and, with Mexico, had just broken away from Spain. Oregon, Washington and Idaho, with large portions of Wyoming and Montana, were in controversy between the United States and England, and were to remain in that condition for twenty years longer. West and southwest of the Missouri, and on its upper waters for hundreds of miles east of that river, roamed some of the most warlike and powerful Indian tribes of North America. Except that, in the interval, the capital of the southwest territory had swung from Madrid, Spain, to Mexico, no perceptible change had taken place on the western frontier since the days, twenty years earlier, when Lewis and Clark explored the region from the mouth of the Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia; or since Captain Zebulon M. Pike, seeking the sources of the Red River, entered Spanish territory unawares, in the southern part of the present Colorado, and was carried a prisoner before Charles IV's governor-general at Santa Fé. In no age or land did adventure ever offer a more attractive field to daring and enterprise than that which spread itself out before young Carson at the moment when, fleeing from the little saddler's shop, he plunged into the current of the stirring life off to the westward.

First as a teamster on the Santa Fé Trail, of which Franklin was then the eastern terminus, then as a worker at the copper mines on the Gila, and afterward as a hunter, trapper, and guide across the West's wide spaces, Carson traversed a large part of the region from the Missouri to the Sacramento, from the Gulf of California to the upper reaches of the Columbia, and, as exigencies demanded, alternately fighting, fleeing from, or affiliating with Comanches, Apaches, Sioux, Pawnees, and Blackfeet. Thus he was thrown into active association with St. Vrain, the Bents, Ewing Young, Fitzpatrick, Bill Williams, Jim Bridger, the Sublettes, and other well-known plainsmen and mountaineers of the middle third of the nineteenth century, and won a reputation for initiative, versatility, and daring which made him a marked figure among the frontier leaders of his day. Moreover, in the midst of his exciting activities he found time to marry, to establish a home, and to practise the civic virtues which, refusing to lend themselves to picturesque treatment, have eluded the writers of romance.

At this time, May, 1842, Lieutenant John C. Frémont, on his way up the Mississippi with the first of his exploration parties, fell in with Carson and induced him to enter the government service as the official guide of the expedition. He afterward wrote:

On the boat I met Kit Carson. He was returning from putting his little daughter in a convent school in St. Louis. I was pleased with him and his manner of address at this first meeting. He was a man of medium height, broad-shouldered and deep-chested, with a clear, steady blue eye and frank speech and manner—quiet and unassuming.

Carson, then a little less than thirty-three years of age, was already a national character. The association which began at that time lasted to the end of the Mexican War.

Washington, a city which saw many strange spectacles, had a novel sight on the June day of 1847 when Kit Carson entered it with letters from Frémont. In various phrase, this is the substance of what the newspapers of Washington, New York, and Boston said: Here is the man who has blazed paths for the Pathfinder from the mouth of the Missouri to the Golden Gate; who, in 1846, guided General Stephen W. Kearny's column of the Army of the West through New Mexico to the Pacific; who, when Kearny was surrounded and besieged by the Mexicans, brought Commodore Stockton's forces to the rescue; and who has just ridden from Los Angeles, nearly 4,000 miles, with a military escort for the first 1200 miles of the way, eluding or fighting Mexicans and Indians, as circumstances dictated, carrying to President Polk and to War Secretary Marcy the story of the conquest of California and of the raising of the Stars and Stripes along the Pacific coast.