Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West (59 page)
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Authors: Hampton Sides
Tags: #West (U.S.) - History; Military - 19th Century, #Indians of North America - Wars, #Indians of North America - History - 19th Century, #Frontier and Pioneer Life, #Frontier and Pioneer Life - West (U.S.), #Adventurers & Explorers, #Wars, #West (U.S.), #United States, #Indians of North America, #West (U.S.) - History - 19th Century, #Native American, #Navajo Indians - History - 19th Century, #United States - Territorial Expansion, #Biography & Autobiography, #Military, #Carson; Kit, #General, #19th Century, #History
“Much is expected of you, both here and in Washington”: Colonel Kit Carson, field commander of the Navajo campaign.
Odd fellows: A gathering of Masons in the Santa Fe hall, 1865. Carson (center) is seated beside Carleton (right) in front.
“No command should ever again enter it”: The great sandstone chasm of Canyon de Chelly.
Masada of the Southwest: During the winter of 1863–64, starving Navajos took refuge atop Fortress Rock, deep within the Canyon de Chelly complex.
“I have nothing to lose but my life”: Navajo headman Manuelito, son-in-law of Narbona, was one of the last to surrender to the American army.
“Severity will be the most humane course”: A soldier counts Navajo prisoners at the Bosque Redondo reservation.
“We know this land does not like us”: Navajo headman Barboncito, whose passionate eloquence may have swayed Sherman to abandon the Bosque Redondo experiment.
“I believe you have told the truth”: General William Tecumseh Sherman decided the fate of the Navajo people.
“Compadre, adios”: Kit Carson photographed during an 1868 trip to the East, a few months before his death.
“A class of men as antiquated as Ulysses belonging to a dead past”: Kit and Josefa Carson grave site in Taos.
The captain of adventure: Cover of The Fighting Trapper, published in 1874, one of the scores of “blood and thunder” dime novels starring a largely fictionalized Kit Carson.
Putting New Mexican recruits in American uniforms, furnishing them with good weapons, and stationing them at a volatile place like Fort Fauntleroy thus had shades of the fox guarding the henhouse: It was only a matter of time before something dramatic would happen, especially with a ferocious fighter like Manuel Chaves left in charge.
The report of the rifle boomed across the grounds of Fort Fauntleroy and echoed off the distant canyon walls. Alarmed, soldiers seized their weapons and scurried about the grounds of the fort in great confusion. As one witness described it, “Every man ran to arm himself. Companies did not regularly form, but every man ran wherever he thought fit.” The word was, one of the drunk Navajos had tried to force his way past the sentinel guarding the entrance of the fort. The sentinel fired and killed the Indian on the spot.