OCR Text |
Show Jti ROOT DIGGERS () Ali IV i ' t-kl'i' plmas 11 a v-aMiffrwj , -sAV iff 18 Ji-ilfr js .'mot &jiXrilla AfeV I 7 By ELMO SCOTT WATSON On Christmas day' in the morning, 1809, an under-sized, tow-headed, bandy-legged, blue-eyed boy sped in:o the world squalling lustily with an uncontrolled un-controlled excitement which no later adventure could arouse In him. Small, bandy-legged, blue-eyed, and sandy-haired sandy-haired he remained to the end of his days, and to this unimpressive appear-. appear-. ance the sun added freckles. Yet this boy, typically backwoods as he was, and apparently no different from other lads of his family and community, was to exhibit such character, display such competence, and achieve such fame as distinguish few other lone adyenturers In history. f it. HUS begins the saga of a great American frontiersman, frontiers-man, as recorded in a book,' "Kit Carson The Happy Warrior of the Old West," recently pub iished by Houghton Mif lin company. The author is Stanley Vestal, otherwise other-wise Walter Stanley Campbell, a professor of English at the University of Oklahoma and a man who has had an unusual opportunity to write the final word in a Kit Carson biography. For, as he says In the preface, "I am familiar with much of the country Kit ranged over,- and with that Southwest which he made his life-long headquarters. head-quarters. I grew up among the Cheyenne Chey-enne and Arapaho Indians, the tribes with which he was most intimately associated as-sociated and from which he took his two Indian wives. And I think I have seldom missed an opportunity to talk with an old-timer who could tell me about the days and ways of America's heroic age." Among those original sources of material ma-terial he lists such, persons as George Bent, son of Col. William Bent and Owl Woman, and grandson of the Keeper of the Cheyenne Medicine Arrows; Ar-rows; Left Hand, Washee, Watan and Watonga of the Arapaho India'ns and . Wolf Chief, Burnt All Over, Roman Nose Thunder, Edmond Guerrier of the ( heyennes. In addition to these and his stepfather, James Hobert Campbell, who served on the staff of Bancroft, the historian, and spent much of his time in making investigations investiga-tions In the Southwest, the author of tills book has made use of the researches re-searches of such historians as George Bird Grlnnell, Edwin L. Sabin, H. M. Chitteneden, It. L. Thwaites and Blmche C. Grant, who last year pub lished for the first time Carson's own memoirs. As one of the "Big Four of the American Frontier" the other three are Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and Sam Houston Kit Carson has-been-much-written about. But as Mr. Vestal Ves-tal points out "Kit's first biographers mnde him oul a striking but unue- countable hero. They placed him in a spotlight which threw all the background back-ground of his age In shadow, representing repre-senting lit in as at once blameless and colorless. The effect was to make the man incredible, and to leave the read er with a hunch that the evidence '.ad been doctored. To make mViers worse, the Western Hero became commercialized, com-mercialized, and the countrj was flooded with showmn, who- -foi a consideration posed and postured and made of the Old West a cheap burlesque. bur-lesque. This sickening spectacle made us all more skeptical than ever, and Kit Carson seemed about to go the way of the 'noble lied man' In popular favor. For there was no readable 'Life' to relate the man to the charac ier of the times he lived in, no cred- ible account of the typical product ol that heroic age when trick cowboys and professional humans were as yet unknown. ... As research mops up the corners and corrects the errors of the earlier accounts of his career, it is more and more clear that the legend needs rechecking. ... It is time to retell the adventures of this great little man." And that Is what Mr. Vestal has done retold Kit Carson's adventures and projected the action of the epic story against an authentic background of the Old West in which Kit Carson lived. In the first chapter he offers an Interpretation of Kit Carson, the man and the frontiersman, which sums him up as follows: Dispassionate comparison will demonstrate dem-onstrate how worthy he is of a rank even with the best of legendary heroes. Kit Carson'e endless journeys through the wilderness make the fabled Mediterranean Medi-terranean wanderings of Odysseus seem week-end excursions of a stay-at-home; his humanity rivals Robin Hood's, in readiness to fight and In chivalry to women he rates a siege at the Round Table; his courage and coolness against hopeless odds may be matched but not surpassed by the old Norse heroes; while his prowess in Innumerable In-numerable battles all quite without the aid of invulnerable armor or the encouragement of Indulgent goddesses makes Achilles look like a wash-out. this is no idle boast; any candid reader read-er will admit It. Yet Kit was no seeker after renown. re-nown. Shy and matter-of-fact, he went about the business of his life with no notion that he was to be the archetype of the American pioneer. Before Horace Hor-ace Greeley thought of his celebrated advice. Kit had already gone West and grown up with the country. And because be-cause he did grow up with it, he left all the other mountain men behind him pathetic survivors of a dead epoch, ft was this adaptability, this superior competence, which made him the figure he remains tn the history of the frontier. When fame came, It abashed him, and he never betrayed any of the showmanship which has so cheapened the western adventurers of a later day. Kit was no boaster, no outlaw, no charlatan, no gunman. Only the willfulness of youth flung him into that endless series of scraps, expeditions, sprees, battles, adventures of every sort, making him chief actor on the largest stage whereon a heroic age ever went Its swift and roaring, way to law and civilization. He looked his part so little that on one occasion some emigrants on the Oregon Trail, having hav-ing paused to stare at the fanwus scout, went back to their wagons, hooting and laughing, too smart to be hoaxed by those who had pointed out hat insignificant-looking little man. When fame could no longer be denied, de-nied, the myth-makers went to work. They piled their legends about Kit until the man himself is hardly seen. They concealed and ignored the wild deeds of his youth, though he killed more men than Billy . the Kid; thf-y said nothing of his adventures with women, though he is known to have married three times, and twice wlth-1 wlth-1 out the blessing of the church. Not knowing how to present such a man, they manufactured a monster. On the one hand they failed to exhibit the vanning humanity of their victim: on the other they magnified his exploits, "laying it on a leetle too thick," to use Kit's own sly comment on the authorized "Life." ' The high lights In the life of Kb Carson have been told so often that they are familiar to most Americans how, when Kit was a year old, the Carson Car-son family left his birthplace in Madison Madi-son county, Kentucky, and went to Missouri; how as a small boy Kit ran wild with the neighbors' children, hunted coons and did chores about home; how he was apprenticed to a saddler at Franklin. Mo., but ran away seeking adventure as a trapper. Then followed his first trip to Santa Fe. N. ii., with the wagon train of Bent SL Vraln and company, Indian and Mexican traders, which was to launch him upon his amazing career as a mountain man, scout, guide for General Gen-eral Fremont, Indian fighter, Civil war leader on the New Mexican frontier, guardian of the Santa Fe trail and "Father Kit" in the government's dealings with the Indians. Such a career, of course, with its multitude of thrilling Incidents gave the "Wild West" type of writer a chance to do his best (or worst) and few of them failed to make the most of the opportunity In writing of Kit Carson. The result has been a Jumble of truth and absurdity which fully justifies this latest Carson biographer's biogra-pher's criticisms of his predecessors But he has exploded many of the old legends and In their place substituted either the facts, or theories which can be accepted as logical and reasonable For instance, Carson has been painted as a man with a vision of the vast empire of the West which he was to help open up. This new picture of Carson shows him as an empire builder, build-er, all right, not because he Intended to be one but because he liked the life which these "unconscious empire-builders" empire-builders" lived the scouting, fighting of bad Indians and making treaties with good ones, trapping, hunting dancing, drinking and loving For Instance In-stance Carson did not go with Fremont Fre-mont to "carry the Stars and Stripes , to the summits of the Rockies and win this vast territory for his country." as the sentimentalist-historians would have it. "Kit went with Fremont" says Mr. Vestal, "Because he loved Josepha (his third and last wife) and wanted to better himself. Like most people who do things In the world of affairs, he was moved by no grand schemes or highfalutln, sense of service serv-ice or honor, but simply set his heart on a woman and a little money." And that Is sound common sense. His manner of dying was as simple as the manner of his living. The end came May 23, 1868, at Fort Lyon, Colo., where he was under the care of an army surgeon. He was tired of the food that had been given him. "Cook, me some fust rate doln's," said the old scout, "A buffalo steak and a bowl of coffee and a pipe are what I need." The surgeon warned bim that the meal would probably be fatal. But Kit insisted and the surgeon, knowing that he was going soon, did not long oppose him. . . . The expected hemorrhage followed. Kit called out "I'm gone! Doctor, compadre, adlos!" The end was swift. ... So died Kit Carson, brave, unaffected, self-sufficient to the last puff of hi old dudheen, a valiant trencherman, I with the bull meat vnder his belt, and , the old glean- in hi tired eyes, blow- Ing smoke ito the jaws of death, whom he had flouted so often. ... I This Is the happy warrior; this If he That every man in arms should wish to be. |