Kit Carson

It’s been a terrible, terrible month for the reputation of Cesar Chavez (1927-1993). On March 18 The New York Times published its five-year investigation uncovering the long-celebrated farmworkers union leader’s long sexual abuse of girls and others. Governmental and private leaders who had venerated him for decades immediately started racing to distance themselves and take his name off stuff. A debate has started about appropriate new names.

For me, it’s an easy fix. Simply rename everything possible for Dolores Huerta, who co-founded what became the United Farm Workers with Chavez and in many circles is equally as famous. She was also his victim, suffering his sexual abuse and bearing him two children–at least one the product of rape–and secretly giving them away lest their labor union movement be damaged. Huerta finally broke her silence earlier this month at age 95 to The Times, whose stories about Chavez undoubtedly will win a Pulitzer Prize.

As a state with relatively little farming and a weak union structure, Nevada doesn’t have a lot of things bearing Chavez’s name. Remedial actions could include renaming the Las Vegas park and the portion of a Las Vegas street unofficially sporting his name, and changing a state law that requires the governor to issue a proclamation every year designating Chavez’s birthday on March 31 as Cesar Chavez Day.

But while we’re at it here, I also think it’s time to consider renaming our remote state capital of Carson City. It’s currently named after Kit Carson (1809-1868). He was a celebrated, even legendary, mountain man and wilderness guide. But in my view he was also a war criminal, and not just once. Carson killed Indians and Latinos almost for sport in service of a U.S. government relentlessly pushing West to steal as much land and wealth as it could in the name of American exceptionalism.

I am hardly alone is questioning the character of Carson. In November, the town council in the scenic snow resort of Taos, N.M., ended a long debate centering on Carson’s persona and decided to rename Kit Carson Park to Red Willow Park. This is a pretty big deal. Why? The park, which sports a large entertainment facility, is the biggest thing in town–and Carson is actually buried in it! The Kit Carson Home and Museum is nearby. His name, though, remains on the local electric utility and a nearby national forest.

The debate in Taos about Carson stretched back 50 years in New Mexico, where I lived for more than a decade long before becoming New To Las Vegas. The Taos discussions focused largely on Carson dealings with native Americas, who continue to have a large presence in the area and an adjoining reservation.

For Carson, born Christopher Houston Carson in Kentucky, I would call it a love-hate relationship with a lot of hate. Despite his doing terrible things to Indians, two of his three wives were native American. The trio bore him a total of 10 children (the same number, coincidentally, that Chavez had if you count the two with Huerta). Carson for a few years served as a government Indian agent who at times helped to protect Indians. But to make way for gringos he followed orders to force Indian tribes to relocate to internment camps in a process that killed thousands.

Much, but hardly all, of Carson’s fame comes from his six-year association with John C. Frémont (1813-1890). He’s the military man and politician (the Republican Party’s first presidential candidate in 1856) who became famous mapping much of the West with the considerable help of Carson and then, with the luck of good timing more than military skill, getting credit for helping to win the Mexican War. That brought eight future states into the U.S., including California, Nevada, Utah and most of Arizona.

Frémont’s name is plastered on schools, cities, hospitals, neighborhoods and all kinds of other places all over the West. Before development of the Las Vegas Strip, Fremont Street was the most important artery in Las Vegas. Still, I long have considered Frémont to be a war criminal and have written about him for a long time in this space and elsewhere.

But a lot of Frémont’s unsavory activities involved Carson, who later created his own baggage. It was Frémont who in 1843 named a river near the present Carson City, then still part of Utah, after his scout. In 1858, the future state capital was laid out by a businessman from New York a few miles to the west along a trade route on the edge of Lake Tahoe in a place called Eagle Valley and given the name Carson City in honor of Kit. (In case you wonder, Carson City is 430 miles northwest of Las Vegas, a seven-hour drive almost all of it on two-lane state highways.) Population today is 58,000.

Frémont and Carson had met in 1842 as the ambitious military man was planning its first of his five military mapping expeditions through the West (mainly as a prelude to a U.S. military invasion). Carson already had a big reputation as a guide, and hired on.

In Frémont’s journal writings, he frequently praised Carson for what what one historian has called his disproportionate “butchery” in killing Indians to avenge deaths and get back stolen horses. Frémont once blandly wrote in his journal that Carson “had been able to give so useful a lesson to these American Arabs.” Now remember, Frémont, Carson et al. were traipsing through Indian and Mexican territory with no legal authority. Imagine a secret U.S. military unit doing this in, say, Russia?

Carson was with Frémont on May 3, 1844, when the marching expedition spent 12 hours at an unpopulated marshy area in the Mojave Desert area known locally as Las Vegas. I have called it Frémont’s one-night stand in Las Vegas., but it was Carson’s, too. In his journal Frémont wrote the water was too warm to drink but delightful for bathing (he sorta sounded like the first of millions of tourists who eventually would follow). Carson, who was illiterate, wrote nothing. Frémont never returned to the Las Vegas area, which didn’t become a city until years after his death. It’s not likely that Carson did, either.

The traipsing continued for several years. In March 1846, finally ordered by Mexican authorities to leave California, Frémont, Carson and the troops headed north toward Oregon, never part of Mexico. On the way they attacked without provocation a large Indian encampment near the future Redding, Calif. Their long guns allowed them to fight with impunity from outside the range of answering Indian arrows. In what became known as the Sacramento River Massacre, Frémont’s troops, including Carson, easily killed hundreds of braves, women and children without experiencing any casualties of their own. Trapped by the Sacramento River, many others died from drowning.

In Oregon, Frémont received secret orders from U.S. President James K. Polk to head back south to California; war was afoot! But in Oregon they encountered Klamath Indians upset about these incursions into their ancestral land. They attacked, killing three of Frémont’s men. Frémont and Carson responded by spending days moving around the 87-mile perimeter of Klamath Lake killing every Indian they could find–as many as 14 at a  time–and making little effort to determine the culpable parties. Since Frémont, Carson and the troops had the guns and Indians had only bows and arrows it really wasn’t much  of a fight. Frémont expressed great satisfaction with his actions during the Klamath Lake Massacre. “It will be a story for them to hand down when there are any Klamaths on their lake,” he said.

As the Frémont expedition continued south, the close-knit team stole horses, raped Indian women and shot their husbands. “We killed plenty of game and an occasional Indian,” wrote one of Frémont’s soldiers. “We made it a rule to spare none of the bucks.”

In June 1846 the unit reach San Rafael, just north of San Francisco. Two years ago in this space, I described what ensued:

[Fremont’s] troops spotted three innocent, unarmed Mexican settlers–an elderly man and two nephews–crossing a waterway toward them. Using a telescope, Frémont himself watched the small boat as it neared the shoreline.

“Captain,” Kit Carson said, “Shall I take these men prisoners?”

Frémont airily waived his hand. “I have no room for prisoners,” he replied, according to a witness account the Great Pathfinder never disputed. His answer amounted to a death warrant. Using their rifles at point-blank range, Carson and two soldiers eagerly gunned down the helpless Californios.

They then reported back to Frémont what they had done. “It is well,” he said approvingly. His soldiers then stripped the dead bodies of all clothing. Frémont rebuffed one dead man’s son who asked for return of his father’s poncho.

The U.S. won the Mexican War, of course, helping to seal Carson’s fame. Years later, during the Civil War, Carson fought with distinction on the Union side in New Mexico. But that also involved dealing with the many Indian tribes in New Mexico. He slow-walked and ignored orders by hire-ups to kill male Indians of hostile tribes. But he oversaw what is known as the Long Walk of the Navajo, in reality dozens of forced relocations of native Americans from 1863 to 1866 to distant reservations. More than one-third of the participants died, some killed by forces under Carson as they fell behind.

If you think Cesar Chavez is a poor subject for veneration and namesaking despite doing some good things, what about Kit Carson? I say, change the name. Maybe back to Eagle Valley (the original Indian name seems lost to history, but eagles are venerated by tribes). Or something evocative like Sierra Nation or Sierra Heights. Easy fixes, with no risk of a future character exposé by those pesky out-of-state journalists. Add your comments below, and let the debate begin!

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