The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by HimselfPeters, De Witt C. (De Witt Clinton)
History
The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself
Peters, De Witt C. (De Witt Clinton)
Carson Kit, 1809-1868; Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.)
It would doubtless afford many a page of exciting interest could we
carry the reader through all the varied scenes of the chase in which
Kit Carson has been the principal actor. To transmit to our narrative
a choice fight with the fierce old grizzly bear; or, perchance, a fine
old buffalo bull turning on his destroyer with savage ferocity; or, a
wounded panther, with its inevitable accompaniment in the shape of a
hand-to-hand encounter for dear life, each of such could not fail in
giving interest to the general reader. We are forced, against our
own conviction of the duty we owe the public as Kit Carson's chosen
Biographer, to pass by all such acts of his personal daring
and triumph because of his own unwillingness to relate them for
publication. Notwithstanding our urgent requests, backed up by the
advice and interference of friends, Kit Carson is inflexibly opposed
to relating such acts of himself. He is even more willing to speak of
his failures, though such are few, rather than of his victories in
the chase. While the description of these adventures could not fail
to furnish useful and interesting data, most unfortunately, Kit Carson
considers that they are uninteresting minutiae which have pertained to
the every-day business of his life and no persuasion can induce him to
enter upon their relation. Not so when he is entertaining some of the
brave chiefs of the Indian nations whose friendship he has won by his
brave deeds. If they are his guests, or he himself theirs, then their
delight to hear kindles a pride in his breast to relate. He knows that
he will not, by them, be called a boaster.
Before quitting the mountains, Kit Carson married an Indian girl to
whom he was most devotedly attached. By this wife he had one child,
a daughter. Soon after the birth of this child, his wife died. His
daughter, he watched over with the greatest solicitude. When she
reached a suitable age, he sent her to St. Louis for the purpose of
giving her the advantages of a liberal education. Indeed most of Kit
Carson's hard earnings, gained while he was a hunter on the Arkansas,
were devoted to the advancement of his child. On arriving at maturity
she married and with her husband settled in California.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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