Charles Burdett - Life of Kit Carson, the Great Western Hunter and Guide

He described to his host a buffalo hunt in which he engaged with the Sioux Indians, before he left his father's home, at fifteen years of age, and another later, since he came into the mountains. He had hunted buffalo every year since he was twelve years old.

The Don was charmed with the earnestness and the frankness, and manifest integrity of the youth, and turning his glance upon him, with the slightly quizzical expression the face a Spaniard so readily assumes, he inquired how many buffalo he had ever killed.

"Not so many as I have deer, because I was always in a deer country; but in the eight years since I commenced going in the buffalo ranges, I must have killed five hundred. The hunter does not kill without he wishes to use. I was often permitted to take a shot at the animals before I was able to help in dressing them."

But Carson felt it might seem like boasting, for him to tell his own exploits, and changing the theme, remarked,

"Your horses would make excellent buffalo hunters, with the proper training, and I have some at camp that I intend shall see buffalo. But why do you not deal gently with them when they are first caught, and keep the fire they have in the herd? Pardon me, but I think in taming your horses, you break their spirits."

"My tutor has said the same, and I too have thought so in regard to the Mexican style of training our horses. We mount one just caught from the drove, and ride him till he becomes gentle from exhaustion. The French do not train horses in that way, nor the English; I have not been in the United States. Our custom is brought from Spain; and it answers well enough with us, where our horses go in droves, and when one is used up, we turn him out and take up another; but when we take this animal again, he is just as wild as at the first; we cannot afford to spend time on breaking him when it must be done over again directly."

And so the two hours, which Carson had allotted for his visit, passed in easy chat, and when he took his leave, his host expressed his thanks for his visit, and promised to return it at the camp.

Carson did not again see his courteous host, for early on the following morning, Mr. Young found it necessary that he should get his men away from Los Angelos as speedily as possible. They had been indulging to excess in bad liquors, and having none of the best feelings towards the Mexicans, many quarrels, some ending in bloodshed, had ensued.

He therefore despatched Carson ahead with a few men, promising to follow and overtake him at the earliest moment, and waiting another day, he managed to get his followers in a tolerably sober condition, and succeeded, though not without much trouble, in getting away without the loss of a man, though the Mexicans were desperately enraged at the death of one of their townsmen, who had been killed in a chance fray. In three days he overtook Carson, and the party, once more reunited, advanced rapidly towards the Colorado River, his men working with a heartiness and cheerfulness, resulting from a consciousness of their misconduct at Los Angelos, which, but for the prudent discretion of Young and Carson, might have resulted disastrously to all concerned.

In nine days they were ready to commence trapping on the Colorado, and in a short time added here to the large stock of furs they had brought from California.

Here while left in charge of the camp, with only a few men, Carson found himself suddenly confronted by several hundred Indians. They entered the camp with the utmost assurance, and acted as though they felt the power of their numbers. Carson at once suspected that all was not right, and attempting to talk with them, he soon discovered that, with all their sang froid , each of them carried his weapons concealed beneath his garments, and immediately ordered them out of camp. Seeing the small number of the white men, the Indians were not inclined to obey, but chose to wait their time and do as they pleased, as they were accustomed to do with the Mexicans. They soon learned that they were dealing with men of different mettle, for Carson was a man not to be trifled with.

His men stood around him, each with his rifle resting in the hollow of the arm, ready to be dropped to deadly aim on the sign from their young commander. Carson addressed the old chief in Spanish, (for he had betrayed his knowledge of that language,) and warned him that though they were few, they were determined to sell their lives dearly. The Indians awed, it would seem, by the bold and defiant language of Carson, and finding that any plunder they might acquire, would be purchased at a heavy sacrifice, sullenly withdrew, and left the party to pursue their journey unmolested.

Any appearance of fear would have cost the lives of Carson and probably of the whole party, but the Indian warriors were too chary of their lives to rush into death's door unprovoked, even for the sake of the rich plunder they might hope to secure. Carson's cool bravery saved the trappers and all their effects; and this first command in an Indian engagement is but a picture of his conduct in a hundred others, when the battles were with weapons other than the tongue. The intention of the Indians had been to drive away the animals, first causing a stampede, when they would become lawful plunder, but they dared not undertake it.

The wily craftiness of the Indians induced the necessity for constant vigilance against them, and in the school this youth had been in all his life, he had shown himself an apt scholar.

While on the Colorado, Young's party discovered a company of Indians, (with whom they had had a previous skirmish,) as they were coming out from Los Angelos, and charging suddenly among them, succeeded in taking a large herd of cattle from them in the Indians' own style. The same week an Indian party came past their camp in the night, with a drove of a hundred horses, evidently just stolen from a Mexican town in Sonora. The trappers, with their guns for their pillows, were ready in an instant for the onslaught, and captured these horses also, the Indians hurrying away for fear of the deadly rifle. The next day they selected such as they wanted from the herd, choosing of course the finest, and turning the rest loose, to be taken again by the Indians, or to become the wild mustangs that roamed the plains of Northern Mexico, in droves of tens of thousands, and which could be captured and tamed only by the use of the lasso.

Mr. Young and his party trapped down the Colorado and up the Gila with success, then crossed to the vicinity of the New Mexican copper mines, where they left their furs and went to Santa Fe. Having procured there license to trade with the Indians about the copper mines, they returned thither for their furs, went back to Santa Fe and disposed of them to great advantage. The party disbanded with several hundred dollars apiece, which most of them expended as sailors do their earnings when they come into port. Of course Carson was hail fellow well met with them for a time. He had not hitherto taken the lesson that all have to learn, viz., that the ways of pleasure are deceitful paths; and to resist temptation needs a large amount of courage – larger perhaps than to encounter any physical danger; at least the moral courage it requires is of a higher tone than the physical courage which would carry one through a fight with a grizzly bear triumphantly; that the latter assists the former; indeed that the highest moral courage must be aided by physical bravery, but that the latter may exist entirely independently of the former.

Carson learned during this season of hilarity the necessity of saying No! and he did so persistently, knowing that if he failed in this he would be lost to himself and to everything dear in life. He was now twenty-one, and though the terrible ordeal of poverty had been nobly borne, and he had conquered, the latter ordeal of temptation from the sudden possession of what was to him a large sum of money, had proved for once, too much. And it is well for him perhaps it was so; as it enabled him to sow his wild oats in early youth.