Dear Old Kit
Dear Old Kit

Author: Harvey Lewis Carter

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 1968

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780806122533

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Figure of Kit Carson strides through the literature of the American West in heroic size. Trader, trapper, scout, brigadier general of New Mexico Volunteers, and many other things besides, he has appealed to the public imagination as no other frontiersman has. Many biographies and who versions of his “autobiography” have been published. Yet much of the legend still remains to be separated from the facts, declares the author of this new biography. “I am an admirer of Carson,” says Mr. Carter, “and have no wish deliberately to debunk him, but I am interested in correcting the statements of uncritical hero worship many by many writers.” Kit is allowed to speak for himself, as far as possible, through an exact transcription of his dictated reminiscences made from the manuscript in the Newberry Library, Chicago. Persons and places are clearly identified, and Kit’s slips of memory are corrected in the definitive annotation of his account. One hundred years of speculation about the identity of the man who transcribed Carson’s story is ended. Mr. Carter has established positive identification, based on carefully assembled facts. A new assessment of Kit’s character and reputation is included, as well as an annotated account of the last years of his life.

On the Borders of Love and Power
On the Borders of Love and Power

Author: David Wallace Adams

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2012-07-09

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 0520951344

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Embracing the crossroads that made the region distinctive this book reveals how American families have always been characterized by greater diversity than idealizations of the traditional family have allowed. The essays show how family life figured prominently in relations to larger struggles for conquest and control.

A Life Wild and Perilous
A Life Wild and Perilous

Author: Robert M. Utley

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2015-09-15

Total Pages: 558

ISBN-13: 1627798838

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“[This] richly documented book is the definitive study of the decisive role mountain men played in the exploration and expansion of the Western frontier.” —Jay P. Dolan, The New York Times Book Review Early in the nineteenth century, the mountain men emerged as a small but distinctive group whose knowledge and experience of the trans-Mississippi West extended the national consciousness to continental dimensions. Though Lewis and Clark blazed a narrow corridor of geographical reality, the West remained largely terra incognita until trappers and traders—such as Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Tom Fitzpatrick, and Jedediah Smith—opened paths through the snow-choked mountain wilderness. These and other Mountain Men opened the way west to Fremont and played a major role in the pivotal years of 1845–1848 when Texas was annexed, the Oregon question was decided, and the Mexican War ended with the Southwest and California in American hands—thus making the Pacific Ocean America’s western boundary.

After Lewis and Clark
After Lewis and Clark

Author: Robert M. Utley

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2004-01-01

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 9780803295643

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 1807, a year after Lewis and Clark returned from the shores of the Pacific, groups of trappers and hunters began to drift West to tap the rich stocks of beaver and to trade with the Native nations. Colorful and eccentric, bold and adventurous, mountain men such as John Colter, George Drouillard, Hugh Glass, Andrew Henry, and Kit Carson found individual freedom and financial reward in pursuit of pelts. Their knowledge of the country and its inhabitants served the first mapmakers, the army, and the streams of emigrants moving West in ever-greater numbers. The mountain men laid the foundations for their own displacement, as they led the nation on a westward course that ultimately spread the American lands from sea to sea.