Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West

by Hampton Sides

  The Navajos did not have a concept of the devil… See Locke, The Book of the Navajo, p. xi.

  The Navajos believed in a class of witches called “skinwalkers…” See Preston, Talking to the Ground, pp. 165–69.

  a preparation…collected from the eyes of an eagle… Kluckhohn and Leighton, The Navajo, p. 313.

  If a coyote crossed their path,… For an excellent compendium of Navajo do’s and don’ts, see Ernie Bulow, Navajo Taboos.

  the slow and watchful life known…as transhumance. Underhill, The Navajos, p. 60.

  On the Santa Fe Trail, one Navajo blanket… Lavender, Bent’s Fort, p. 156.

  the Navajos found that the tough and surefooted churro sheep… Underhill, The Navajos, p. 38.

  They were the great in-betweeners, hard to pin down,… See Ibid., p. 23.

  Their creation story, called the Emergence… For a full English translation from the Navajo, see Paul Zolbrod, Diné Bahané: The Navajo Creation Story.

  is thought…to be an allegory for their long migration from Canada. See Preston, Talking to the Ground, p. 70.

  the Navajos call this intentional flaw the “spirit outlet.” Locke, The Book of the Navajo, p. 34; and Kluckhohn and Leighton, The Navajo, p. 201.

  Navajo warriors were careful not to take all the sheep… Underhill, The Navajos, p. 79.

  Chapter 3 The Army of the West

  “The raw material is good enough,…” Clarke, Stephen Watts Kearny: Soldier of the West, p. 110.

  “We would rather hear of your falling…” Hughes, Doniphan’s Expedition: Containing an Account of the Conquest of New Mexico, p. 28.

  “Death before dishonor…” Ibid., p. 29.

  The corpse was wrapped in a blanket,… For a full description of an Army of the West prairie funeral, see Jacob Robinson, Sketches of the Great West: A Journal of the Santa Fe Expedition, p. 15.

  “boundless plains, lying in ridges…” Hughes, Doniphan’s Expedition, p. 30.

  when the ink in his fountain pen froze solid. Clarke, Stephen Watts Kearny, p. 81.

  the “soaring eagle of your fame.” Ibid., p. 66.

  “You have many enemies about you, but this is the greatest…” Hunt, Major General James H. Carleton, 1814–1873, p. 93.

  “imposing a Pax Americana on the entire…” Lavender, Bent’s Fort, p. 166.

  a distinct “absence of swashbuckling.” Clarke, Stephen Watts Kearny, p. 38.

  “the strictest disciplinarian in the service…” Ibid., p. 73.

  “came like claps of thunder in a clear sky.” Hughes, Doniphan’s Expedition, p. 102.

  “one of the ablest officers of the day.” Clarke, Stephen Watts Kearny, p. 391.

  “An army…is a mob of the worst kind…” Gibson, Journal of a Soldier under Kearny and Doniphan, p. 243.

  “If you do not study…” Clarke, Stephen Watts Kearny, p. 103.

  be “very careful to avoid alarming…” Ibid., p. 75.

  “gained the peak of the hill…” Ibid., p. 13.

  “To the Prince of Wales, drunk or sober!” Ibid., p. 17.

  Chapter 4 Singing Grass

  known as “the Bully of the Mountains…” Sabin, Kit Carson Days, vol. 1, p. 258.

  “a large Frenchman, one of those overbearing kind…” Carson, Autobiography, p. 42.

  “It was all over a squaw…” Marc Simmons, Kit Carson and His Three Wives, p. 14.

  “I did not like such talk from any man…” Carson, Autobiography, p. 43.

  “a peculiar smile, as though he was about to perpetrate some excellent joke.” Dunlay, Kit Carson and the Indians, p. 71.

  “All present said but one report was heard.” Carson, Autobiography, p. 43.

  the camp “had no more bother with this bully Frenchman.” Ibid., p. 44.

  “the only serious personal quarrel of Kit Carson’s life.” Washington Daily Union, June 15, 1847.

  “He was pleased with himself for doing it.” Simmons, Kit Carson and His Three Wives, p. 14.

  a chastity belt, of sorts… See Lavender, Bent’s Fort, p. 188; and Vestal, Kit Carson, p. 128.

  “a good girl, a good housewife, and good to look at.” Vestal, Kit Carson, p. 127.

  “broad vowels, soft liquids, and smooth diphthongs.” Ibid.

  “the happiest days of my life.” Henry Tilton, The Last Days of Kit Carson, p. 5.

  “flitting ghostlike from creek to creek,…” Lavender, Bent’s Fort, p. 60.

  “in the mountains, far from the habitations of civilized man,…” Carson, Autobiography, p. 65.

  “She was a good wife to me…” Quoted in John C. Frémont’s Memoirs of My Life, p. 74.

  “Teepees stood smokeless…drunk with ptomaines.” Vestal, Kit Carson, p. 132.

  “Beaver was getting scarce…” Carter, Dear Old Kit, p. 77.

  The Arapaho relatives mourned in the self-flagellatory tradition… For further descriptions of Plains Indian mourning, see Lavender, Bent’s Fort, pp. 200–201.

  “Kit had to explain that he was crying in his heart,…” Vestal, Kit Carson, p. 179.

  “Times was hard, no beaver, and everything dull.” Dunlay, Kit Carson and the Indians, p. 76.

  The marriage lasted only a few months before she evicted him,… Lavender, Bent’s Fort, p. 220; Vestal, Kit Carson, p. 184.

  Carson had a brief affair with a Hispanic woman with a loose reputation… Simmons, Kit Carson and His Three Wives, p. 40.

  “Carson brought this little girl with him to be educated…” Ibid., p. 47.

  “a wild uncouth boy who married…an Indian squaw…” Ibid., p. 44.

  Chapter 5 Blue Bead Mountain

  “Narbona was born in 1766 to the Red-Streaked Earth People…” I’m indebted here to Virginia Hoffman for her excellent sketch of the life of Narbona contained in her two-volume work, Navajo Biographies, vol. 1, pp. 17–35.

  cradleboard that, in lieu of diapers, was lined with shavings of cedar bark. See Sapir, Navajo Texts, pp. 279–81; and Locke, The Book of the Navajo, p. 24.

  his cradleboard may have been festooned with the customary squirrel’s tail… Kluckhohn and Leighton, The Navajo, p. 203.

  Narbona received his first pony when he was six… Hoffman, Navajo Biographies, p. 18.

  Before dawn, he would rise and run for miles… Ibid. See also Walter Dyk, Son of Old Man Hat, for similar descriptions of early morning runs and plunges in freezing water as traditional training for a warrior.

  There were…traditional games of chance and amusement… Locke, The Book of the Navajo, p. 29; and Kluckhohn and Leighton, The Navajo, p. 96.

  “getting bucked off a horse is one of the most embarrassing things…” Preston, Talking to the Ground p. 74.

  the bow stood exactly his own height.” Hoffman, Navajo Biographies, p. 20.

  Navajo country has moved modern geologists…to adopt a vocabulary of doom… See Halka Chronic, Roadside Geology of New Mexico; Robert Julyan, The Place Names of New Mexico; and Donald Baars, Navajo Country: A Geology and Natural History of the Four Corners Region.

  Yeitso…the creature’s blood congealing into lava flows. See Preston, Talking to the Ground, p. 37; and Kluckhohn and Leighton, The Navajo, p. 182.

  The…San Juan River…was decidedly male. Kluckhohn and Leighton, The Navajo, p. 311.

  the Utes were probably the Navajo’s greatest enemy. Underhill, The Navajos, p. 83.

  When he was sixteen he went on his first raid… Hoffman, Navajo Biographies, p. 20.

  during the late 1770s…villagers finally had to import new horses from Chihuahua… Locke, The Book of the Navajo, p. 161.

  in his early twenties, Narbona’s parents arranged for him to marry…. Hoffman, Navajo Biographies, p. 20.

  advised the young couple, with a bodily frankness that would certainly embarrass… See Locke, The Book of the Navajo, p. 23.

  “emotional inbreeding.” See Kluckhohn and Leighton, The Navajo, p. 237.

  Observing an old and curious Navajo taboo… The Navajo t
aboo forbidding men from gazing upon their mothers-in-law is vividly explained in Locke, The Book of the Navajo, p. 22; and Underhill, The Navajos, p. 9.

  During one raid Narbona captured a young Zuni woman… Hoffman, Navajo Biographies, p. 20.

  He…impressed people as someone who…“talks easy.” Locke, The Book of the Navajo, p. 32.

  The Cebolletans passed down one story about an elderly grandmother. Marc Simmons, The Little Lion of the Southwest, p. 31.

  “were aghast…for he recovered and lived to fight again.” Ibid.

  Chapter 6 Who Is James K. Polk?

  The war with Mexico was a complex affair… For a concise overview of the causes of the Mexican War, see John Eisenhower, So Far from God. An excellent Mexican War resource on which I consistently relied is The United States and Mexico at War (Donald S. Frazier, ed.). For a particularly vivid oral history of the conflict, I also reccommend Smith and Judah (eds.), Chronicles of the Gringos.

  and there underwent what was then a state-of-the-art surgery. For an excruciating description of Polk’s operation, see John Seigenthaler, James K. Polk, p. 21.

  “…became a man on Dr. McDowell’s operating table…” Ibid.

  “has no wit, no literature, no gracefulness of delivery…” Sam W. Haynes, James K. Polk and the Expansionist Impulse, p. 19.

  “felt that he was a citizen of the model republic.” Hughes, Doniphan’s Expedition, p. 131.

  a fashionable campus craze called the Young America Movement. See Frazier, The United States and Mexico at War, p. 487.

  Melville declared that “America can hardly be said to have any western bound…” DeVoto, The Year of Decision: 1846, p. 26.

  Walt Whitman thought that Mexico must be taught a “vigorous lesson.” Ibid., p. 38.

  “the iniquity of aggression…” Seigenthaler, James K. Polk, pp. 131–32.

  “The United States will conquer Mexico,…but it will be as the man swallows…” Ibid., p. 214.

  Benton “knows more political facts than any other man…” Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas H. Benton, p. 319.

  “unfortunately deficient in the sense of humor.” These descriptions are all taken from Roosevelt’s biography of Benton, pp. 47, 83, 221, 223, 235, 286.

  He regarded the Peculiar Institution as an “incurable evil…” Ibid., p. 297.

  “I am Southern in my affections…” Tom Chaffin, Pathfinder: John Charles Frémont and the Course of American Empire, p. 86.

  Chapter 7 What a Wild Life!

  “Concluded to charge them, done so.” Vestal, Kit Carson, p. 104.

  expelled from university…for “incorrigible negligence.” David Roberts, A Newer World, p. 114.

  “He was broad-shouldered and deep-chested…” Frémont, Memoirs of My Life, p. 74.

  “I’ve been some time in the mountains…” Carson, Autobiography, p. 66.

  the kind of man who could repair a broken barometer. See Chaffin, Pathfinder, p. 122.

  “Fremont has touched my imagination…” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, quoted in Ibid., p. 95.

  Chapter 8 The Ruling Hand of Providence

  “Nothing appears as it is…” Jacob Robinson, Sketches of the Great West: A Journal of the Santa Fe Expedition, p. 11.

  so “full of holes and burrows as to make it sound hollow…” Ibid.

  “Nothing could exceed the confidence which every man seems to have in him…” Clarke, p. 117.

  “This morning we all took a drink of whiskey…” Robinson, Sketches of the Great West, p. 10.

  “He is a man who keeps his counsels to himself.” Gibson, Journal of a Soldier, p. 112.

  “one of the grandest sights ever beheld…Every acre was covered…” Robinson, Sketches of the Great West, p. 12.

  “The men have been out since sun rise…” Magoffin, Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico, The Diary of Susan Magoffin, p. 43.

  pots of bitter coffee—or “black soup”… Lavender, Bent’s Fort, p. 141.

  This outpost…boasted all sorts of incongruous pleasures… Ibid., pp. 146–47, 171, 254.

  “There is the greatest possible noise…” Magoffin, Diary, p. 66.

  “strange sensations in my head, my back, and hips…” Ibid.

  “much agony and severest of pains.” Ibid., p. 68.

  “I sunk into a kind of lethargy.” Ibid.

  “Although it was the Sabbath…” Ibid., p. 69.

  “Though forbidden to rise from my bed…” Ibid.

  Chapter 9 The Pathfinder

  drained by a monstrous whirlpool that connected…with the Pacific… See Chaffin, Pathfinder, p. 168.

  Fremont’s term for the desert sink, the Great Basin… Ibid., pp. 180, 248.

  This fabled conduit, called the Buenaventura… Ibid., p. 199.

  “in as poor condition as men could possibly be.” Carson, Autobiography, pp. 79–81.

  “Kit waited for nobody…” George Brewerton, Overland with Kit Carson, p. 66.

  clipping a mule’s ears and drinking its blood… See Lavender, Bent’s Fort, p. 55.

  tan hides with a glutinous emulsion made from the brains… Ibid., p. 118.

  “prompt, self-sacrificing, and true.” Frémont, Memoirs, p. 427.

  “Mounted on a fine horse, without a saddle,…” Frémont, The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, p. 15.

  “sprung to his feet, the blood streaming…” Frémont, Memoirs, p. 374.

  “quickly terminated the agonies of the gory savage.” Ibid.

  “Two men, in a savage desert…” Ibid.

  “Kit Carson, an American, born in the Booneslick county…” Ibid.

  “impossible to describe the hardships…” Carson, Autobiography, pp. 126–27.

  Chapter 10 When the Land Is Sick

  This chapter is primarily drawn from Virginia Hoffman’s sketch of the life of Narbona in Navajo Biographies, pp. 17–35, and from Frank McNitt’s Navajo Wars, pp. 66–91.

  “when the land is sick, the people are sick.” Kluckhohn and Leighton, The Navajo, p. 155.

  they called the Navajos the tasavuh, or “the head pounders,… Locke, The Book of the Navajo, p. 7.

  some 250 Diné…had been stolen in raids… Ibid., p. 189.

  The Navajo emissaries set off for the capital… Thomas James, Three Years among the Indians and Mexicans, pp. 164–66.

  Chapter 11 The Un-Alamo

  Fremont’s mission was quite limited… See Chaffin, Pathfinder, p. 254.

  the Golden Gate, he called it. Ibid., p. 283.

  Fremont responded with pure histrionics. For accounts of Fremont’s ludicrous stand at Gavilan Peak, see Josiah Royce, California: A Study of the American Character, p. 44; and Bernard DeVoto, The Year of Decision, pp. 111–14.

  urging them to “lance the ulcer” of the American invasion.” Ibid., p. 288.

  “Thinking I had remained as long as the occasion required…” Frémont, Memoirs, p. 460.

  has to rank as one of the great solo courier missions in history. For a biographical sketch and a thorough treatment of Gillespie’s extraordinary trek, see Werner H. Marti, Messenger of Destiny, pp. 1–49.

  “The information…had absolved me from my duty as an explorer…” Frémont, Memoirs, p. 488.

  Chapter 12 We Will Correct All This

  The people of Las Vegas were fascinated by the Americans… My description of the Army of the West’s arrival in Las Vegas is adapted from diaries and other firsthand accounts, primarily Emory, Gibson, Edwards, Robinson, and John Hughes.

  “wild looking strangers” who “constantly stared” and “swarmed…” Magoffin, Diary, p. 92.

  “I have come amongst you…to take possession of your country.” The most thorough account of Kearny’s rooftop speech, and the one I quote from here, is found in Emory, Lieutenant Emory Reports, pp. 49–51.

  “Look at me in the face…” Emory, Lieutenant Emory Reports, p. 51. See also Clarke, Stephen Watts Kearny, p. 135.

  Chapter 13 Narbona Pass


  “utterly unconscious of the reception that awaited them,…” Josiah Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies, p. 200.

  When the moment is right…we will cut the tree into small pieces. Hoffman, Navajo Biographies, p. 25.

  “thrown into a state of speechless consternation…” Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies, p. 200.

  “they were felled like deer trapped in a box canyon.” McNitt, Navajo Wars, p. 74.

  According to Navajo tradition, the captain of Jemez… Ibid.

  “We killed plenty of them.” Locke, The Book of the Navajo, p. 192.

  Chapter 14 The Uninvaded Silence

  “all wild and unexplored,…and the uninvaded silence roused our curiosity.” Frémont, Memoirs, p. 490.

  Carson…“apprehended no danger.” Carson, Autobiography, p. 98.

  They were…a “mean, low-lived, treacherous race.” Ibid., p. 78.

  the arrows…were headed with lancetlike scraps of iron… See Chaffin, Pathfinder, p. 313.

  “The bravest Indian I ever saw…” Carson, Autobiography, p. 97.

  All were “brave, good men.” Ibid.

  The camp was plunged in “an angry gloom.” Frémont, Memoirs, p. 492.

  “Sick”…“Very sick now.” Ibid.

  “I knocked his head to pieces.” Ibid.

  Chapter 15 On the Altar of the Country

  My description of Armijo’s aborted stand at Apache Canyon is based on soldier eyewitness accounts as well as primary documents found in William Keleher’s Turmoil in New Mexico and Ralph Emerson Twitchell’s The Story of the Conquest of Santa Fe.

  “a mountain of fat.” George Ruxton, quoted in DeVoto, The Year of Decision, p. 276.

  “It is smarter to appear brave…than to be so.” Clarke, Stephen Watts Kearny, p. 105.

  “whether I ought to defend New Mexico…or not.” Paul Horgan, Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History, p. 720.

  “forced…to heave from position to position.” Ibid., p. 719.

  “Fellow Patriots…the moment has come…” Keleher, Turmoil in New Mexico, p. 10.