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}} Christopher Houston "Kit" Carson (December 24, 1809 – May 23, 1868) was an American frontiersman. The few paying jobs he had during his lifetime included mountain man (fur trapper), wilderness guide, Indian agent, and American Army officer. Carson became a frontier legend in his own lifetime via biographies and news articles. Exaggerated versions of his exploits were the subject of dime novels. Carson left home in rural present-day Missouri at age 16 to become a mountain man and trapper in the West. In the 1830s, he accompanied Ewing Young on an expedition to Mexican California and joined fur trapping expeditions into the Rocky Mountains. He lived among and married into the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes. In the 1840s, he was hired as a guide by John C. Fremont. Fremont's expedition covered much of California, Oregon, and the Great Basin area. Fremont mapped and wrote reports and commentaries on the Oregon Trail to assist and encourage westward-bound American pioneers. Carson achieved national fame through Fremont's accounts of his expeditions. Under Fremont's command, Carson participated in the uprising against Mexican rule in California at the beginning of the Mexican-American War. Later in the war, Carson was a scout and courier, celebrated for his rescue mission after the Battle of San Pasqual and for his coast-to-coast journey from California to Washington, DC to deliver news of the conflict in California to the U.S. government. In the 1850s, he was appointed as the Indian agent to the Ute Indians and the Jicarilla Apaches. During the American Civil War, Carson led a regiment of mostly Hispanic volunteers from New Mexico on the side of the Union at the Battle of Valverde in 1862. When the Confederate threat to New Mexico was eliminated, Carson led forces to suppress the Navajo, Mescalero Apache, and the Kiowa and Comanche Indians. Carson was breveted a Brigadier General, and took command of Fort Garland, Colorado. He was there only briefly: poor health forced him to retire from military life. Carson was married three times and had ten children. The Carson home was in Taos, New Mexico. Carson died at Fort Lyon, Colorado, of an aortic aneurysm on May 23, 1868. He is buried in Taos, New Mexico, next to his third wife Josefa Jaramillo. == Early life (1809–1829) == Carson was born in Kentucky on Christmas Eve, 1809. His parents were Lindsay (or Lindsey) Carson and his second wife, Rebecca Robinson. Lindsay had had five children by his first wife Lucy Bradley, and ten more children by Rebecca. Kit was their sixth, making him the eleventh of Lindsay's offspring.〔Roberts 54–55〕〔Guild and Carter 3〕 Lindsay Carson had a Scots-Irish Presbyterian background.〔Sides 8–9〕 He was a farmer, a cabin builder, and a veteran of the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.〔 He fought Indians on the American frontier, losing two fingers on his left hand in a battle with the Fox and Sauk Indians.〔 The Carson family moved to Boone's Lick, Howard County, Missouri when Kit was about one year old. The family settled on a tract of land owned by the sons of Daniel Boone, who had purchased the land from the Spanish. The Boone and Carson families became good friends, working and socializing together, and intermarrying. Lindsay's oldest son William married Boone's grand-niece, Millie Boone, in 1810. Their daughter Adaline became Kit's favorite playmate.〔Guild and Carter 9〕 Missouri was then the frontier of American expansionism west; cabins were "forted" with tall stockade fences to defend against Indian attacks. As men worked in the fields, sentries were posted with weapons, to protect the farmers. These men were ready to kill any Indian who attacked.〔〔 Carson wrote in his ''Memoirs'': "For two or three years after our arrival, we had to remain forted and it was necessary to have men stationed at the extremities of the fields for the protection of those that were laboring."〔 In 1818 Lindsay Carson died instantly when a tree limb fell on him while clearing a field. Kit was about 8 years old. Despite being penniless, his mother took care of her children alone for four years. She then married Joseph Martin, a widower with several children.〔Guild and Carter 10〕 Kit was a young teenager at the time and did not get along with his stepfather. The decision was made to apprentice him to David Workman, a saddler in Franklin, Missouri. Kit wrote in his ''Memoirs'' that Workman was "a good man, and I often recall the kind treatment I received."〔Guild and Carter 15〕 Franklin was situated at the eastern end of the Santa Fe Trail, which had opened two years earlier. Many of the customers at the saddleshop were trappers and traders, from whom Carson heard stirring tales of the West. Carson found work in the saddlery not to his taste: he once stated "the business did not suit me, and I concluded to leave".〔Carter 38–39〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kit Carson」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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