On the Trail of Kit Carson in Taos

“I don’t know if I did right or wrong but I always did my best.”  Quote by Kit Carson on a placard in his home in Taos, New Mexico

Teepees near Taos 

Few people in history have received as many mixed reviews as Kit Carson.  The larger-than-life mountain man, trapper, scout, soldier, and Indian fighter was in his lifetime one of the most famous characters of the American West -- the subject of books and movies.  There are mountains, parks, a state capital and a national forest named after him.  In Colorado, where he is still a hero, bronze Kit Carson statues grace parks from Denver to Trinidad.

But in New Mexico, not so much.  An exhibit on Carson in the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe states flatly that Carson was “admired by a few, despised by many.”  Ouch.  A 2014 article in the Albuquerque Tribune was headlined:  “Kit Carson: The Most Hated White Guy in American History?”  The article seemed to conclude yes – at least in New Mexico, a state that ironically treasures every association it has with the outlaw Billy the Kid. 

The grave of Kit and Josefa Carson in Taos

Nowhere in New Mexico is this dichotomy over Kit Carson more intense than in Taos, the pretty mountain valley town where he spent 25 years of his life.  Carson’s third wife, Josefa Jaramillo, was from Taos. They married here in 1843 and had seven children.  She died giving birth to their eighth.  A heartbroken Carson died a month later.  They are buried side-by-side in a small park in the heart of Taos, called the Kit Carson Park and Historic Cemetery. 

And that’s where the problems begin.  In 2014, there was a movement in Taos to remove Carson’s name from the park.  Interpretive signs by his quiet gravesite were defaced and at city council meetings he was called a “murderer” and blamed for the “Long Walk” of the Navajos, an infamous chapter of American history in which the Navajo tribe was forcibly removed from their homelands in Arizona and marched 400 miles in winter to a reservation, where thousands of them died.  It was a Navajo version of the Holocaust.  Carson wasn’t on the march, but along with George Armstrong Custer, in the changing times of the 21^st century, he has become a symbol of the tragedies inflicted on Native Americans during the “winning” of the West.

Statue of  a heroic Kit Carson in Trinidad, CO by Frederick Roth (horse) and Augostus Lukeman (figure)

Which is a fact that would have struck the humble Kit Carson as simply amazing.  A short and shy man, he was illiterate and couldn’t even sign his own name.  Despite that, he was fluent in both French and Spanish, as well as Apache, Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Blackfoot, Ute and Dine (Navajo).   He had two Indian wives, lived and traded with the Indians for years and was considered one of the best and fairest of Indian agents.  He served as the principal guide to the John C. Fremont expeditions of the Oregon Trail, which was the 19^th century equivalent of being an astronaut.  Fremont’s widely read journals made Kit Carson a household name across America.  During the War with Mexico, Carson helped capture California, sneaking through enemy lines in the dark and running 23 miles to get reinforcements.  Later, he commanded Union forces with honor in the Civil War. 

Kit Carson

In his lifetime, Kit Carson covered thousands of miles on foot and horseback across the American West, but you can get an intimate glimpse of both sides of the man in just a short walk around the Taos Plaza.   

“The cowards never start and the weak die along the way.”  Kit Carson

There has been a plaza in the center of Taos for more than 200 years.  Originally, it was a fortified square where livestock could be kept safe at night, but today, it’s a quiet park with large shade trees and benches, surrounded by adobe buildings in the Spanish Colonial and Territorial Revival style.  Since the buildings are all connected, when one caught fire, they all caught fire, and they’ve been burning down together for two centuries, leading, of course, to many changes.   The current buildings date back to the golden era of 1930s tourism, when artists and writers such as D.H. Lawrence lived here.  They drip with New Mexico charm with covered verandas, exposed wood beams, adobe walls and shops sparkling with turquoise jewelry, silver, and bright Indian blankets.

Near the Taos Plaza

Just a block from the plaza is where Kit and Josefa lived in a four-room, 1820s adobe house that is now a National Historic Landmark operated as the Kit Carson Home & Museum.

You enter the museum through a pleasant courtyard.  This is where the Carsons did most of their living.  The courtyard was where people cooked, washed, and socialized.  It’s also where Carson conducted business as an Indian agent for the Utes, Apaches, and Taos Pueblo tribes.  Many tribesmen pitched their teepees in the courtyard, where their children played with Kit Carson’s.

In the house, are exhibits telling his life story.  Born in 1809, by the time he was 16, Christopher “Kit” Carson had run away from his home in Missouri and gone west on the Santa Fe Trail, working as a mountain man, trapper and hunter, and later as an explorer and guide.  By the time he settled down in the mountain community of Taos, Kit was the town’s most famous citizen.   The house is small, and the doorways even smaller.  Kit was only 5 feet 6 inches tall.  When Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman met the famous scout for the first time, he wrote, “I cannot express my surprise at beholding a small, stoop-shouldered man, with reddish hair, freckled face, soft blue eyes, and nothing to indicate extraordinary courage or daring.”  

The kitchen in the Kit Carson Museum

The kitchen is reconstructed as it would have been, when food was prepared here for the nine Carsons.  Taos was still the frontier and life was very simple with few possessions.  Each of the rooms had a fireplace, which was the only heat.  

Much of the museum is devoted to Josefa Carson, and you learn that Kit wasn’t the only Carson with adventures.  Josefa’s sister, Ignacia, was married to the second most famous citizen in Taos, former mountain man and trader Charles Bent, who in 1846 was appointed governor of New Mexico.  They lived around the corner, and you can walk to their home, also a museum, in a few minutes.

The Governor Bent Museum is a crazy, hodgepodge collection of Old West memorabilia including bearskins, arrows, guns, eight-legged lambs, farm tools, and Indian baskets.  It was opened in 1959, which appears to be the last time any exhibit was dusted.  Tom Noeding’s parents opened it and today he runs it, so if it’s open, that means he’s there and can point out the room where the famous fireplace was.

The murder would have taken place right about at the sign.

While Kit was out of town in January 1847, Josefa Carson was staying with her sister at this house when the Taos Revolt began.  Taos and all of New Mexico had been ruled first by Native Americans, then Spanish, then Mexican, and then in 1846 by the United States, who captured it in the War with Mexico and appointed the first Anglo governor, Charles Bent.  It was too much change too fast for the locals.  Tensions built and an angry mob of Taos Pueblo natives and local Hispanic residents revolted and marched on the Governor’s house.  Bent tried to calm them down, but they grabbed him from the house, shot him full of arrows, scalped him alive and literally tore his body to pieces, all in front of what is now the quiet Op. Cit Bookstore.  Meanwhile, Josefa Carson and her sister Ignacia seized a poker and spoons and managed to dig a hole through the adobe wall at the back of the fireplace, and escape.

After the gruesome murder, the Carsons helped care for Ignacia and her children.  Ignacia lived to be 68 and she and her grandchildren are buried in the Kit Carson Cemetery Park, not far from her sister and Kit.

An old wagon near Taos

If there was a tragedy to Kit Carson’s life, it is that he was amazingly good at whatever he set out to do.  Unfortunately, this included fighting a war against the Navajos in 1865.  Twice, he refused the assignment, but as a soldier he was finally ordered by Brigadier General James Carleton to lead the campaign.  Carson reluctantly did, but he deliberately disobeyed his brutal orders to “capture the women and kill all the men.”  Instead he waged a mostly nonviolent, “scorched earth” war by destroying the Navajo’s food sources, which forced them to surrender with little loss of life.  Sadly, in the end, the results were equally horrifying.  The Navajos were ripped from their land by other soldiers and forced on the deadly long march to a reservation, which killed thousands.  Naturally, they blamed Carson for their defeat and never forgave him.   Ironically, Carson had nothing to do with the Long March, and he even went to Washington to lobby for the Navajos to be returned to their homeland, which they were in 1868.

Carson quit the army after the campaign and he and Josefa died shortly afterward.  Standing by their gravesite, 150 years later, it’s hard not to go back to Kit’s quote, hanging in his home.  “I don’t know if I did right or wrong, but I always did my best.”

IF YOU GO:

Green chile stew at Eske's Brew Pub & Eatery

When Kit was near death, he allegedly said:  “I wish I had time for just one more bowl of chili.”  And by that he meant, Taos chili.  Delicious cuisine is just one reason that millions of visitors flow to this beautiful artist community and outdoor recreation center every year.  In addition to skiing, Taos is known for river running on the Rio Grande, hiking, fishing, and spectacular mountain scenery.  There are dozens of art galleries and a fantastic assortment of restaurants, many specializing in New Mexico cuisine based upon the most famous of all green chiles, those grown in NM.  The Eskes Brew Pub & Eatery near the main square has an excellent green chile stew as well as half dozen of their own craft beers.  Wednesday night is “Bluegrass Night,” with many local musicians pickin’ away on guitars, banjos and fiddles.

Taos Pueblo -- the oldest continuously inhabited spot in North America

Another must visit is the Taos Pueblo, four miles from town.  This is the oldest continuously inhabited spot in North America.  The two main structures are believed to be well over 1,000 years old and consist of individual adobe homes built side by side and in layers, with common walls and no connecting doorways.   They look today much like they would have when Kit Carson was their Indian agent; the only change to the adobe structures was the addition of blue entrance doors (the homes were originally entered via ladders from holes in the ceiling).  Between 50 and 100 people still live in the Taos Pueblo without running water or electricity.  Students give tours, and several of the buildings are open as shops selling jewelry, pottery and Indian fry bread.

The original San Geronimo church is now a cemetery.

In 1847, shortly after the uprising in which Charles Bent was killed and Josefa Carson had her narrow escape, the U.S. Army attacked Taos Pueblo in reprisal.  Many of the Taos Pueblo people went to the San Geronimo church for protection.  The army wheeled a cannon to the church, and fired into it point blank, killing dozens of women and children.  The ruins of the church became a cemetery and the leaders of the revolt were hung in Taos Plaza.  Visiting today, it’s hard to believe this tranquil and beautiful spot had such a bloody past.  Because of past oppressions against them, the language of the Taos People, Tiwa, is unwritten and unrecorded and is passed down orally from generation to generation.  It is quite remarkable to see people live here as they did centuries ago and walk literally back into the days of Kit Carson.

Where to Stay:

The spectacular entrance to El Monte Sagrado Living Resort & Spa

Just a short walk down Kit Carson Road from Kit’s old house is El Monte Sagrado Living Resort & Spa – one of those rarest of rare finds – a world-class luxurious resort and spa within easy walking distance of a historic district.  El Monte Sagrado (which means “The Holy Mountain”) is spread over a beautiful 11-acre oasis filled with ponds, streams, wildflowers, bridges, waterfalls and aspen trees.   The 84-room resort became a Heritage Hotel & Resort 10 months ago.  The largest independent hotel brand in New Mexico, Heritage takes great pride in their collection of culturally distinct properties, and it shows.  They are pumping big money into the $70 million, AAA Four Diamond resort, including major improvements to the rooms, landscaping and cultural amenities, as well as adding to the resort’s 300 piece art collection.

The Anaconda Bar has a gigantic snake curling around it.

Among the new amenities are regularly scheduled concerts by Native American flutist Robert Mirabal.   A two time Grammy Award winner, Mirabal is also working with the hotel and Taos Pueblo to introduce a new garden at El Monte Sagrado that will use ancient seeds to grow Native American foods and spices on the hotel’s grounds for use in its kitchens.  The hotel’s gorgeous restaurant, De La Tierra, serves all three meals, inside or on the patio.  For dinner, go local and try the Caprice Cactus salad, the Crab Quesadilla and the Elk Chop seared and glazed with Chipotle agave nectar. The hip Anaconda Bar next door has a gigantic snake sculpture wrapped around the horseshoe-shaped bar and has one of the best happy hours in Taos with $3.50 local drafts and $5 house margaritas.

The lovely grounds have streams and waterfalls.

The resort offers six types of rooms.  At the top end, the Global Suites are 1,100-sq. ft. casitas (small bungalows) each decorated with original art and architecture to reflect different regions of the world, from China, Japan and Spain to Morocco, Mexico and Argentina.  Each of the casitas has two bedrooms, two baths, log beam ceilings and all luxury amenities from wet bars to pueblo-style gas fireplaces.  Four of them have hot tubs.  If it seems strange to have a global theme in Taos, there’s no worries.  It works beautifully with the patios walking out into the gardens.

The premiere suites carry the global theme to Bali, Egypt and Tibet, while the 18 Native American suites each carry the name of a famous historic Native American and come with king beds, kiva-style fireplaces and balconies or courtyards overlooking the Sacred Circle, the green space surrounded by willow and cottonwood trees that is the center of the resort. 

One of the spa rooms.

Finally, the Casita Suites are fun and funky, part of the original historic hotel with true 1930s New Mexico style and private patios, all upgraded with modern amenities, while the Taos Mountain Rooms are more tradition resort rooms but with private balconies, fireplaces, jet soaking tubs and access to all the amenities of the resort.

And then there’s the spa.  The Living Spa, as it’s called, has won awards from Conde Nast Traveler to Spa Finder, and no wonder.  The ten gorgeous and eco-conscious treatment rooms offer benefits such as a sunlit shower and natural waterfall cooling system.  Kit Carson probably took a natural shower in a waterfall, but not like this.  There are candlelit couple’s suites, Thai massage sessions, 90-minute facials…and when you’re done, don a robe and walk through the gardens to the saltwater pool for a long relaxing soak.  Kit Carson would have never left Taos if he had discovered this place.

For information on other attractions in Taos, 

The Great Adobe Castle of the Santa Fe Trail -- Bent's Fort

Traders and guides on the Santa Fe Trail at Bent's Old Fort during one of their many re--enactment events.

Few roads in history have conjured up romantic images like the Santa Fe Trail.  It lasted only 60 years, from 1821 to 1880, but for that short time it was America’s first international highway.  And the most colorful. 

Across 900 miles of open prairie, from Missouri to Old Mexico, the Santa Fe Trail became one of the most important commerce roads in the world, bringing goods from Europe -- wool, silk, iron tools and cotton cloth -- to Mexico and returning with furs, silver, mules and horses.   Traveling on the trail were a wild assortment of characters -- fur trappers and mountain men dressed in buckskins, famous guides like Kit Carson, big-hatted vaqueros and cowboys, soldiers from three different armies, gold seekers, journalists and adventurers. 

One of the typical wagons of the trail at Bent's Old Fort

Thousands of huge 6,000-pound Conestoga wagons creaked across the dirt tracks, pulled by teams of 20 oxen, that were matched by color so that one wagon had all black oxen, while another used all brown.  These wagon trains with their white canvas covers billowing in the wind like sails, slowly moved across a sea of grass at a rate of 15 miles a day.

And then there were the Indians.  The trail passed through the traditional hunting grounds of the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Comanche and Apaches.  There were raging rivers to cross, massive herds of buffalo to be negotiated, mountains to be conquered, drought, cold, snow and thunderstorms.  

All that's left is ruts

And then, just like that, the Santa Fe Trail was gone. In 1878, there were 500 dusty wagons rolling into Santa Fe from the trail every day.  But two years later, the railroad from Missouri was completed. Where once it had taken three months to travel to Santa Fe by foot, by rail it took just three days.  The famous trail quickly faded into obscurity, wind and rain washing away all but a few traces.

Today, modern highways follow some of the original route and most people zoom by at 75 mph.   But slow down, and it’s possible to still see some of the old trail.  There are natural landmarks and even some ruts in the prairie, carved there by wagons nearly 200 years ago. 

Bent's Old Fort

Best of all, the National Park Service rebuilt the most famous site on the trail – the amazing adobe castle, Bent’s Old Fort in La Junta, Colorado. 

Enter the gates of this mud-colored trading post, past massive towers guarded by cannons, and you are time-tripping back to the 1830s.  Here, you can listen to tales from mountain men and soldier re-enactors, touch the wagons they pulled across the prairie and see the exact same views they did when this adobe fort marked the border between Mexico and the United States.

Building the Trail

The story of the Santa Fe Trail began a decade before Plymouth Rock, in 1610 when Spanish explorer and colonist Pedro de Peralta laid out the Villa de Santa Fe – the City of Holy Faith – in Northern Mexico.  It was an ambitious plan with a grand Governor’s Palace on the plaza.  But of course, at first, there were bloody battles with Indians, who in 1680 revolted, threw the Spanish out of the territory and occupied the Palace for 12 years.  But slowly over time, Santa Fe became a peaceful and prosperous city, except that it was completely isolated.  The Spanish government forbid any trade with the North Americanos of the United States and anyone who tried was arrested.

Governor's Palace in Santa Fe

Then in 1821, William Becknell changed that.  He was a bankrupt Missouri trader, one step ahead of the U.S. law, who decided to take a big risk.  He smuggled the first three wagons of goods to ever cross the Great Plains, somehow dragging them over rivers and up mountains and finally into the plaza of Santa Fe.  Where instead of being arrested, he was treated as a hero!  There had been a revolution, the Spanish were thrown out and the new Mexican government welcomed trade.

Overnight, the word was out and great caravans of wagons began assembling for the tremendous profit to be made trading with Mexico.   The typical wagon train didn’t follow one wagon after another, as shown in films.  No one liked eating the dust of the wagon ahead, and there was plenty of land, so the wagons spread out in columns.  Caravans of 10 to 100 wagons traveled together for protection.  Trade mushroomed from $65,000 in 1825 to $1 million twenty years later.

When the United States declared war on Mexico in 1846, an army of 1,657 soldiers and 150 wagons tramped over the trail, to capture Santa Fe without firing a shot.  In the Civil War, both Confederates and Yankee armies used the trail, fighting the deciding battle of the war in the West directly on the trail at the Battle of Glorieta Pass.  The Union victory preserved New Mexico and Colorado for the North.

Bent’s Old Fort

Troops approach Bent's Old Fort on the Santa Fe Trail

One of the trail’s most exciting events occurred n 1835, when brothers William and Charles Bent and their partner Ceran St. Vrain decided to build an Indian trading post along the Santa Fe Trail, on the banks of the Arkansas River.  This was the dividing line between Mexico and the United States at the time and the center of Indian hunting grounds.  Profits could be huge.  The Bent’s could buy a buffalo robe from the Indians for 25 cents worth of trinkets, and sell it in Missouri for $6.

But the Bents didn’t want to build just any old trading post or fort.  They envisioned a fortified town – a castle, really – that would be built of adobe bricks, guarded by towers and cannons.  It would be a place that could provide all the luxuries of the city to hungry travelers who at this point had been weeks on the trail. 

In the plaza of the Fort

The Bents brought 100 workers from Mexico, pushed mud and straw into wood forms to create sun-dried bricks, and over two years, built their dream.  A visitor in 1839 marveled, “it was as though an air built castle had dropped to the earth in the midst of a vast desert.”  

 

The original fort vanished, along with the trail, long ago.  But the National Park Service working with original plans, drawings and archeological excavations, built an exact replica. 

The first view takes your breath away.  The fort’s parking lots are several hundred yards away.  As you leave the parking lot and climb a small rise, there suddenly is Bent’s Fort in all its glory, sitting on the plains just as it would have appeared to wagon trains. 

Bent's Fort appears like a dream today, just like it did in the 1830s

Enter the gates and you are in 1830s, surrounded by bustling re-enactors portraying the blacksmiths, gunsmiths, hunters, traders, soldiers and horse wranglers who kept the fort in business.  It was a busy and multi-cultural place filled with many languages.  The Bent’s owned three slaves who lived here, of whom Charlotte was a renowned cook. Indians frequently camped outside the fort while trading, and today, teepees still dot the horizon.  

The center of the fort was an open plaza, surrounded by two story buildings.  On the bottom floor were the storehouses, trading rooms, a barber shop, dining rooms, a kitchen and a blacksmith shop.  The upper floors had more private rooms and even a billiard table and bar.  Some 60 to 100 people lived in the fort, and it could accommodate up to 15 prairie schooners in a walled adobe corral.  No one worried about Indians stealing goods from the corral – the walls were protected on top by living cactus.

The interior of The Fort Restaurant in Denver

The trading rooms were packed with beads, brass wire, red cloth, tobacco, hoop iron, tomahawks, bracelets, bright colored blankets, and of course whiskey. 

Kit Carson worked at the fort as a hunter, supplying meat for the workers, before becoming more famous as a trail guide and soldier. 

Ironically, William Bent didn’t live in the fort.  His wife, a Cheyenne named Owl Woman, didn’t like all the constant noise of wagons coming and going, and the hammering in the blacksmith shop, and the traders and trappers drinking whiskey and carousing.  So she lived in a teepee by the river.  She made William live there too.

The Fort Restaurant in Denver was first re-creation of Bent's.

When war broke out with Mexico, Bent’s Fort became an army post.  After the war, trade fell off, and the Bents had difficulties with the U.S. government.  One story is that they set fire to the fort rather than have the U.S. take control.  At any rate, the fort was abandoned and the adobe bricks eventually washed away, like the trail it had served, leaving only the wind, the grass and the big skies of the Great Plains. 

  

If you go:  Bent’s Old Fort is located in La Junta, Colorado, 190 miles from Denver and 280 miles from Santa Fe. http://www.nps.gov/beol  The first reproduction of the fort was created by Sam Arnold in 1963 in Denver as The Fort restaurant.  www.thefort.com. 

Prickly Pear Margarita

Today, the restaurant is run by his daughter Holly Arnold Kinney and The Fort still dishes up more buffalo than any other restaurant on the planet.  It’s a wonderful place to soak up the atmosphere of the Santa Fe Trail, while tasting buffalo, elk, quail, rabbit  – even rattlesnake is on the menu. Try the “Bowl of the wife of Kit Carson – a soup served by Kit Carson’s granddaughter with chicken, rice, chipotle chili, dried garbanzo beans and cheese, served with avocado, cilantro and lime.  Wash it down with a Prickly Pear Margarita made with real cactus juice.  As the mountain men used to say, “Waaaah!”