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

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Overview

In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territories claimed by Mexico. Fueled by the new ideology of "Manifest Destiny," this land grab would lead to a decades-long battle between the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistant rulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness. In Blood and Thunder, Hampton Sides gives us a magnificent history of the American conquest of the West. At the center of this sweeping tale is Kit Carson, the trapper, scout, and soldier whose adventures made him a legend. Sides shows us how this illiterate mountain man understood and respected the Western tribes better than any other American, yet willingly followed orders that would ultimately devastate the Navajo nation. Rich in detail and spanning more than three decades, this is an essential addition to our understanding of how the West was really won.

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

If you're a fan of nonfiction narratives that crackle with excitement and energy, this rip-snorter of an epic history by Hampton Sides (Ghost Soldiers) is right up your alley. Sides takes a story we think we know well (the 20-year battle for Navajo territory in America's relentless pursuit of Manifest Destiny) and turns it upside down. What shakes out are a series of unlovely facts that defy myth, confound stereotypes, and fly in the face of hallowed historical traditions. At the center of this violent, blood-soaked history stands the iconic figure of Kit Carson, an infuriating mystery of a man who understood and even respected the Navajo but betrayed them anyway. A riveting account filled with colorful, flawed characters neither wholly heroic nor villainous, Blood and Thunder is a must-read for both students and casual observers of American history.

Jeffrey Lent

The truth of history is often fickle and difficult to determine, and Sides demonstrates his awareness of this with a riveting narrative focus. Like the authors of many other recent works of popular history, Sides dispenses with footnotes but offers an exhaustive bibliography that underscores the scope of this monumental undertaking. Not only does Blood and Thunder capture a pivotal moment in U.S. history in marvelous detail, it is also authoritative and masterfully told.
— The Washington Post

More Reviews (4) Fewer Reviews

William Grimes

Like a Cinemascope western, Blood and Thunder abounds in colorful characters, bristles with incident and ravishes the eye with long, lingering pan shots of the great Southwest…as the title suggests, [it] resounds with war whoops, rifle fire and hoofbeats. Many scalps are taken, by both sides, and Carson dies on cue, with a jaunty farewell on his lips. In other words, the story always moves. In this case, that may be enough.
—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Although delivering little in the way of new information, Sides, an Outside magazine editor-at-large and bestselling author (Ghost Soldiers), eloquently paints the landscape and history of the 19th-century Southwest, combining Larry McMurtry's lyricism with the historian's attachment to facts. Inevitably, Sides's main focus is the virtual decimation of the Navajo nation from the 1820s to the late 1860s. Sides depicts the complex role of whites in the subjugation of the Navajos through his portrait of Kit Carson an illiterate trapper, soldier and scout who knew the Native Americans intimately, married two of them and, without blinking, participated in the Indians' slaughter. Books about Carson have been numerous, but Sides is better than most Carson biographers in setting his exploits against a larger backdrop: the unstoppable idea of manifest destiny. Of course, as counterpoint to the progress of Carson and other whites, Sides details the fierce but doomed defense mounted by the Navajos over long decades. This culminated in their final, desperate "stand" during 1863 at Canyon de Chelly, more than a decade after a contingent of federal troops operating under a commander whose last name of "Washington" seems ironic in this context killed their great leader, Narbona. (Oct. 3) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Two related but not interdependent epic themes run through this book: the wresting of the Southwest and California away from Mexico to make them a part of the United States and efforts by the Navajo to protect their territory from inroads by Mexico and the United States. Outside magazine editor Sides (Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission) does not give readers much guidance as to which is the principal theme or what his exact intent is here. It appears that he began with the Navajo resistance and kept adding interesting stories as he came upon them, without considering how they related to the dual theme. But he does know how to tell a good story, drawing on a wide variety of published sources. Academic libraries already have analytical works that cover all these topics. However, little has been written for the general reader on either theme, so this book fills that gap and will be useful for public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/06.] Stephen H. Peters, Northern Michigan Univ. Lib., Marquette Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Kit Carson versus the Indians-and everyone against everyone else in the Hobbesian world of the newly conquered American West. Whereas Bernard De Voto, Wallace Stegner and latter-day historian David Roberts were and are concerned with the ideas and social trends behind historical facts, this author's chronicle mostly blends just-so stories with human-interest sketches: Americans stream west into Spanish-speaking lands as James Polk ("possibly the most effective president in American history-and likely the least corrupt") urges them to empire; the Navajo people, a case study in the terrible collision of nations, fight well even though they are culturally indisposed to draw blood; and few in the war between Mexico and the United States are inclined to play by the rules, leading to such little-sung moments as the Battle of San Pasqual, which should make no gringo jingoist proud. Sides (Ghost Soldiers, 2001, etc.) has studied the historical literature diligently and turned up some engrossing tales, from the fate of mountain man Bill Williams to the exploration of the Great Basin to the circumstances of Carson's first marriage; if the details of native customs and the wealth of future senators are sometimes repetitive, his attention to what motivates people to act is refreshing, and Sides has a fine way of complicating his heroes and villains so that they emerge as flawed humans rather than misty figures of legend. And the flaws are endless, as with one fellow, for whom more than a few points on the map are named, who writes back to Washington following the death of a Navajo leader, "I very much regret that I had not procured Narbona's cranium, as I think he had the finest head I ever saw on anIndian."Popular history in the Alvin Josephy vein. Sides works material well-known to historians, but less so to general readers, into an unchallenging but informative narrative.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781400031108
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date: 10/9/2007
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 624
Sales rank: 56,727
Product dimensions: 5.18 (w) x 8.01 (h) x 1.26 (d)

Meet the Author

A native of Memphis, Hampton Sides is editor-atlarge for Outside magazine and the author of the international best-seller, Ghost Soldiers (Doubleday), which was the basis for the 2005 Miramax film, The Great Raid. Ghost Soldiers won the 2002 PEN USA award for non-fiction and the 2002 Discover Award from Barnes & Noble, and his magazine work has been twice nominated for National Magazine Awards for feature writing. Hampton is also the author of Americana (Anchor) and Stomping Grounds (William Morrow). A graduate of Yale with a B.A. in history, he lives in New Mexico with his wife, Anne, and their three sons.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

Jumping Off

In the two decades he had lived and wandered in the West, Christopher Carson had led an unaccountably full life. He was only thirty-six years old, but it seemed he had done everything there was to do in the Western wilds—had been everywhere, met everyone. As a fur trapper, scout, and explorer, he had traveled untold thousands of miles in the Rockies, in the Great Basin, in the Sierra Nevada, in the Wind River Range, in the Tetons, in the coastal ranges of Oregon. As a hunter he had crisscrossed the Great Plains any number of times following the buffalo herds. He had seen the Pacific, been deep into Mexico, pushed far into British-held territories of the Northwest. He had traversed the Sonoran, Chihuahuan, and Mojave Deserts, gazed upon the Grand Canyon, stood at the life-leached margins of the Great Salt Lake. He had never seen the Hudson or the Potomac, but he had traced all the important rivers of the West—the Colorado, Platte, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Columbia, Green, Arkansas, Gila, Missouri, Powder, Big Horn, Snake, Salmon, Yellowstone, Rio Grande.

Carson was present at the creation, it seemed. He had witnessed the dawn of the American West in all its vividness and brutality. In his constant travels he had caromed off of or intersected with nearly every major tribal group and person of consequence. He had lived the sweep of the Western experience with a directness few other men could rival.

At first glance, Kit Carson was not much to look at, but that was a curious part of his charm. His bantam physique and modest bumpkin demeanor seemed interestingly at odds with the grandeur of the landscapes he had roamed. He stood only five-feet four-inches, with stringy brown hair grazing his shoulders. His jaw was clenched and squarish, his eyes a penetrating gray-blue, his mouth set in a tight little downturned construction that looked like a frown of mild disgust. The skin between his eyebrows was pinched in a furrow, as though permanently creased from constant squinting. His forehead rose high and craggy to a swept-back hairline. He had a scar along his left ear, another one on his right shoulder—both left by bullets. He appeared bowlegged from his years in the saddle, and he walked roundly, with a certain ungainliness, as though he were not entirely comfortable as a terrestrial creature, his sense of ease and familiarity of movement tied to his mule.

He was a man of odd habits and superstitions. He never would take a second shot at standing game if his initial shot missed—this, he believed, was "bad medicine." He never began a project on a Friday. He was fastidious about the way he dressed and cleaned any animal he killed. He believed in signs and omens. When he got a bad feeling about something or someone, he was quick to heed his instincts. A life of hard experience on the trail had taught him to be cautious at all times, tuned to danger. A magazine writer who rode with Carson observed with great curiosity the scout's unfailing ritual as he prepared to bed down for the night: "His saddle, which he always used as a pillow, form[ed] a barricade for his head; his pistols half cocked were laid above it, and his trusty rifle reposed beneath the blanket by his side, ready for instant use. You never caught Kit exposing himself to the full glare of the camp fire." When traveling, the writer noticed, Carson "scarcely spoke," and his eye "was continually examining the country, his manner that of a man deeply impressed with a sense of responsibility."

When he did speak, Carson talked in the twangy cadences of backwoods Missouri—thar and har, ain't and yonder, thataway and crick and I reckon so. It seemed right that this ultimate Westerner should be from Missouri, the Ur-country of the trans-Mississippi frontier, the mother state.

Out west, Carson had learned to speak Spanish and French fluently, and he knew healthy smatterings of Navajo, Ute, Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Blackfoot, Shoshone, and Paiute, among other native tongues. He also knew Indian sign language and, one way or another, could communicate with most any tribe in the West. And yet for all his facility with language, Kit Carson was illiterate.

Although he was a mountain man, a fraternity legendary for swilling and creative profanity, Carson was a straight arrow—"as clean as a hound's tooth" as one friend put it. He liked poker and often smoked a pipe, but he drank very little and was not given to womanizing. He was now married to a Hispanic girl from Taos, Josefa Jaramillo. Slender, olive-skinned, and eighteen years his junior, Josefa possessed "a beauty of the haughty, heart-breaking kind" according to one smitten writer from Ohio who got to know her, "a beauty such as would lead a man with the glance of the eye to risk his life for one smile." Only fifteen years old when she married Carson, Josefa was a bit taller than her husband. She was a dark-complected, bright-eyed woman whom one family member described as "very well-built, and graceful in every way." Cristobal, as Josefa called him, was utterly devoted to her, and to please her family, he had converted to Catholicism.

Especially now that he was a married man, Carson gave off none of the mountain man's swagger. "There was nothing like the fire-eater in his manner," wrote one admirer, "but, to the contrary, in all his actions he was unassuming." An army officer once introduced himself to Carson, saying, "So this is the distinguished Kit Carson who has made so many Indians run." To which Carson replied, "Yes, but most of the time they were running after me." His sense of humor was understated and dry, usually delivered with a faint grin and a glint of mischief in his eyes. When amused, he was prone to "sharp little barks of laughter." He spoke quietly, in short, deliberate sentences, using language that was, according to one account, "forcible, slow, and pointed, with the fewest words possible." A friend said Carson "never swore more'n was necessary."

Yes, Christopher Carson was a lovable man. Nearly everyone said so. He was loyal, honest, and kind. In many pinpointable incidents, he acted bravely and with much physical grace. More than once, he saved people's lives without seeking recognition or pay. He was a dashing good Samaritan—a hero, even.

He was also a natural born killer. It is hard to reconcile the much-described sweetness of his disposition with his frenzies of violence. Carson could be brutal even for the West of his day (a West so wild it lacked outlaws, for no law yet existed to be outside of). His ferocious temper could be triggered in an instant. If you crossed him, he would find you. He pursued vengeance as though it were something sacred, with a kind of dogged focus that might be called tribal—his tribe being the famously grudge-happy Scotch-Irish.

When called upon to narrate his exploits, which he did reluctantly, he spoke with a clinical lack of emotion, and with a hit man's sense of aesthetics. He liked to call his skirmishes pretty—as in "that was the prettiest fight I ever saw." He spoke of chasing down his enemies as "sport." After participating in a preemptive attack—others called it a massacre—on an Indian village along California's Sacramento River, Carson pronounced the action "a perfect butchery."

By the macabre distinctions of his day, he was regarded not as an Indian killer but as an Indian-fighter—which was, if not a noble American profession, at least a venerable one. But Carson did not hate Indians, certainly not in any sort of abstract racial sense. He was no Custer, no Sheridan, no Andrew Jackson. If he had killed Native Americans, he had also befriended them, loved them, buried them, even married them. Through much of his life, he lived more like an Indian than a white man. Most of his Indian victims had died in what he judged to be fair fights, or at least fights that could have gone the other way. It was miraculous he was still alive: He'd had more close calls than he could count.

Because Carson's direct words were rarely written, it's hard to know what he really thought about Indians, or the violence of his times, or anything else. His autobiography, dictated in the mid-1850s (and turned into a biography by a tin-eared writer who has charitably been described as an "ass"), is a bone-dry recitation of his life and leaves us few clues. It was said that Carson told a pretty good story around a campfire, but his book carefully eschews anything approaching an insight. His refusal to pontificate was refreshing in a way—he lived in a golden age of windbags—but at the same time, his reticence in the face of the few big subjects of his life was remarkable. He was, and remains, a sort of Sphinx of the American West: His eyes had seen things, his mind held secrets, but he kept his mouth shut.

Christopher Houston Carson was born in a log cabin in Madison County, Kentucky, on Christmas Eve of 1809, the same year and the same state in which Lincoln was born. A year later the Carson family pulled up stakes and trekked west from Kentucky to the Missouri frontier, with little Christopher, whom they nicknamed "Kit," facing forward in the saddle, swaddled in his mother's arms. The Carsons chose a spot in the wilderness near the Missouri River and hacked their farm from a large tract that had been part of a Spanish land grant bought by the sons of Daniel Boone, prior to the Louisiana Purchase. It was known indelicately as "Boone's Lick," for the salt deposits that attracted wild game and which the Boone family successfully mined. The Boones and the Carsons would become close family friends—working, socializing, and intermarrying with one another.

Kit was a quiet, stubborn, reliable kid with bright blue eyes. Although he had a small frame—a consequence, perhaps, of his having been born two months premature—he was tough and strong, with large, agile hands. His first toy was a wooden gun whittled by one of his brothers. Kit showed enough intellectual promise at an early age that his father, Lindsey Carson, dreamed he would be a lawyer.

Lindsey Carson was a farmer of Scotch-Irish Presbyterian stock who had lived most of his young life in North Carolina and fought in the Revolutionary War under Gen. Wade Hampton. The elder Carson had an enormous family—five children by his first wife and ten by Kit's mother, Rebecca Robinson. Of those fifteen children, Kit was the eleventh in line.

The Boone's Lick country, though uncultivated, was by no means uninhabited. Winnebago, Potawatomi, and Kickapoo Indians, among other tribes, had lived around the Missouri River Valley for many generations, and they were often aggressively hostile to white encroachment. For their own safety the pioneers in the Boone's Lick country had to live huddled together in cabins built near forts, and the men tended the fields with armed sentries constantly patrolling the forest clearings. All able-bodied men were members of the local militia. Most cabins were designed with rifle loopholes so settlers, barricaded within, could defend themselves against Indian attacks. Kit and his siblings grew up with a constant fear of being kidnapped. "When we would go to school or any distance away from our house," Kit's sister Mary Carson Rubey recalled years later, "we would carry bits of red cloth with us to drop if we were captured by Indians, so our people could trace us." Rubey remembered that, even as a little boy, Kit was an especially keen night watchman. "When we were asleep at night and there was the slightest noise outside the house, Kit's little brown head would be the first to bob up. I always felt completely safe when Kit was on guard duty."

One day when Kit was four, Lindsey Carson went out with a small group of men to survey a piece of land when they were ambushed by Sac and Fox Indians. In the attack, Kit's father was nearly killed. The stock of his rifle was shot apart and two fingers on his left hand were blown off. Another man in the party, William McLane, fell in the fight and, according to one vivid account, his Indian attackers cut out his heart and ate it.

Despite many incidents like this, some Missouri tribes were friendly with the settlers, or at least found it pragmatic to strike alliances and keep the peace. As a boy, Carson played with Indian children. The Sac and Fox tribes frequently came into the Boone's Lick settlements and carried on a robust trade. From an early age, Carson learned an important practical truth of frontier life—that there was no such thing as "Indians," that tribes could be substantially and sometimes violently different from one another, and that each group must be dealt with separately, on its own terms.

Before settlers like the Boones and the Carsons arrived, the country along the Missouri River, like so much of North America, was heavily forested. To clear land for planting, pioneers would sometimes "girdle" trees—cutting deep rings around the trunks—to deaden them. But the most expeditious way for farmers to remove dense thickets of timber was to set them afire. One day in 1818, Lindsey Carson was burning the woods nearby when a large limb broke off from a burning tree, killing him instantly.

Kit was only seven at the time, and his life would be profoundly changed. Although some of Lindsey Carson's children had grown up and moved out of the house, Rebecca Carson still had ten children to raise on her own. The Carsons were reduced to a desperate poverty. Kit's schooling ceased altogether, and he spent his time working the fields, doing chores around the cabin, and hunting meat for his family. As Carson put it years later, "I jumped to my rifle and threw down my spelling book—and there it lies."

Briefly, Kit became a ward of a neighbor. Then in 1822, Kit's mother remarried, and the obstreperous boy soon rebelled against his new stepfather. At age fourteen, Kit was apprenticed to a well-known saddler named David Workman in the small settlement of Franklin, Missouri. The boy hated this close and tedious shopwork. For nearly two years he sat at his bench each day, repairing harnesses and shaping scraps of hide with leatherworking tools. Because Franklin was situated on the eastern end of the newly cleared Santa Fe Trail, Workman's clientele largely consisted of trappers and traders, and the shop was often filled with stirring tales from the Far West. This bedraggled tribe of men in their musky animal skins and peltries must have impressed the young boy mightily, and one senses how the worm of his imagination began to turn. Sitting miserably at his station with his shears and his awls and his crimping tools, transfixed by the bold stories of these feral men, Kit began to dream of Santa Fe—the name signifying not so much a specific place as a new kind of existence, a life of expanse and possibility in fresh precincts of the continent.

Prologue: Hoofbeats     1
The New Men
Jumping Off     7
The Glittering World     22
The Army of the West     29
Singing Grass     37
Blue Bead Mountain     45
Who Is James K. Polk?     53
What a Wild Life!     63
The Ruling Hand of Providence     67
The Pathfinder     74
When the Land Is Sick     81
The Un-Alamo     86
We Will Correct All This     91
Narbona Pass     94
The Uninvaded Silence     97
On the Altar of the Country     101
A Perfect Butchery     106
The Fire of Montezuma     111
Your Duty, Mr. Carson     116
Daggers in Every Look     127
Men with Ears Down to Their Ankles     134
The Hall of Final Ruin     139
The New Men     150
A Broken Country
The Grim Metronome     155
Lords of the Mountains     165
The Devil's Turnpike     174
Our Red Children     189
Cold Steel     192
El Crepusculo     206
American Mercury     229
Time at Last Sets AllThings Even     237
A Broken Country     246
The Finest Head I Ever Saw     269
The Death Knot     275
Men Without Eyes     283
Blood and Thunder     299
Monster Slayer
The Fearing Time     325
People of the Single Star     340
The Sons of Some Dear Mother     362
The Round Forest     379
Children of the Mist     396
General Orders No. 55     417
Fortress Rock     429
The Long Walk     445
Adobe Walls     458
The Condition of the Tribes     471
Crossing Purgatory     482
Epilogue: In Beauty We Walk     493
A Note on the Sources     499
Notes     503
Selected Bibliography     531
Acknowledgments     549
Index     551
Art Credits     557

Reading Group Guide

1. Were you familiar with the Navajo wars before reading Blood and Thunder? How do the book’s historical details compare with what you previously believed about the West?

2. The contradictions in Kit Carson’s personality make him an alluring figure. How was Carson able to embrace so many aspects of Native American culture, even marrying two Indian women, but nonetheless lead campaigns that crippled them? To whom (or what) was he most loyal?

3. What was John Fremont’s essential quest in exploring the West? What spurs all explorers to pursue risky journeys?

4. What do the biographical details in chapter six indicate about James K. Polk? What might have stoked his determination to claim the West? How did he manage to keep military leaders motivated, despite Polk’s ambiguous leadership style?

5. Is American literature’s love of the “noble savage,” inspired by characters such as Fremont and his pathfinder Carson (chapter nine), a thing of the past? Who are the heroes in new fiction of the twenty-first century?

6. How did the post-colonial unrest in Mexico affect U.S. attempts to purchase and conquer the West? What racial hierarchies were in place among Hispanic and Indian populations there? What is the current legacy of these conflicts?

7. Is the underlying concept of Manifest Destiny still used to justify violence around the world? What did Carson’s words and actions reveal about his understanding of divine will?

8. What does Carson’s illiteracy, paired with his knowledge of numerous languages, say about him? What distinguishes the power of the written word from the power of the spoken word, as evidenced by Carson’s enthusiasm for an epic poem by Lord Byron? Is a society truly literate if its members are not versed in more than one language?

9. Did the Texas Confederates believe they were different from (or even superior to) the Confederates fighting closer to the Mason-Dixon line? What were the stakes for both sides as the Civil War played out in the West? How did the reasons for this war compare to the reasons behind Native American warfare and raids (such as the Comanche raids on dwindling Pecos resources at the end of chapter seventeen)?

10. Why was Carson able to scorn generalizations and see Native Americans as individuals? What made him resistant to the hubris of men like General Carleton? How would you have responded if you had been a witness to both the death of Navajo chief Narbona (which closes chapter thirty-two) and the brutalization of Ann White (depicted in chapter thirty-five)?

11. In what way was the landscape a “warrior” in Blood and Thunder (as in the Washington Expedition’s encounter with Canyon de Chelly, depicted in chapter thirty-four)? How have various populations perceived the landscape of the West, from ancient populations to modern-day tourists?

12. Discuss the promises that were made to Mexicans and Indians by Americans such as General Kearny. Why did so many of the treaties and pacifist proclamations prove to be hollow? How was this lack of concern for credibility justified?

13. What did Carson seek in a wife? What prevented him from being more involved in the lives of his children? Did his first child, Adaline, fare better or worse than his other children, who were raised with less structure?

14. How did you react to the scorched-earth tactics that forced the Navajos to begin their doomed migration? How would you categorize these tactics of war? Why has the Navajos’ Long Walk, until now, been less well-known than the Cherokees’ Trail of Tears?

15. The book’s title is derived from the rousing “blood-and-thunder” pulp novels that made Kit Carson a caricature. Were fictionalized versions of his life harmful? Is exaggerated storytelling a necessary component of most cultures? Why have some Native Americans rejected historical and linguistic evidence for their global migrations, preferring to maintain dramatic myths instead?

16. Why did Kit Carson die in poverty? What does it say about Carson that his estate comprised considerable debt–owed to him by others? What are the appropriate means of measuring a life’s accomplishments?

17. What was the ultimate fallout of the history contained in Blood and Thunder? Where do Indian and American identities now stand in response to each other?

18. How would Kit Carson advise contemporary America on diplomacy and fighting terrorism? How did he balance the need to win allies with the need to be perceived as a fearsome warrior?

19. How did Kit Carson’s ideas about American Indians evolve over the course of his life?

20. Do Americans still have an emotional investment in believing that the “winning” of the West was a glorious, even heroic endeavor? How does the real story of Western conquest differ from the one we were taught in grade school?

21. During its first war of foreign aggression, the United States seized many thousands of square miles of territory from Mexico. How should this historical fact shape the current debate over Mexican immigration–especially considering that the states most keenly affected by the immigration controversy (California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas) are the very states the United States appropriated from Mexico?

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Strongmedicine

Posted February 23, 2009

more from this reviewer

Kit Carson - Forest Gump on a Mule

Kit Carson seemed to be everyplace. Everytime there was a desparate situation, Kit Carson showed up just in the nick of time and did an extraordinary deed to save the day. And the charming part of the story is that Kit Carson himself thought he was just "doing his job".

Great insight into the Indian tribes, the Mexican history of New Mexico. The amazing story is Carson riding a mule from California to Washington to deliver documents to the President and then riding back.... three times!!

A heroic story told very well.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted October 1, 2011

Amazing, jaw dropping, and heart-rending!!!

I am not a history lover but I could not put this book down! Hampton Sides is so thorough in organizing all the insighful facts of this story yet keeps it so very human and interesting. It would floor me over and over again leaving me reading passages of it out loud to my family. I had thought of Kit Carson as a sort of made-up cowboy figure. His story, and those that surrounded him, needs and deserves this masterful retelling. It left me thankful for my own life yet in awe of the wildness and hardship that much of the United States was formed within. Sides does a great job of giving equal time and admiration for both the Indians and the early settlers. I love how messy and complicated it all is. A must read!

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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glauver

Posted July 3, 2011

more from this reviewer

A Southwestern Tragedy

Hampton Sides is the rare writer who writes both literature and history in the same book. He is also balanced, fair, and sympathetic to both his Indian and white subjects. it would be easy to condemn kit Carson, General Carleton, or many of the others involved in the Navajo debacle but Sides refrains. He resists the temptation to place 21st century values on 19th century frontiersmen and native Americans. I found myself comparing Blood and Thunder to Son of the Morning Star, another western classic. Even though it sometimes tries to cover too much ground, any serious reader of history will be rewarded by a trip through its pages.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted January 16, 2012

Great read!

I didn't realize this was 553 pages. It's mind boggling all the action seen in Kit Carson's life and the travels he made throught Indian country in those hostile times. It truly depicts the personalities, the arrogance and downright stupidity of some of the army brass attempting to administer conquered territory. They are much better at fighting than monitoring and overseeing conquered people, be they Mexicans or American Indians. I highly recommend this book as historical information to all of you.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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DavidS-Albuquerque

Posted July 27, 2011

Deja Vu

Hampton Sides goes out of his way to praise Thomas Dunlay in his acknowledgements as well he should. The book is almost a twin of Dunlay's "Kit Carson and the Indians", published by the University of Nebaraska Press in 2000. Page after page and source after source apes Dunlay's work. In fact, Sides' last page in his book is almost the same as Dunlay's (sans Chapter on Conclusion) and it seems to me that he may have even got the title of his book from reading Chapter 1, page 13 of Dunlay's book. There is no new information presented here save for a few hearsay details given by Navajo informants. I was very disappointed to have wasted my reading time on something that I already read back in 2000.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted April 8, 2010

The complex history of the American West comes alive...

This book reads like a good novel. It is well researched and documented. The author is intellegent: I thoroughly enjoyed his vocabulary and command of the English language. His view was well-balanced glorifying neither the white settlers, the hispanic settlers, nor the natives. Excellent. I will seek more books by Hampton Sides.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted April 10, 2012

I learned a few things....

Very informative, very engaging and a very entertaining and easy read.
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Mosso

Posted March 4, 2012

Loved it.

Hampton Sides can really tell a story that keeps you reading. Lots of action and drama. Kit Carson was a remarkable person!
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arkie20

Posted April 6, 2011

A good read

I enjoyed this book. It was an interesting tale about Kit Carson and the interesting life he led. I love books about the old west and this was a good one.
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Anonymous

Posted March 7, 2011

Fantastic book!

I doesn't read like a history book but provides the information on one.
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cannonball

Posted June 2, 2009

I Also Recommend:

Easy Historical Reading

I really enjoyed this sweeping saga of the Old West centered on the life of Kit Carson. Although the author's "epic" treatment of history makes for occasionally jagged transitions between characters and interwoven stories, the book is fascinating as its describes the characters and their motives who pushed the US borders from sea to sea.
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Anonymous

Posted April 13, 2008

Kit Carson -- Fremont's Pathfinder

When the history of the west was written Kit Carson fur trapper, scout and explorer was there and was a part of it. Carson was born in Kentucky the day before Christmas in 1809, the same year and state of Lincoln¿s birth. He was only eight years old when his father died and out of necessity the boy picked up his rifle and hunted game. When he was thirteen his mother married and Kit rebelled. To mollify the situation he was apprenticed to a saddle maker and worked at the trade for two years before he signed on with a freight caravan at St Louis and headed west. In less than twenty years Kit Carson had proved his metal as scout, fur trapper and guide. John C. Fremont hired Carson as his guide for his first expedition that would be heading out of St. Louis to North Pass. The group left in June of 1842. The expedition successfully explored the country lying between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains on a line of the Kansas and Great Platte Rivers. Carson was also along for Fremont¿s second expedition when they explored the Oregon Trail from South Pass to the Columbia River. Most Americans thought of Fremont as the Pathfinder, but in my opinion they were wrong. I Believe Kit Carson was the real Pathfinder. The year was 1846 when Hampton Sides brought another important personality into that western struggle -- General Stephen Watts Kearny. Kearny moved his army west along the Santa Fe Trail with orders to capture and occupy the New Mexico Capital at Santa Fe. Kearny stopped off, almost as an after thought, and secured the town of Las Vegas for the American forces. Kearny made a short speech to the citizens of Las Vegas. He said, ¿From the Mexican Government you have never received protection. The Navajos come down from the mountains and carry off your sheep and your women whenever they please.¿ From the crowd reaction Kearny knew he¿d struck a nerve and went on to tell the people that from that day forward their lives and property would be protected. ¿Your enemies will become our enemies.¿ Kearny then led his army toward Santa Fe with only a halt at Apache Canyon where he held his army in check and waited out the New Mexico militia that had gathered and planned an ambush. Following a long wait the militia abandoned their position Kearny continued to Santa Fe and occupied the town without a shot being fired. General Kearny rode into the central plaza, dismounted, raised his hand and said, ¿I, Stephen W. Kearny, General of the Army of the United States have taken possession of the providence of New Mexico.¿ From the time Kearny and Kit Carson¿s first met they formed a good relationship and Carson took up the same duties for Kearny as he had performed on John C. Fremont¿s expeditions. Carson guided Kearny and his army through to California. However, at that point General Kearny and his army were worn out, the horses, mules and men all needed water and rest. But they got neither, what they got was an ambush and a fire fight at San Pasqual, which was about thirty miles from San Diego and their rendezvous point with Commodore Robert Stockton. Kearny was pinned down by the Mexicans and sent Carson and two others to try to get through to Stockton and ask for help. As it turned all three men managed to get through the enemy lines to San Diego. Commodore Stockton complied with the request and immediately sent a force to assist Kearny. Stockton¿s 100-man force broke the impasse at San Pasqual, and the opposition was broken. That defeat at San Pasqual essentially ended the fight for the West. And while it didn¿t end all the hostilities with Mexico it was a great beginning. Kit Carson was trusted by the military and as a consequence he was given the task of delivering important dispatches to Washington. Carson traversed the country several times during his lifetime and probably understood the American landscape better than any man alive at the time. Among his obvious skills as hunter, trapper and guide Kit Carson was al
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Anonymous

Posted March 10, 2008

Interesting Book

Kit Carson: a dedicated soldier and man who loved the Native American way of life. He was at the forefront of much that changed the American West. This book gives a great history of the man and the orders he carried out but I would have liked to read more about his personal life. A great beginning to learning more about Kit Carson. Now I want to read more about the other side of the story: especially from the perspective of the Navaho and Manuelito. I think it's terrible what our ancestors did to the Native Americans but exciting history to read about nonetheless.
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Anonymous

Posted January 28, 2008

Great History

Very well written and breathes life into Kit Carson..My knowledge of him was in bits and pieces..Exploring with Fremont, mountain man and the injustice visited upon the Navajos in which he was a major participant...Hampton Sides gives a full vision to the man in this book....More of a novel in form, it's hard to put it down even though you know what's coming and wish he hadn't been talked into leading the movement and gone to Fort Canby ...And so brutally executed by Carson... Really enjoyable read for history buff types and chronologically puts events and his life into perspective...One fault, at least for me, is that I'm interested in western history, have maps handy when reading and find that 'seeing' where an event is taking place and spacial relationships are important..I want to know where an event is taking place geographically....Hampton does not execute this very well ....Sometimes you know exactly where the event is taking place and sometimes not quite precise and maybe only the general area...Not good enough for me... Would have appreciated present day location ralationships in a more specific way...More maps showing events...... Given the above, still a great book...Thanks to Hampton Sides....Hope to see more from him........
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Anonymous

Posted June 11, 2007

Great New History

Great read from Chapter 1. A must for those living out West or those wanting a real, non-sensationalized picture of the American West.
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Anonymous

Posted February 5, 2007

The March of Manifest Destiny

Hampton Sides is an author with an excellent command of language, research and detail. Blood and Thunder is a well organized, well written, and nicely documented slice of approximately 40 years of American History. While ostensibly a presentation of the life, times and exploits of Kit Carson, it is more a tableau of American Manifest Destiny as lived through the actions of the participants. Like the movement which inexorably moved forward until the deed was done, this is a methodical march of a work, not boring but with a pace which doesn't waiver. I was struck by the parallel between the self-proclaimed justification for the movement based upon the logic that the redman was an inferior species, that this was Darwinism being played out, and the World War II fascist justification that being the master race allowed for the genocide of inferior species. While the American situation moved from 'An only good Indian is a dead Indian' to 'Let's provide them with the advantages of our Christian civilization', it conveniently overlooked the fact that it was that civilization that created the problem in the first place, something which was noted by the protagonist. The treatment of all this was fairhanded, not condemning. The book shows it as being what it was, without any glorification, self-righteousness or condemnation, which was one of the work's strongpoints. The only thing I was surprised at was the end, where no mention of General Sherman's battering of the lamb to show the Navajo what would happen if they resorted to their old ways after returning to their homeland. Since the book went to such great detail to present what occurred, no reference to this event I thought to be curious. All and all, this was a very fine work of a time, and events, which, if anyone travels much in the southwest, will assuredly be of interest.
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Anonymous

Posted October 19, 2006

GREAT READ

EXCITING AND INTERESTING BOOK. NOT YOUR AVERAGE HISTORY BOOK. HAMPTON'S WRITING STYLE KEEPS THE PAGES TURNING.
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Anonymous

Posted December 6, 2006

History Nearly Lost

This great book covers some pivotal points in US history that I was only vaguely aware of. I had heard of Kit Carson, but really didn't know all he had done. Likewise, I had heard of the war against the Navajo, but knew few details. This book does a great job filling in those details and much more. Mr. Sides proves that writing history for the general reader is an art, one he excels at. I couldn't put the book down. It was far more thrilling than many novels I've read.
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Anonymous

Posted December 5, 2006

Worth reading

This book is slow for the first 75 pages and I was somewhat disappointed. However, it eventually got going and I really enjoyed the remainder of this book. If you think you know Kit Carson be prepared for a suprise. What I really enjoyed is that it provides a history of an often overlooked time and place in the American experience. Overall well worth the read
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Anonymous

Posted November 5, 2006

A Grand Book

Hampton Sides has given us a multi-faceted examination of the men and forces involved in the conquest of the American West and the way of life of its original settlers. At the center is Christopher ¿Kit¿ Carson, who was a pivotal figure in the events and whose life has been so distorted by legend most today have little inkling of just how complex an individual and how heroic¿in the true sense of the word¿the man really was. There are also telling portraits of others: President James Polk, engineer of Manifest Destiny, who believed it was his nation¿s biblical right to seize real estate all the way to the Pacific, no matter who else might claim the land Stephen Watts Kearny, father of the U.S. Cavalry and one of the most underrated officers produced by this country, who Polk used to spearhead his land lust the equally ambitious John C. Fremont and his father-in-law, Sen. Thomas Hart Benton, the apostle of Manifest Destiny the energetic and interesting Brig. Gen. James H. Carleton, whose well-meaning dream of a refuge for the Navajo led them to Bosque Redondo and near extinction the great Navajo leaders Narbona, Manuelito and Barboncito, and many others. Diminutive in stature, Carson was¿as Sides describes him early on: ¿¿a lovable man¿loyal, honest, and kind. In many pinpointable incidents, he acted bravely and with much physical grace. More than once, he saved people¿s lives without seeking recognition or pay. He was a dashing good Samaritan¿a hero, even.¿ In the very next paragraph, Sides says, ¿He was also a natural born killer.¿ Carson was all of that. A humble man, a brave man, loyal to his friends, a demon to his enemies. He was a man of his times, yet stood head and shoulders above many of his contemporaries. Married to a Mexican, he shared the viewpoint of his Hispanic relatives and neighbors when it came to the Navajo and was Carleton¿s spear in driving the Dine from their homeland and on the Long Walk. Yet he loved the Ute and helped save them from the forces destroying other tribes. Sides does not romanticize. He is a storyteller, and his words keep one turning the pages no dry history this. He reveals the good and the bad about all the people in this book. It is a grand book. One that should be required reading in high schools and colleges to inform future generations of how we came to our present place in history.
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