“but out on the Plains, we’re the princes.” My descriptions of Carson’s visit with Jessie Fremont are primarily drawn from Pamela Herr, Jessie Benton Frémont, pp. 152–53, 156; and Jessie Fremont, Will and the Way Stories, pp. 39–42.
the “hardest working man in America.” John Seigenthaler, James K. Polk, p. 121.
“virtually incarcerated himself in the White House.” Ibid., p. 103.
“His manners at table I found to be faultless…” Gerson, Kit Carson: Folk Hero and Man, pp. 144–45.
“He remained the soul of diffidence…” Ibid.
Chapter 31 A Broken Country
“The Navajos commit their wrongs from a pure love of rapine…” Keleher, Turmoil in New Mexico, p. 52.
“wild Indians of this country have been so much more successful…” Ibid., p. 53.
“The Indians…until they are properly chastised.” Keleher, Turmoil in New Mexico, p. 45.
most of whom carried Model 1841 muzzle-loading… My description of the Washington Expedition’s equipment and weaponry is drawn primarily from Frank McNitt’s introduction to Navaho Expedition, by Lt. James Simpson, pp. lxvi–lxix.
“dismayingly mousy-looking” McNitt, introduction to Navaho Expedition, p. lx.
“frankly makes dull reading.” Ibid.
“antipathy to its use”…“favor in the eyes of the senoritas.” David Weber, Richard Kern: Expeditionary Artist in the Far Southwest, p. 122.
Dr. Samuel George Morton, an anatomy professor… See Dunlay, Kit Carson and the Indians, p. 54, and Weber, Richard Kern, p. 24.
“mountains high and bold”…“swallows all the dirt and misery.” Weber, Richard Kern, p. 116.
“one of the most harebrained exploring expeditions ever undertaken…” McNitt, introduction to Simpson’s Navaho Expedition, p. xxxii.
Kearny suffered an excruciating death. For further details on the advanced stages of yellow fever, see American Plague, by Molly Crosby.
His rifle…“cracked away merrily, and never spoke in vain.” Vestal, Kit Carson: The Happy Warrior, p. 150.
“We all looked like Old Winter…” Weber, Richard Kern, p. 39.
“I told Dick the expedition was destroyed…” Roberts, A Newer World, p. 213.
“gradually sinking into a sleep…” Weber, Richard Kern, p. 45.
“In starving times…no man ever walked…” DeVoto, The Year of Decision, p. 341.
“But…’tis among the best in town…” Weber, Richard Kern, p. 67.
“Although I was exceedingly hungry…” McNitt, Navaho Expedition, p. 10.
“At present it is considerably defaced…” Ibid., p. 18.
Other Jemez Indians joined forces… Ibid., p. 15 fn.
“Hosta…is one of the finest-looking…” Ibid., p. 24.
Much of this land…was “a barren waste.” Ibid., p. 70.
“where it lit for a moment within a foot or two of my person…” Ibid., p. 25.
“a scene…that partook both of the painful and ludicrous.” Ibid., p. 29.
The largest of all the structures, Pueblo Bonito… See Preston, Talking to the Ground, p. 56.
“and the bright wild flowers fill the open court…” Weber, Richard Kern, p. 88.
“Had time permitted,…we would gladly have remained…” McNitt, Navaho Expedition, pp. 39, 47.
Archaeologists have come to call it the Chaco Phenomenon. For a concise description of the Chaco Phenomenon, see Preston, Talking to the Ground, pp. 56–58, 268–78.
North America had never seen such a florescence… My description of the Anasazi rise and fall is primarily adapted from James Judge, New Light on Chaco Canyon; David Roberts, In Search of the Old Ones; and Preston, Talking to the Ground.
wondering whether this bewhiskered little man was a witch. See Preston, Talking to the Ground, p. 269.
Chapter 32 The Finest Head I Ever Saw
“bestrode their horses a la mode des hommes.” McNitt, Navaho Expedition, p. 62.
a “dark, portentous cloud” was hovering… Ibid., p. 63.
“If we are friends…” McNitt, Navajo Wars, p. 143.
“gorgeously decked in red, blue, and white…” McNitt, Navaho Expedition, p. 67.
“quite old and of a very large frame…” Ibid., p. 63.
“CALHOUN: Tell them they are lawfully…” Ibid., p. 66.
negotiations had finally reached a concrete topic… See Underhill, The Navajos, p. 99.
A New Mexican souvenir hunter… McNitt, Navajo Wars, p. 145.
“He was the chief of the Nation…” Weber, Richard Kern, p. 96.
Chapter 33 The Death Knot
The hogan would then have had to be destroyed… Sapir, Navajo Texts, p. 431, and Locke, The Book of the Navajo, p. 15.
some Navajos had wondered whether he might be a witch… Ibid., pp. 118, 247.
feasts and healing gatherings…worked as an economic leveler… Kluckhohn and Leighton, The Navajo, p. 227.
“You can’t grow wealthy if you treat your relatives right.” Locke, The Book of the Navajo, p. 32, and Kluckhohn and Leighton, The Navajo, p. 100.
Narbona’s slaves probably performed…the abhorrent parts… Locke, The Book of the Navajo, p. 30, and Hoffman, Navajo Biographies, p. 34.
Those tasked with the burial were supposed to destroy several prized horses… Sapir, Navajo Texts, p. 431, and Hoffman, Navajo Biographies, p. 34.
There was nothing radiant about the afterlife… Locke, The Book of the Navajo, p. 29.
Navajos…invited to the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. Ibid., p. 10.
the two men then ripped the saddles and bridles into shreds… After they were destroyed, these objects became known as “ghost’s belongings.” See Sapir, Navajo Texts, p. 431.
There they stayed for four nights… Ibid.
Chapter 34 Men Without Eyes
It was derived from the Navajo word tsegi… Grant, Canyon de Chelly: Its People and Rock Art, p. 3.
“It is regrettable…that so much damage…” McNitt, Navaho Expedition, p. 73.
“The country is one extended naked, barren waste…” Ibid., p. 70.
“pure, wholesome water”…“the towering pines…” Ibid., p. 78.
“a fight was expected…At nearly every point…” Weber, Richard Kern, p. 96.
Simpson decided to pay his commander an eternal compliment… McNitt, Navaho Expedition, p. 75.
“The road we have been traveling looks as if…” Ibid., p. 86
It was “exciting…to observe the huts of the enemy…” Ibid., pp. 86–87.
WASHINGTON: Are he and his people desirous of peace? Ibid., pp. 88–89.
“Almost perfectly vertical…the custom-house of the city of New York.” Ibid., p. 93.
The “fabulous rocks…became wilder at every turn.” Weber, Richard Kern, p. 102.
“The mystery of the Canon of Chelly is now…solved.” McNitt, Navaho Expedition, p. 95.
“It seems anomalous to me that a nation…” Ibid., p. 96.
“tripping down the almost vertical wall as nimbly…” Ibid., p. 92.
The designs came in a dazzling confusion. Grant, Canyon de Chelly, pp. 153–268.
a curious tableau scrawled across the walls. My account of the 1805 massacre is drawn from McNitt, Navajo Wars; Grant, Canyon de Chelly, pp. 84–89; and Underhill, The Navajos, pp. 72–73.
“Hostilities between the contracting parties…” McNitt, Navajo Wars, pp. 150–51.
their unwillingness to pronounce anyone’s name out loud… See Locke, The Book of the Navajo, p. 25.
Navajo is an extremely precise language… See Kluckhohn and Leighton, The Navajo, pp. 253–93.
“satisfy the public mind and testify to the whole world…” McNitt, Navaho Expedition, p. 100.
Chapter 35 Blood and Thunder
Francis Aubry was a celebrated figure on the trail. David Dary, The Santa Fe Trail: Its History, Legends, and Lore, p. 201.
Aubry ordered ham and eggs and then wa
s taken upstairs… Ibid., p. 207.
“whose hands are turned against every white man…” William Davis, El Gringo, p. 251.
“practising sadists” who had “great skill…” DeVoto, The Year of Decision, p. 250.
“the Comanches who in 1841 killed and scalped…Robert Bent…” Lavender, Bent’s Fort, p. 203.
another famous Taos trapper, named Lucien… See Harriet Freiberger, Lucien Maxwell: Villain or Visionary; and Lawrence R. Murphy, “Master of the Cimarron.”
“king of that whole country…He had perfect control…” Ibid.
“We had been leading a roving life long enough…” Carson, Autobiography, p. 130.
“an extremely difficult and painful operation.” See Murphy, “Rayado.”
the highest death rate per fighting soldier… Eisenhower, So Far from God.
“A deed has been done from which the country will not…recover…” DeVoto, The Year of Decision, p. 214.
“Could those Mexicans have seen into my heart…” Robert Drexter, Guilty of Making Peace: A Biography of Nicholas P. Trist, p. 139.
He filled the labyrinthine chambers with kegs of powder… For a full description of William Bent’s destruction of the old fort, see Lavender, Bent’s Fort, pp. 338–39.
“Small in stature, and slenderly limbed…” George Ruxton, In the Old West, 286–87.
“I cannot express my surprise at beholding…” Dunlay, Kit Carson and the Indians, p. 13.
“The hero of a hundred desperate encounters…” George Brewerton, Overland with Kit Carson, p. 38.
“He was uncouth”…“yet he wore shyness…like a veil.” Dunlay, Kit Carson and the Indians, p. 191.
“I say, stranger, are you Kit Carson?” Ibid., p. 10.
“a lynx-like eye and an imperturbable coolness…” Charles Averill, Kit Carson, The Prince of the Gold Hunters, p. 26, a microfilm copy of which I viewed at the Library of Congress.
“At the first sound, even a shout…” Veronica Tiller, The Jicarilla Apache.
jicarilla means “little basket…” Ibid., p. 5.
“an indolent and cowardly people…” Keleher, Turmoil in New Mexico, p. 71.
a “Rocky Mountain Hunter” wearing moccasins… Dunlay, Kit Carson and the Indians, pp. 136–37.
“Being thoroughly acquainted…” Ibid.
“The order was too late for the desired effect.” Carson, Autobiography, p. 133.
“She was perfectly warm…” Ibid.
“Kit Carson! His lip, that proud, that determined lip…” Charles Averill, Kit Carson, Prince of the Goldhunters, p. 98.
“The book was the first of its kind I had ever seen…” Carson, Autobiography, p. 135.
“I have much regretted the failure to save the life…” Ibid.
“burn the damn thing.” Dunlay, Kit Carson and the Indians, p. 140.
BOOK THREE: MONSTER SLAYER
Chapter 36 The Fearing Time
the Navajos sometimes called “Something-Sticking-Out-From-The-Foreheads…” Maurice Frink, Fort Defiance and the Navajos, p. 47.
“Large bets, larger than on the other races, were made on both sides…” Nicholas Hodt, testimony recorded in United States, Condition of the Indian Tribes: Report of the Joint Special Committee, p. 314.
some Navajos called the great casks “hollow-woods…” See Lavender, Bent’s Fort, p. 156.
Other accounts say the owner was…Manuelito… Locke, The Book of the Navajo, p. 343.
a truly competent man held the office of Indian agent… For more on the remarkable Henry Linn Dodge, see McNitt, Navajo Wars, p. 267; and Underhill, The Navajos, pp. 103–11.
“a superior race of Indians.” Davis, El Gringo, pp. 411–12.
“The water there is mine, not yours…” See Hoffman, Navajo Biographies, p. 99.
Major Brooks threatened to obliterate the Navajos… For a full account of the attack on Brooks’s slave and its aftermath, see McNitt, Navajo Wars, p. 325.
in April 1860, Manuelito organized a thousand Navajo warriors… See Frink, Fort Defiance and the Navajos, p. 51, Hoffman, Navajo Biographies, p. 100, and McNitt, Navajo Wars, p. 380.
“An angry fire burned within him…” Hoffman, Navajo Biographies, p. 93.
“I walk like a headman now…” Ibid., p. 90.
He scalped his victim, and later chewed on the bloody skin… Ibid., p. 91.
“they jump around like rabbits!” Ibid., p. 88.
Now the moment had come, the day’s grand finale. For more details on the massacre at Fort Fauntleroy, see McNitt, Navajo Wars, p. 422; Marc Simmons, The Little Lion of the Southwest, p. 165; and Marc Simmons, “Horse Race at Fort Fauntleroy: An Incident of the Navajo War,” in the journal La Gaceta 5(3) (1970).
“A procession of the winning party…” Nicholas Hodt testimony in United States, Condition of the Indian Tribes, p. 314.
The forty-three-year-old Chaves hailed from a venerable… My biographical sketch of Manuel Chaves is drawn from Marc Simmons, The Little Lion of the Southwest.
Chavez had nearly died in a Navajo clash. Ibid., pp. 38–42.
“I saw a soldier murdering two little children…” Nicholas Hodt testimony in United States, Condition of the Indian Tribes, p. 314.
“Give this soldier back his arms…” Ibid.
Chapter 37 People of the Single Star
two armies stared at each other… My account of the battle of Valverde is based primarily on the following sources: John Taylor, Bloody Valverde: A Civil War Battle on the Rio Grande; Max Heyman, Prudent Soldier: A Biography of Major General E. R. S. Canby; Alvin Josephy, The Civil War in the American West; Charles Carroll and Lynne Sebastian, eds., Fort Craig: The United States Fort on the Camino Real; and Martin Hall, Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign.
“too prone to let the morrow take care of itself.” Martin Hall, Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign, p. 38.
Those big artillery pieces…were nothing more than decoys… Taylor, Bloody Valverde, p. 105.
“I’ll make my wife a nightgown out of it!” Ibid., p. 25.
“Kit was loyal, but he was like me…” Dunlay, Kit Carson and the Indians, p. 229.
he “had the utmost firmness and the best of common sense…” Ibid., p. 232.
Carson “then approached and in a mild manner…” Ibid., p. 233.
“The mountains here are full of Indians…” Hall, Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign, p. 40.
he looked “like a horned frog.” Donald Frazier, “Long Marches and Short Rations,” in Carrol and Sebastian, Fort Craig, p. 102.
“Our leaders were crazy…” Sabin, Kit Carson Days, p. 687.
The precise terms and arrangements of their servitude… Dunlay, Kit Carson and the Indians, p. 201.
“in truth but a more charming name for a species of slavery…” Davis, El Gringo, p. 232.
“fell so hard as to almost peel the skin off your face.” Josephy, The Civil War in the American West, p. 60.
“a widely acknowledged reputation for the spectacular…” Jerry Thompson, Desert Tiger: Captain Paddy Graydon and the Civil War in the Far Southwest.
“You’ve come too far from home hunting a fight…” Taylor, Bloody Valverde, p. 39.
“had given his allegiance to country rather than to state…” Ibid., p. 50.
cut out a large piece of his own tongue… Josephy, The Civil War in the American West, p. 69.
“one of the most gallant and furious charges…” Taylor, Bloody Valverde, p. 70.
“fought full of courage and almost in a frenzy…” Jacqueline Meketa, Legacy of Honor: The Life of Rafael Chacon, p. 175.
“could not understand the signals to retreat…” Ibid., p. 338.
Chapter 38 The Sons of Some Dear Mother
“If we can subsist our men and horses…” Hall, Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign, p. 74.
“too intimate an acquaintance with ‘John Barley Corn.’” Edrington and Taylor, The Battle of Glorieta Pass, p. 115.
“Those of you who volu
nteered…were doubtless deceived…” Hall, Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign, p. 81.
“By the grace of God and these two revolvers…” Reginald Craig, The Fighting Parson, p. 40.
“something of an epic.” Alvin Josephy, The Civil War in the American West, p. 77.
“On they came to…certain destruction…” Ibid., p. 80.
“You are right on top of them, Major…” Marc Simmons, The Little Lion of the Southwest, p. 184.
“lost all sense of humanity.” Edrington and Taylor, The Battle of Glorieta Pass, p. 95.
“We pierced the Confederate vitals and drew…the life blood.” Ibid., p. 89.
“We have been crippled…” Josephy, The Civil War in the American West, p. 85.
“a further connection might result in my assassination.” Edrington and Taylor, The Battle of Glorieta Pass, p. 107.
“We do not want to take any unfair advantage…” Hall, Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign, p. 132.
“chasing a shadow in a barren land.” Ibid., p. 150.
“Any cause that men sustain to death…” Ibid., p. 135.
Chapter 39 The Round Forest
“truly frightful…This death list is not made up of a few lives lost.” Gerald Thompson, The Army and the Navajo: The Bosque Redondo Reservation Experiment, 1863–1868, p. 10.
“there is now no choice between…extermination or their removal…” Dunlay, Kit Carson and the Indians, p. 267.
“utterly ignorant of everything beyond their corn fields…” Aurora Hunt, Major General James H. Carleton, 1814–1873, p. 146.
if Carleton had “never had to function as God…” C. L. Sonnichsen, The Mescalero Apaches, p. 97.
“Born in 1814, the son of a shipmaster…” My biographical sketch of Carleton is primarily drawn from Hunt, James H. Carleton.
When happiness lived up this way… David Barker poem is quoted in ibid., p. 28.
“I cannot but think that good tales…” Letter from Dickens to Carleton is printed in full in ibid., p. 31.
“a fine companion and a perfect gentleman…” Ibid., p. 71.
Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West Page 58
