FOLK OF THE WILD FRONTIER
As kids, one of our favourite games was Cowboys and Indians and like most boys, I always wanted to play the part of a cowboy. At least I did until one of my father’s colleagues bought us a load of western comic annuals and I avidly read the adventures of a Comanche boy. After that I wanted to be an Indian in our games. Or more accurately I wanted to be a Comanche with my own pony, tomahawk and feather in my hair.
My heart was not entirely given to native Americans, however. I adored American television shows and only latterly realised that many were not about the traditional Wild West of cowboys, Indians, gunslingers of the Badlands and Prairies. They were set fifty or even a hundred years earlier and featured the men who traversed lands which were close to the eastern settlements.
One of my favourite shows was Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.
Fess Parker as Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.
I even got my aunt Eileen to make me a coonskin hat like Davy wore, complete with tail. And I didn’t notice that Fess Parker Jr who played Davy Crockett in 1954 returned to the screen ten years later for a six-year run as Daniel Boone. He wore coonskin hats in both series. I wonder if it was the same one. Davy Crockett died, looking the spitting image of John Wayne, at the Battle of the Alamo.
Daniel Boone was the generation before Crockett. He was born in 1734 and died aged 85 while out hunting, a fitting end for him for he spent much of his life in the wilderness. He was supposed to have said that all you need for happiness is a good gun, a good horse and a good wife. In that order, presumably.
Fess Parker as Daniel Boone in another coonskin hat.
Another of my favourite programmes was set in the Lake George area of New York State, a mere two hundred miles west of Boston and the sea. The heroes of The Last of the Mohicans were not real men, although at the time I didn’t know the difference. Natty Bumppo, (also known by more glamorous nicknames including Hawkeye) his foster-brother Chingachgook and his son, Uncas were fictional characters and it’s noticeable that the novel was named after the native Americans.
Today I want to focus on another great western hero, Kit Carson.
Kit Carson as a young man. The real man, not Fess Parker.
Carson was of a later generation than Boone or Crockett, born in 1809 and dying on May 23 1868 - 156 years ago today, which is why I’m writing about him.
His story is every bit as remarkable as the earlier men, perhaps more so. He was a fur trapper, a waggon train guide, an Indian Agent, a Brigadier General in the US army, a man who killed countless native Americans (he had a particular dislike of the Blackfoot people) but was also one of their staunchest supporters.
As well as being one of the greatest frontiersmen who ever lived, a consummate guide, hunter and, it has to be said, killer, Carson could speak several European and native languages, although illiterate. His exploits were widely written about and became the stuff of legend.
In 1847, William Tecumseh Sherman, later a General in the Civil War, met Carson and wrote: ‘His fame was then at its height,... and I was very anxious to see a man who had achieved such feats of daring among the wild animals of the Rocky Mountains, and still wilder Indians of the plains.... I cannot express my surprise at beholding such a small, stoop-shouldered man, with reddish hair, freckled face, soft blue eyes, and nothing to indicate extraordinary courage or daring. He spoke but little and answered questions in monosyllables.’
It was at this time that ambitious writers made Carson a legend and their fortunes by writing about his exploits, often with less truth than enthusiasm. It is thought that more than 70 dime novels were written about him.
Davy Crockett, Kit Carson and friend. Judging by their teeth, the dentists of the west were very good indeed.
Most poignant of his real experiences was when Carson helped track a party of Apache who had captured Mrs Anne White, her baby and black servant. The captain charge of the rescue did not heed Carson’s advice to launch an immediate attack and Mrs White’s corpse was found soon after. Carson found a novel about his exploits nearby and was forever haunted by the thought that she might have thought he would come to her rescue. The fictional hero would have succeeded, the real one did not.
He features in the novel Flashman and the Redskins by George MacDonald Fraser, in what is probably a reasonably accurate portrayal.
Carson married three times. His first wife, Waanibe (Singing Grass) was a beautiful Arapaho woman and he had to fight a duel with a Frenchman to win her. She died giving birth to their second child. Carson’s second wife was a Cheyanne woman called Making out Road. She showed him the road pretty soon, divorcing him by putting his possessions and daughter out of their tent. A few years later he married his third wife, the 14-year-old daughter of a wealthy Mexican couple. She died giving birth to their eighth child and Kit Carson, devastated by her death, died a month later.
The last picture of Kit Carson, two months before his death.
By the way, something which has been whitewashed from the tales of the American West is the role of Black people. In fact, white cattle men were called cowhands and the term cowboy was given to Black cattle men – presumably from the fact that they were often given the derogatory title of Boy. It’s even been suggested that another of my boyhood heroes, The Lone Ranger exploits were based on those of Bass Reeves, a Black assistant marshal. More of this in a future post