by Harvey L. Carter
Mountain Men and Fur Traders of the Far West
Of all the hardy and adventurous trappers who roamed the western mountains, only Kit Carson became so widely known that he achieved the status of a national hero. As this is written, nearly a century after his death, his name and fame are still familiar to the general public. As Daniel Boone typified the early frontier, so Kit Carson typified the frontier of the Far West. It is a curious fact that Carson was born within a few miles of Boonnesborough, Kentucky, and grew up in the Boone's Lick Country in Missouri, near which the last years of the older pioneer were spent.
Christopher Houston Carson, called Kit from a very early age, was born on his father's farm two miles northwest of Richmond, Madison County, Kentucky, on December 24, 1809, being the the sixth of ten children of Lindsey Carson and his second wife, Rebecca Robinson Carson. In October 1811, Lindsey Carson sold his farm, and then moved to Howard County, Missouri, probably in the summer of 1812. Lindsey Carson was killed by a falling tree in 1818 and his widow, in 1821, remarried Joseph Martinby whom she had other children.
At the age of fourteen, Kit was apprenticed to David Workman of Franklin, Missouri, to learn the saddle making trade. Acquiring an increasing dislike for the work, he ran away in August 1826 to Independence, where he joined a wagon train bound for Sante Fe. The advertisement of the saddler for the return of the runaway apprentice described him as a light-haired boy, who was smal for his age, but thick-set. a reward of one cent was offered for his return!
Upon the arrival of the wagon train in Santa Fe, in November 1826, young Carson went almost immediately to Taos. Ther he spent the winter with Mathew Kinkead, who was fifteen years older than Kit and already a Mountain Man of two seasons' experience.
In the spring of 1827, Kit started back to Missouri with a wagon train but, meeting a west bound train on the Arkansas River, he transferred to it as a teamster and went as far as El Paso. Returning to Taos for the winter, he worked as a cook for Ewing Young, in return for his board. In the spring, he repeated his experience of the previous year by changing form an east-bound to a west-bound train. This time he went all the way to Chihuahua, as interpreter for a merchant, Colonel Trammell. He then worked as a teamster for Robert McKnight at the Santa Rita copper mine. Tiring of this, he returned to Taos in August 1828. Just a year later, he left Taos as a member of Ewing Young's first great trapping expedition to California. It was under Young, an old and capable hand at the game, that Kit learned the secrets of successful beaver trapping and the arduous art of survival under difficult conditions. Young found in Carson an apt pupil, who became a trusted lieutenant before they arrived back in taos in April 1831. They had trapped the Arizona streams, both going out and coming back, and had penetrated as far as the Sacramento River in California.
The Mountain Men
by George Laycock
http://www.museumofthemountainman.com/tradingpost/product_info.php?products_id=59
The Dramatic History and Lore of the First Frontiersmen
Paperback, 240 pages, 9 x 6 inches
ISBN: 1558214542
To know how the West was really won, start with the exploits of these unsung mountain men who, like the legendary Jeremiah Johnson, were real buckskin heroes. Preceeded only by Lewis and Clark, beaver fur trappers roamed the river valleys and mountain ranges of the West, surviving on fish and game, fighting or trading with the Native Americans - forever heading toward the untamed wilderness. In the story of the rough, historic men and their worlds, Laycock weaves historical facts with profiles of individual trappers including harrowing escapes, feats of supreme courage and endurance, and sometimes violent encounters with grizzly bears and Native Americans.
VERY GOOD fun read.
also available from Amazon, and all the usual places.