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This Is A New Release Of The Original 1878 Edition.

Volume 1 of Kit Carson Days shows Carson running away from his Missouri home at age fifteen in 1826. He joins a caravan headed toward Santa Fe and in the coming years shuttles between poverty and prosperity as a wrangler, teamster, and trapper. He lives all over the unplotted West, helping to open trails, harvesting fur, befriending mountain men, and fighting and trading with Indians. Carson’s reputation grows after John C. Frémont engages him as guide in 1842. He proves indispensable to the Pathfinder in three expeditions and plays a part in the Bear Flag Rebellion. The first volume is an encyclopedia of activity in the West during the first part of the nineteenth century, bringing into play such figures as Ewing Young, William Ashley, Jim Bridger, Jedediah Smith, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Hugh Glass, John Colter, William Sublette, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, William Bent, Stephen Kearny, President James K. Polk, John Sutter, and Nathaniel Wyeth. This revised edition includes vivid chapters on the mountain man, his character, habits, clothing, and equipment. Volume 2 begins with Carson carrying the news of the conquest of California across the country to Washington, D.C., stopping en route to see his wife in Taos, New Mexico. The older Carson consolidates his fame as a courier, scout, soldier, and Indian agent. Americans, avid for newfound gold, turn to him as an authority on trail lore, and the government recognizes his usefulness in dealing with “the Indian problem.” Carson is seen against the larger background of incessant warfare in the Southwest after midcentury. He fights the Kiowas at Adobe Walls, chases the Apaches, and forces the Navajos into the Bosque Redondo. He fights in the Civil War and retires at fifty-eight—but dies two years later in 1868.

*Winner of the 2020 Will Rogers Medallion Award for Western Nonfiction* In the 1840s and 50s, the Jicarilla Apache were the terror of the Santa Fe Trail and the Rio Arriba. They repeatedly clashed with the cavalry and raided wagon trains, and there was bad blood between the band and the Army after the Battle of San Pasqual, when they were on opposite sides during the Mexican American War. In 1854, as traffic was on the increase along the historic trade route, the Jicarilla soundly defeated the 1st United States Dragoons in the Battle of Cieneguilla. Cieneguilla was the worst defeat of the US Army in the West up to that time, and it was just one of the first major battles between the US Army and Apache forces during the Ute Wars. According to one version of events, the 60 dragoons, under the direction of a Lt. Davidson, had engaged in an unauthorized attack on theJicarilla while they were out on patrol. Others claimed that the Jicarilla either ambushed the Army or taunted them into attack. Kit Carson, who was agent for the Jicarilla, would defend Davidson’s actions—and after this fight, he served as a scout against the Jicarilla. Much like the Sioux defeat of Custer at Little Big Horn, the Jicarilla’s victory over the Army led to retribution and disaster. The Jicarilla were defeated and faded from memory before the Civil War. These are the events that brought them to ruin.