at 9:00 eastern on c-span2's book tv. announcer: next on american history tv, hampton psy, author of "blood and thunder," describes the american frontiersman as a controversial figure, often portray to as either a mythological american hero or a cruel killer of native american. andnpacked this dispute, explores his complex relationship with novel hello indians. -- the aspen institute coordinated this event, and contains language some viewers may find offensive. >> thank you so much, it's great to be here. i joke around and say when i started the podcast, i thought i would hit the big time if i could get to people to listen. askidea that people would

me to come and speak with one of my favorite authors is a dream come true. everybody here is very familiar with hampton sides. for the purposes tonight, we will be talking about "blood and thunder," one of his very well-known books. that is just a very small percentage of what he has written and i have read it all. he has an amazing talent for distilling loads in lowe's and years and years of research and serious history into user-friendly, fun, exciting books. obviously you should all read "blood and thunder," but i'd encourage you to check out his others as well. he has another coming out in october. hampton is a tennessee native, i'm a north carolina native, it is likely that our southern accents will ramp up and no one will understand it. but i am so excited a chat with him. we are going to get right into

it. the best way to go about this is to establish some of the major players in "blood and thunder," and from there we can dig into the details. first we should talk about the novel how -- the navajo. >> no, we should talk about barbecue. >> this could turn into a brawl. [laughter] >> we digress. >> that's not a good way to start. >> so let's talk about the navajo. there's a line in your book most you say there's the -- could you explain what that means and talk about the navajo and their geographic location. >> absolutely. i live in santa fe, and the navajo presence in new mexico is huge, and yet i think all the westerns we are familiar with, it is usually the sioux or

comanche that is depicted. people don't really know that much about -- who are the navajo, this people that came down the spine of the rockies and adopted the lifestyle of anyone they met? it seems like they were the expert inhalers of other cultures. spanishe they met the and adopted their sheet, which became the foundation of their anding skill of making rugs incredible textiles which they are famous for. they adopted the horse, which accelerated their culture, it allowed them to move over vast areas of what we now call navajo country, tending to their herds. but they weren't just a sheep

people, horse people. agriculturalist. they grew corn. they were seminomadic. they learned a lot from the ofblo tribe, adopted many their cultures and ideas. i call them the most american of the american indians, because they seem to have this unique talent for ushering in new blood, new ideas, new concepts wherever they roamed over the farhwest, and they were by the most successful tribe in the southwest at that point. they were growing by leaps and bounds in this internal conflict between the spanish and the mexicans along the rio grande. the navajo were winning that conflict. they were more successful in

their ways, they were flourishing quite beautifully when, in 1846, the united states of america, these anglo-americans, started marching west to take over this >> the second major character in the book is an individual, kit carson. figure historical cloaked in mythology and that is hard to dig down to exactly who he was. i thought of him as a cub what. trotting around on a stallion. that couldn't be further from the truth. [laughter] >> unassuming, awkward around the ladies, he had a certain

mischievous charisma or so many people said. he was someone will always put other people at the center of the story, not himself. this is an age of windbags and glory hounds. he was a guy who always wanted to let someone else get the glory. very likable in many ways. most people thought he was wonderful, a true loyal husband and father, loyal to his friends. loyalty, botheal ways. you don't throw your friends under a bus. he was that kind of person. but, he was also prone to violence. he was a natural born killer. people remarked about how in a firefight, he was the guy you wanted on your side.

it became really difficult for me as i got into the story to reconcile these two personalities. the sleet kit carson, the full cure a with -- a full hero -- folk hero, with a very violent guy. he lives in an era of incredible violence, an era where there were not really outlaws yet because there were no laws to live outside of. interesting cat. i get rushing up against east to -- brushing up against these two different viewpoints. maniac was a genocidal and a full hero -- folk hero. routinely, people did say that about carson. the truth is somewhere in the

middle. he was a great indian hater which was not an indian hater at all. arapajo. wife was he spoke seven different india men which is. he looked more like an indian than a white guy for most of his life. the truth is much more complicated and interesting. i realize this was a great character, iconic character, to use as the narrative line for understanding bigger forces that were out there. sort of like a forest gump caret -- character. not to say he was dimwitted at all become a -- dimwitted at all, because he wasn't. he had like nine different lives. it allowed me to understand the biggest -- bigger forces of manifest destiny, mapping, describing of the west that took place during this one lifetime.

it is hard to overstate what emotions kit carson rings out -- brings out. just a few weeks ago, we were in the middle of a conversation with multiple stakeholders when your book came up, kit carson came up, one guy chimed in and said, he is an american hero and before he had even the sentence another person chimed in and said he is an indian killer. it is other than water rights in the west. i have not encountered many things that bring up emotion. navajo: try going to country. i have done a lot of talks and navajo country. we southerners are famous for our hospitality. it is so embracing and wonderful. i had a great time everywhere i went and navajo country. i give a talk in shiprock, this

woman set up and asked me questions. she said i bought your book and i may read it but i may just use it for target practice. she said it with a smile. she is a wonderful lady. i don't know what happened but that is the point, this guy is viewed like we southerners you -- if you sherman -- view sherman. destroyed every water source, cow, cap, cornfield, every and letape -- sheep, this district of campaign against the people that is still in their psyches. this morning in one of the sessions, the novel molly gloss was speaking at she was talking about how in the american west there was this vacuum, we did not have king arthur or the baleful -- or the beowulf.

the question to you is, was kit carson such a dynamic individual that the myth just grew out of him or was there this vacuum and this demand for a myth in kit carson that worked. because latched on him we americans, humans, need to have that. hampton: a little bit of both. carson was not like the most charismatic guy when you first met him. people would meet him on the trail and they would hear about him or read about him, they would meet him, despite for four awkward guy, -- this five foot say awkward guy, it would you're not that kit carson i am looking for. he is supposed to be six foot eight and blonde, blue-eyed and beautiful, always gets a girl and always wins the day.

that is the hero of these early books. featured kit carson as a hero. they were pretty important kind of books in their day. it was one of the first mass pieces of literature in american publishing. people north and south and east and west. but carson was often at the center of these books. carson hated these books. he absolutely hated them. he did not understand them. he did not understand where they were coming from or who these writers were. they needed to use him as some sort of old hero. they used his name without getting his permission, without paying him a cent. they would also perpetuate all sorts of lies and say things like he would kill to indians before breakfast. it was presumably a good thing back then. he did not understand that. he had to reckon with the

celebrity for his entire life starting around 1846 when carney's army was coming was. even before because of john c fremont and his topographical books. it is actually a big thing -- seem -- seem of the book -- them e of the book. he tries to reckon with his own celebrity and does not understand where it is coming from. i think there is an element -- people back east, not only government people at the writers, novelist, the thinkers, they needed to come up with some sort of notion that this new territory which we just seized unlawfully from the spanish and was notve americans, already inhabited by anglo-american heroes who were doing great things. warfare and bright -- who were

fair and right and all these things that carson was supposed to be, and in fact, he was most of the things. it also helped that his name was kit carson. it is easy to remember. it obtained this kind of watchword or by word for all sorts of heroes that i think people back east hoped and suspected were out here already somehow. was a difficult and awkward subject for his whole life. he really did not fully get it. it was made much more difficult by the fact that kit carson was illiterate. he could not read the books even though they were not great tones or anything. i do you to read some of these "blood and thunder" books. he would have to have other people read to him around the campfire. it began in the middle part of

his career, he realized that he had to seize control of his own pr. he wrote and dictated a biography, autobiography, which is a very frustrating document by the way, when you read it, it is the bare-bones. he had this expression, he would say, i concluded to charge the indians. done so. [laughter] like, your action is greater than words. which in the essence of his concluded to do the dishes i will to my wife, done so. -- i will tell my wife, done so. someone trying to understand his inner life and emotional life, which he really think about american indians --

what did he really think about american indians? you don't get that in his autobiography. he did try to seize control of direct itblicity and in some way. ed: one of the questions that i kept thinking about and reading the book was -- in reading the book was he was very tight with john fremont. i don't think you can have more -- to more polar opposite personalities. fremont was a glory hound, center of attention, he was a mega maniac and carson was a border follower who did whatever he said. it would seem to me that a guy like carson would be so turned off by somebody who is trying to build his name up, build of his reputation on everybody else's work. how you reconcile those two relationships? it's really interesting. hampton: it is the double helix relationship that helps blame --

explain the american west. you have a guy like fremont was very intelligent and widely read, very ambitious, with intimate ties to important people back east in washington. foremost among those being the senator thomas, his father-in-law, charismatic, a beautiful man by all accounts. the women swooned over him. lovehe was as you say, and with a vertical pronoun -- in love with a vertical pronoun. he was the most intelligent man in the room but the first to admit it. all those kind of things. then you have carson who is completely the opposite. i guess sort of modern addiction counselor tech people would say that they enabled each other. their codependent. -- they are codependent. there wasded --

something about his personality because you want to get deep in his psychology, his front -- his father died at an early age. he was looking for a father figure perhaps. he knew there was this world back east of well educated intelligent literate people. the society that he could never be a part of. and here comes fremont, he meets him on a steamship near st. louis. he gets a job to be a scout to go explore the american west. fremont just won him over. once you became his friend and he became your friend, it was impossible to defend him. -- de-friend him. he believed in loyalty. he expected you to be loyal to him and him to you.

he was loyal to fremont for the rest of his life. fremont did save his life several times, carson saved fremont's life many more times. they needed each other. he was very differential throughout his life. to anyone who was better educated, and fact that he was illiterate, it played a role in some of his insecurities. but he also needed someone, most men were married understand this -- who are married understand this, when he to be told what to do so we can go out and do it. thumbs up. -- done so. he was one of those guys. when you gave him a punch list, he went out and did it. sometimes he was incredibly violent and hard to reconcile with other aspects of his is nobody. to understand carson unit to

understand these other guys in his life, fremont and james henry carlton, for some ultimately and ordered him to go on to the navajo campaign. when you're faking about loyalty, i feel like that is the common descriptor that comes -- talking about loyalty, when you fast forward to his whole life, you get to the end of his life, and he dies basically destined because he has no assets, he has accounts receivables that is friends won't pay him, he's got on paper not a dollar to his thing but in his pocket, basically nothing. as an american hero, that everybody is put on a pedestal forever -- has put on a pedestal forever, dies alone with no money. people but loyal to the people that he trusted in the financial matters did not repay him. what does that say about the blood loyalty, i guess?

hampton: he was a sucker i guess, in some way. also, he grew up and came up out of a culture that was not really a money culture. it was a barter culture. the currency new mexico is rugs, up with navajo lightning whiskey, by the time he died, the railroad was coming west and money culture was taking over the west. it is interesting to think about carson is a lot of people say, this ultimate american who was a blind follower of duty. he was a patriot who wanted to do what he did to advance americans, anglo-american culture. but i do not think that is true at all. misery --y from missouri to the new mexico territory. it was mexican territory.

he was trying to get away from america. happiest years of his life were the years that he spent as a mountain man, living with the arapahoe. trapping beaver in the rivers of the remote american west. that was not a money culture. it produced money, obviously, it was a lucrative trade, but they lived a very different world. to understand carson really, his motivation of his life, it was not about being a patriot, it was about loyalty, coming back to this idea. tribal loyalty. this is how you survived when you were a mountain man. this is the code we talked about yesterday in the seminars about. the code of the west. the good of the west was absolute loyalty to your group

to him. the enemy of your group is your personal enemy. brain whennto your -- when you are a 19-year-old kit coming up in that culture. other tribes were your enemy. by the time he was 30 years old, that was so hard -- so baked into his personality that that is the way he viewed the american west. ed: when we are sitting here looking back, it is all very clear that that was not an appropriate course of action, what he did was very bad. but if you look at it through the lens of his people and his time, it is a different story. it reminded me of another character from one of your books, the captain.

how he had this idea to go on this exploration to find seat in the middle of the polar ice cap. if you could find the secret passage can get to this warm topical sea. looking back at that, you think that is the craziest thing. can you talk a little bit about the importance of judging these characters whether it is kit carson or theodore roosevelt, looking at them in their time. -- in their time period. hampton: this notion of presentism that you judge has characters based on present values, towards race or equal rights, or whatever. you really have to scrape away everything that we know and think and feel. if you want to understand who these people are, in history,

you have to get -- scrape away what we are today and all we know and all the advances we have made as a culture, as a people, and is a democracy. you have to get back to where they were than. -- then. that is why i tried to do "blood and thunder." i don't know if i succeeded. a lot have criticized the book. other people have criticized the book for not being broke it carson enough. especially some of these mountain man rendezvous reenactor guys. but i feel like i am doing my job if a lot of people are criticizing me. the truth is somewhere in the middle. reallysay, this book is -- curious, how many of you read ?"lood and thunder it is using a single character

-- and i can't think of a better character in the american west with the exception of fremont himself, who could do this. as a way to understand the ebb and flow and the clashing of the this cauldron american west of the 1840's and 50's and 60's. he is the guy. he was everywhere. he did all this trouble and oregon, he was in mexico, washington, dc, national this travel. -- all this travel. i did it in a volkswagen jetta. it's got really good mileage. diesel. just a span of this man's life thathere he went, the fact he was a literate also created some really profound challenges because historians love documents. he did not really have any.

i lived in santa fe and found out about the kit carson papers. the havoc it carson papers -- they have the kit carson papers there in the state archives. we ordered up the box, they come out rolled up, the kit carson papers, maybe no one even knows about this. i opened up the box and sure enough they had the kit carson papers, both of them. [laughter] it was a real problem researching the book. but then i realized, i live in santa fe, new mexico. the new age capital of the world. home of high colonics and massage, we had a bunch of seances. with carson himself. that is what the book is about. direct communication. [laughter] unfortunately, or fortunately, even though he was illiterate, he was written about a lot. there are tons of accounts all over the place.

you have to go to places like the library at yale or the huntington library in pasadena to relate to the story and sift through what is false and what is fiction and what is real. but you can find it. ed: he worked on this book for five years. no joke. how did you sift through the nonsense and the facts? i would imagine there are equal amounts of both. hampton: from a technical historian research aspect, how did you do that? hampton: kit carson is like a jack-in-the-box. he pops up everywhere. people will come he is a think kit carson was in our backyard, there is a true carved into it. probably not. since he was illiterate. [laughter] kay's the he supposedly lived in. caves that he supposedly lived

in. whatever. he could've been anywhere. course, every county, every carson city, nevada, every kit carson park, carson national forest, everything is named after the sky. it creates this kind of illusion that he must've been everywhere. and he was almost everywhere. ed: how did you sift through? hampton: it is hard. there's all kinds of lore. that he was in a fight with the comanches and he was outnumbered by a hundred to one. he was a himself. he reached around and slit the mule, of his meal - -

and the mule created the barricades so he could fight the comanches. scared smell of the mule the horses and therefore they would not come close. books and asmerous far as i can tell it did not really happen. i am almost sure it did not happen. but it is one of the hundreds of the things you have to sift through. a girl named carl -- a guy named carl, a german writer who wrote these novels, often starring kit carson, he made up all kinds of stuff like that. you have to sift through it all. it is usually bullshit. but the real story is more interesting because he did do amazing things. it seems that whenever there was that she was in the heat of action, he was the guy to save the day. he was the coolest under

pressure. he killed the most people and got to safety or saved -- got the message to washington. he was also a transcontinental carrier and brought these messages to washington, including possibly in one of the saddleback's, news that they discovered old in california. i don't know, i'm a little skeptical on that one. he hated washington, by the way. they treated him like tarzan. [laughter] like he just came out of the wild. he did not have use a fork, stuff like that. ed: you briefly alluded to this, kit carson park. hampton: sacred house. it is a great example of some of modern-day society's attempts to fix some of these wrongs from the old days. mount mckinley and alaska, that is not been renamed to denali officially. ed: do you climb? hampton: i don't know about

climb. throughout -- i threw up my way up. this discussion about washington redskins constantly, there was this part in -- we used to call him the foreskin living in washington. but we digress. park.t carson ed: tell the story about what happened. of similar is sort to what is been happening in richmond and charles hill and other places back east with confederate monuments and the question of what to do with them. should we change their name? remove statues? kit carson park is in the center of town, a center where people meet and it is the central park. it is called that mainly because he is buried there, he and his wife. it is spread on kit carson avenue right up against kit carson national forest.

it is part of the history of this town. but i understand that native americans hate this guy. democracy, wea cannot pick and choose our history but we do live in a democracy and if people really want to debate and think and read think -- re-think and reboot, that is fine and fair. there was a movement to change the name of kit carson park to something else. unfortunately, the town leaders kind of just had a spasm and did not have a good answer and said we will call it red willow park. but they never insulted the people of the rent will. -- of the red willow. the indians were not asked what he think so they pitched a fit and we are back in square one. it is still called kit carson

park. kit carson was involved in the indian wars. one of the last chapters of his man, he was a mountain was a hunter and a renter, a ultimately soldier, a brigadier general, but he was an indian fighter against the navajo and the apache, several apache tribes. so they hate him. and, what we really think about it? -- what do i really think about it? i don't know. there is education behind it and it is not a knee-jerk reaction, i am fine with it. he is buried there, however. what you do with that great, too? you going to unearth it and move it somewhere else? i don't know. it is a debate that will live on and it is an important one.

my usual answer though to this question, what to do with the statute, is not to her than done but to build more statues. we need native american statues. african-american statues. more and more statues involving women in the west, for example. we have only honor these dead white guys. we need to -- the biggest corrective to this problem is to build more statues. ed: aside from building more andues, what would you say, i know you're not a politician, from a practical standpoint, how do you see is getting past this divisiveness? it seems that the rhetoric on both sides, people are only retreating more and more into their corners. maybe there -- they are just allow people, people in the middle that are reading and thinking it through. how do you see is getting past this? it seems to be getting more and more hyped up almost on a weekly basis now in the media. hampton: it is tough.

we live in a really -- i thought we lived in a divisive time before trump was elected, it has worse ton unimaginably the point where families can talk to each other. they can't go on vacation together. it is unbelievable how this has happened. there have been other times in our history where it has happened. .950 with mccarthyism desperate times there where people were not able to really -- democrats and republicans did not talk to each other. you seemed to move past these eras and hope we will continue to do so. conferences like this one where we had a lot of interesting perspectives presented in a very civilized format, have to say honestly, just how privileged i feel to have been invited to this conference. there is actually dozens of

people who are participating in this conference will make their professional lives work. to study and understand the american west. i have just read -- i have just written one book. have made the west my home and i wrote this one book but i am not a scholar of the american west with a lot of these amazing folks are in all different disciplines. anyway, civilized conversation and listening to each other and then he was like -- venues like the african institute are suddenly an important way for us to get a conversation going that will lead to something positive. ed: one of the things i loved about your book was read it pretty soon after moving west, a gave me this phase level knowledge but then you look at the 50 pages of footnotes. it is really just a jumping off point. that is what i loved about it.

this is a hard question. if you had to pick two to three ,ooks that you would recommend where should they go? it is infinite. where should they go and was subject should they follow and what books should they read? one book was mentioned in one of our earlier seminars. the diary of her trip was. i can't remember the title of it honestly. a woman who came was with the army of the west. stephen carney's armie. -- army. she just happened to be a brilliant writer and took all this stuff down. i highly recommend this book. it is an early document of the

american perception of the american west. all theite books of western literature is beyond the hundredth meridian, it is, you have to read it it is an amazing book. maybe some of mccarthy's books and novels. he is a real difficult guy. he lived in santa fe. he is a powerful writer and -- it is one of the great ones of the american west. when you think about -- when you were writing this book, were there any mentors or heroes or influences that you look to when you were thinking, i would love to write this sweeping history

of the west? was anyone you thought about, like if it could turn out like their writing? hampton: i grew up in memphis and the first heard i have are met was a memphis historian. really interesting character. he was linked shall be foot -- shelby foot. he had a pipe in the accident. his son and i were in a rock band together. argots? have you heard of them? we were pretty good. we were -- we would do what we possibly do to prevent shelby foot from finishing his trilogy of the civil war. and ir got to know shelby understood what he was trying to do. he was a novelist who later came to writing his -- writing history. he was a narrative historian. know i what i did not

was aspiring to be. i did not even know it had a name. but that is exactly what i have tried to do and i was very consciously trying to do with "blood and thunder." hopefully it is very readable and brings in a lot of history. but it reads like a novel if at all possible. it was also shelby who gave me a great piece of advice when it didn't interview with him for a magazine. he said, he had this great accent, you should never ever talk about their work -- your work. ever. his point was, you talk about your work, he said great work is written under pressure. micromet -- like remember those cooker's?re

if you let up the pressure a little, there is no pressure the beans to not get cooked. you cooker's? if you let go to cocktail partim going to write this book am i will tell you about this thing i'm going to write, you go to dinner parties and you start letting off the pressure, you're not going to cook because it is so hard to read the book -- write a book. i took that to heart. i really try not to talk about what i am working on. unless i am having a real problem that i am trying to solve with another writer perhaps. i think that is good advice. i am superstitious partly. maybe i will not read the book and i will feel like an idiot when i tell that person at the next alto party -- at the next cocktail party. but it is a lesson. good work is in fact done under pressure. keep it inside until you're ready to really show to the world. ed: that's great. i could keep that in the

questions for 10 hours but we will open it up to questions from the audience. i am sure there are some questions. we have microphones. you recording this. -- we are recording this. >> you talk about john c fremont. just as a piece of work on the west. hampton: it is a great book. isn't that a novel? it is fiction. several clicks on the dial. me,t of people will tell and i think they mean it as a compliment, they say are really enjoyed your novel, and i winced because it is not a novel. everything affected my book was hard won,rned and

i got it from some book or document, it is not a novel. it is only a few clicks away. i am aspiring to make it read like a novel in terms of pacing and structure or characters or then there are several clicks over this weekend you get a historical fiction. it is great and it is wonderful and i read a bunch of historical novels while writing this book -- while researching this book. irving stone is certainly one of them. i grew up when i was young, i read a lot of -- was the guy that wrote ragtime? he was a great historical novelist. research anduch spending fiction. whenever i am reading a historical novel i am always

kind of toggling back and forth in my mind between what is real and what is not real? i need to know. i feel like i am not a solid ground. psych you coming back to wanting to do narrative nonfiction. has always bothered me that i work in a profession that has negative in front of it. it is very weird. it is maybe the only profession that says i am not this i am something else. [laughter] it should not be the other way around. it shouldn't be like truth or non-truth. --shouldn't be true for truth or bullshit. it basically presumes that line -- lying and making up shit is the default condition of the human condition. anyway, that is fine. i love novels too. but nonfiction. jeter'seter -- derek

and non-basketball players. janie fromy name is the navajo nation. it is quite interesting. i have not read your book yet, but i will. it is language have an issue with and how your celebrating these amazing things that he has killed the most people. i am a part of that group that survived that long walk. it is 150 years in july that my people have signed the treaty to survive and be returned back to her homeland. -- their homeland. i understand about the complexities of humans, i came back from germany and how they teach about hitler's and the gestapo and the resident -- and the rise of the. and the perception. i am just wondering, you have not mentioned that all native people or historians. authors, people

from those committees have been affected, have you been including them? where are those voices? hampton: good question. navajol fairly recently, history or in any native american history was largely oral history. up until recently there were not a whole lot of navajo counts of what happened. i certainly use the ones that i had to work with. i use a lot of oral history though. -- i am not sure how many pages of my page in my book are dedicated to the navajo. most of that is based on oral histories that were taken -- the greatr -- during depression, during the wpa, there were a bunch of writers who went into navajo country and a lot of other places and took these oral histories from people who remembered what it was --

what happened then, not what my great great grandfather did. what my father told me. one or two generations away. in terms of the navajo part of -- iory, i would feel a would say a part is on the wpa research that was taken them. -- then. important toit is understand in terms of the navajo situation, there have been for hundreds of years essentially a low-grade war going on between the navajo and the spanish and the mexicans. they sold each other's chief that sheep and cattle -- sheep and cattle and women and killed each other when possible. this is a war that has gone on for over 200 years at the point --n the unit is it came west united states came with a took over this part of the world you

-- world. it is one of the weaknesses of the navajo interpretation. the navajo never recognize that this war took place. the navajo seemed too often argue that the united states just kind of came out of nowhere and visited this campaign upon them for no reason. that there had not been multiple treaties violated and multiple attacks and massacres on both sides. that it led up to this culminating event. i do not know many of my navajo -- ins, and santa fe, santa fe, i do not think there very honest about that -- they are very honest about that. this were also extended to the youths in the comanche and other native tribes. if you go to those tribes and talk about the navajo it will talk about how the navajo were

ancient enemies and attackers install our women and children's. this is kind of an untenable situation that was going on for a long time. unless the navajo are arguing that we should go back to that time when we sold each other women and children and cattle and sheep and live in the sort life is nasty, brutish, and short. you have to reckon what was happening in the 1860's and this for that was proposed that by kit carson come of the fire guy named james henry carlton on orders that were signed by an approved by abraham lincoln. that is when you begin to realize that kit carson is an important but actually only an executive role in this thing. ordered a war that was from the very highest levels of the u.s. government.

it becomes a much more obligated story. it doesn't make it better or worse. it is a big problem that people have with my book. the notion that if you're going to write about someone that you are automatically celebrating them. that would mean that you cannot read about anyone who is a villain or a bad person in history. i think -- i would challenge you to find a single book in american letters that is more vivid and depicting carson's scorched earth campaign against the navajo and all the brutality and all the event -- vivid clarity -- cruelty. this is not mean i am celebrating kit carson. he is just a central character in a much bigger story. thank you. how do you evaluate carson compared to william cody,

possibly david crockett, and given bone -- boone -- admirableications, characters we now recognize -- we now recognize. have you put them in comparison with carson? hampton: i am not an expert on those other characters. most of the more showman or people really good at putting themselves in the center of the story. carson was horrible businessman. -- a horrible businessman. he died destitute. he was also not a narcissist like custer. whatever you want to say about custer, carson -- unfortunately

some of his guys had amanda begins with a c. -- guys had names that begin with a c. i get them all mixed up. he was not anything like custer in terms of his demeanor, body his sort of shiver us that chivalrous demeanor. he was a different kind of cat. he supposedly related to daniel bone when he came out of misery -- misery -- missouri. the baton was handed over from daniel bone in kentucky to a person -- to carson and misery -- carson in missouri. i forgot was you mentioned, david crockett. there are people who try to say this was a progression of white

american folk euros. -- folk heroes. they are actually a pretty different and came out of different times. they had different sorts of worlds that they were living in as they moved their way west. what is different really about this underlying tragic aspect that was part of his personality which was, in part of his love story, he was that she really participated in -- he really participated in the destruction of the world that he loved. unwittingly and for the most part. he came west. those were his happiest days and then his 20's, he was a mountain man. he was living with the cheyenne and the arapahoe. in about guys and living this free world. guys ande mountain living this free world. they trapped the beaver to

extension. -- extinction. the participated in the hunting of the buffalo. he participated in expeditions that led to this mass exodus of immigrants west on the oregon trail. coming,o the mormons all these folks flooding to the west. which then led to the railroads and the railroads created this whole different west that he never really wanted to be a part of. it was clear by the end of his life that he was done with this new west. he did not understand this new west. and yet he, to the creation of this new west, he vowed his own nest, he destroyed his own paradise. i think part of the tragedy is he did not fully realize that. he did not fully see it until

the very end of his life that he figure in thetral destruction of this world that he loved so much. here.have a few over there is an anecdote that i think might have been told in kit carson's autobiography. chasingelping the army some indians who had captured a white woman. when they finally arrives, the woman had already died. but among her, he found a "blood and thunder" novel about kit carson. would you talk a little bit about his reaction to the? -- to that? when he first encountered his own myth, when he first became aware of these

books that were in with him as a central character. -- annenamed and white white was on the santa fe trail when her party was attacked by and all the men were killed. white and her baby daughter and a black slave or captured -- were captured and kit carson sort of got the call to go find her. this is one of the things about officialn with no --le, he was just a great great at reading signs and was a great tracker. he lived new the santa fe trail, he went after -- near the santa fe trail, he went after the party in search of anne white.

after 14 days on the trail, a deepened into the planes of the panhandle of texas. he found her. element -- but the element of surprise had been lost. camp wither in this an arrow through her heart. she had been killed and her baby baby and the sleep were never found again -- the slave were never found again. he found this "blood and thunder," and in that, which he could not read, the story was about how kit carson had gotten a call to go find a woman, a white woman who had been kidnapped by indians on the santa fe trail. and how he had succeeded in finding her and saved the day and rescued her and killed a bunch of indians. restored her to her family back

in boston. heardd this thing and he the story around the campfire, and then someone said, hey, it you want this -- do you want this? this is your copy. he said no, burn the dam thing. he felt that this book has -- -- anne white ai great hope. obviously, he had failed. it haunted him for the rest of his life. it is one of the stories between the truth and the bullshit. this is actually one of the true stories. it is a fascinating side chapter of his life. ed: time for one more. right here. we've got a microphone coming. >> what about his personal life?

you mentioned he was married. did he ever have children? was his marriage successful? [laughter] it's hard to believe it would be. about his personal life, his marriage? hampton: his personal life. he had three wives. not at the same time. [laughter] his first wife was named singing dress. she was arapahoe. one of the loves of his life. he had -- they had two children one of whom died young and the other lived a little bit longer. but she died in childbirth with that second child. his second wife was cheyenne. tv -- ked him out of the of her teepee in what is known as the cheyenne divorce.

his third and final wife was spanish. josefa. yearst remember how many he was married. she was taller than he was. there are maybe one or two pictures of her, she was a beauty. she would be played by salma hayek. [laughter] she is pretty hot. people have wondered what does she see in this smelly old mountain gun? they were married and had eight kids. they were spread out all over colorado and new mexico. when i went on the book tour and met many descendents of the carson family -- i met many descendents of the carson family. they are out there. of course, there is johnny carson. [laughter] no relation. he was a great -- it was a great

theme of his life, this notion like ulysses, he will get back to his wife. but he seemed to be constitutionally incapable of andsng no to aaron's -- err that were proposed to him by the u.s. government or other people. he was constantly on the road. he had raised these kids pretty much by herself -- she had raised these kids party much by herself. i am sure she resented him. be -- he islways in oregon, and montana, he is becky's, fighting in the civil -- we do not even get to the civil war. homeis he going to come and the normal guy and have a family life? i do think it was one of the biggest regrets and his life that he did not do that. but that is how he ended his life story.

he had an aneurysm on his aorta. but hebeen diagnosed wanted to go to washington, d.c. to negotiate a treaty for the youthdians who were -- indians which he successfully did do. he got a secondary diagnosis aneurysm onindeed his aorta, which is a classic sign of syphilis, i later learned. he got an a train this time and mule, -- ae, not a mule, and took the train back to his wife. he got there a couple of days before she gave birth to their final baby. she died in childbirth. he died a month later. heart butf a broken really it was the aneurysm that burst. that is the end of the story.

josefa.rue to he was by all accounts a loyal and true husband but was hardly ever there. except in the very last years of his life. they are buried together in kit carson park which may be renamed. that is sort of the end of the story. that is the saga of "blood and thunder" and kit carson. thanks for listening 1960re nine week series, eight, america into turmoil is available as a podcast. he can find it on our website, c-span.org/history. this is american history tv only on c-span3. ♪ the c-span bus recently made

the long journey to hawaii to the 39th stop of our 50 capitals tour. during us all weekend to watch our visit to hawaii on c-span's book tv and american history tv. we were feature stops across the hawaiian island showcasing the beauty, history and literary culture of the 50th state. ♪ next on lectures in history. university professor david teaches a class on 19th-century artist winslow homer. homer served as an artist correspondent for harper's weekly during the civil war. and first gain notice for his painting of world related scene. in his post or career, he depicted various aspects of american life with a focus on frontier and marine themed. professor lupin explores the symbolism down in homer's work.