hampton is the author of blood and thunder, story of kit carson and the american conquest. he shows was a controversial figure. is either a mythological hero, or cruel killer of native americans. the aspen institute organized this discussion. it does contain language that some people may find offensive. it is great to be here. i joke around is a when i started the podcast, i thought i would hit the big time if i could get two people to listen, my mom, my wife. the idea that people are listening and asked me to come and speak with one of my favorite authors is a dream come true. i think everyone is familiar with him, for the purposes tonight, we'll talk about blood and thunder. is one of his well- known books. this is a small percentage of what he has written.

i have read it all. he has an amazing talent for distilling loads and loads, and years and years of research, and serious history into a very user-friendly book. obviously, you should all read blood and thunder. i encourage you to check out his others as well. he has another one coming out in october. hampton is a tennessee native. i'm a north carolina native. our southern accents will ramp up and up and no one will understand us. i'm excited to chat with him. we will get right into it. the blessed -- best way to go about it is to establish the major players in blood and thunder. from there, we will look at the detail >> we should talk about the navajos first.

actually let's talk about tennessee bbq being better than carolina barbecue. >> that will turn into a brawl a peer. >> we digress. >> that's not a good way to start. >> let's talk about the navajos. there is a line in your book where you say that they are the most american of the native americans? could you talk about that? explain what that means? talk about them, and their geographic location. >> i live in santa fe, and the navajo presence in new mexico is huge. all of the westerns that we are familiar with, the tv shows, it is normally the sioux, or the comanche drive -- tribes that are depicted. people don't really know that much about who the navajo are. these people came down the spine of the rockies. they adopted the lifestyles of

everyone they met. it seems like they were the experts of inhaling other cultures. they met the spanish and they adopted their sheep. that became the foundation of their skills of making rugs. they have these incredible textiles that they are famous for. they adopted the horse, which accelerated their sheep culture. it allowed them to move over vast areas of navajo country. they were not just sheep people. they were not just horse people. they were agriculturalists. they grew corn. they were semi-nomadic. they learned a lot from the pueblo tribes. they adopted many of their

cultures and ideas. they are the most american of the american indians because they seemed to have a unique talent for ushering in new ideas and new blood. they had new concepts wherever they roamed over the southwest. they were by far the most successful tribe in the southwest at that point. they were growing by leaps and bounds in the eternal conflict between the spanish and the mexicans, along the rio grande. the navajo were winning that conflict. they were more successful in their raids. they were flourishing quite beautifully in 1846. then the united states of america, and anglo-american started marching west to take over this area. they encountered the navajo for the first time.

>> the next major character in the book is the individual, kit carson. he is a historical figure that is cloaked in mythology. it's hard to dig down who we -- to who he really was. i thought of them as a six foot four handsome guy trotting around on a stallion, doing cattle drives. that could not be further from the truth. >> he was 5'4". [ laughter ] he was unassuming. he was awkward around the ladies. he had a glint in his eye, and a mischievous charisma. that's what many people said. he was someone who always put other people at the center of the story, not himself. this was an age of windbags and glory hounds. he was the guy who wanted to

let someone else get the glory. he was very likable in many ways. many people thought he was a wonderful, true, loyal husband and father. he was loyal to his friends. he had real loyalty. you do not throw your friends under the bus. he was that kind of person. 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 difficult for me, as i got into the story to reconcile these two personalities. you have the suite kit carson, the folk hero and wonderful guy with is very violent guy. different time. this was a different era. this was an era of incredible violence. is was an era where there were

not any outlaws yet. there were no laws to live outside of. he's a very interesting cat. as i got deeper into the story, i kept brushing up against these two different viewpoints of the same person. one was that he was a wonderful folk hero. the other was that he was a genocidal maniac. hattie reconcile with that? no one said he was a very nice guy. >> routinely, people said that about carson. the truth is somewhere in the middle. i did for deeply into his life story. this is a great indian hater who is not an indian hater at all.'s first wife was arapahoe. he was very close to the cheyenne and the utes, and other tribes. he's boat -- he spoke seven different indian languages.

the truth is much more complicated and interesting. i did realize that this was a great character. is an iconic character to use as a narrative for understanding much bigger forces that were out there. he is like a forrest gump character. i don't mean to say that he was dimwitted at all, because he was not. his twists and turns in life, he had nine lives. it allowed me to understand the bigger forces of manifest destiny and a conquest and mapping, and describing of the west that took place during this one lifetime. it is hard to overstate what emotions kit carson brings out. i do a lot of work in colorado. there is a kit carson county and a town named after him. 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's an american hero. before he even finished the sentence, another person chimed in and said, he's an indian killer. other than water rights in the west, i've not encountered many things that bring up emotions quite like that. >> try going to navajo country. i've done a number of talks the navajo country. like we southerners are famous for hospitality. the navajo or even more so. they are so much more embracing and wonderful. i had a great time everywhere i went in navajo country. i gave a talk at shiprock. a woman stood up and asked me questions. she said i've bought your book and i think you may read it, but i might use it for target practice. [ laughter ] she said with a smile, and she's a wonderful lady. i don't know what happened there. this is the point. this guy is viewed like we southerners view sherman. he was a guy that led a

scorched earth campaign and destroyed every salt source, water source, cornfield, every cow, sheep, and every horse. he led an unnecessary destructive campaign against their people. it is still burned into their psyche. >> i did mention earlier, the mythology that is wrapped around kit carson. this morning, one of the sessions, a woman was speaking about how in the american west, there was a vacuum. there were no myths. we didn't have king arthur or the beowulf that you have back in europe. the question to you is, was kit carson such a dynamic individual that the method grew out of him . was there a vacuum, edit demand for a myth, and kit carson worked?

did the myth latch onto him because we humans need to have that? >> it's a bit of both. carson was not the most charismatic guy. people would meet him on the trail, and they had heard about him and read about him. they would eat him, he was 5'4", and awkward. they would say, well, i'm looking for kit carson. he would say, i am kit carson. they would say, you're not the one i'm looking for. [ laughter ] he was supposed to be like six foot eight, and arian, and blue-eyed and blonde and beautiful. he always got the girl, and always wins the day. he was the hero of the early books. these were folk novels called blood and thunder's. they often featured him as the hero. they were very important books in its day. is one of the first pieces of literature in american publishing.

people north and south, east and west love them. carson was often at the center of these books. he hated these books. he absolutely hated them. he did not understand them. he did not understand where they were coming from, or who the writers were. they used him as some kind of folk hero. they use his name without his permission, or without paying him. they also perpetuated all kinds of lies. they would say things like he would kill two indians before breakfast. that was presumably a good thing back then. he did not understand. he had to reckon with this celebrity for his entire life, starting around 1846, when carney's army came west. even before that, because of fremont and is topographical books. it was a big theme of the book

is how carson reckons, or try to reckon with his own celebrity. he does not understand where it's coming from. there is an element, as you alluded to it, people back east , not just government people, but the myth makers and novelists, the thinkers had to come up with some sort of notion that this new territory that we just seized unlawfully from the spanish and native americans was already inhabited by heroes that were doing great things, and they were fair, right, and true, and lucky. carson was most of those things. it also helped that his name was kit carson. it has a nice alliterative ring to it. it's easy to remember. it was like a byword for all

sorts of heroes that people back east hoped and suspected were out here already. it was a difficult and awkward subject for his entire life. he did not get it. it was made much more difficult by the fact that he was illiterate. he could not read these books. even though they didn't have great talents, i dare you to read some of these a blood and thunder books. he had to have other people read them to him around the campfire. they would say, that didn't happen. that didn't happen. he began at a certain point in the middle part of his career to realize that he had to seize control of his own pr. he dictated a biography, an autobiography. that's a very frustrating document by the way. when you read it, it is a bare- bones, i did this and i did

that. he had this expression, he would say, i concluded to charge the indians. done so. [ laughter ] the action is greater than words, that was the essence of his personality. eye doctor that around my house with my wife. i concluded to do the dictions -- dishes, done so. [ laughter ] there is something very frustrating as a writer, and someone trying to understand his inner life and emotional life, what did he really think about american indians? what did he think about the violence that he participated in? you don't get that in his autobiography. he did try to seize control of his own publicity. he tried to direct in some way. >> one of the questions that i kept thinking about while reading the book was, he was

very tight with john fremont. i do not think you can have two more polar opposite personalities. he was a glory hound. you wanted to be the center of attention. he was a megalomaniac. and then carson was an order follower. he basically did what was told. is seems like carson would be so turned off by someone who is trying to build up his name and his reputation on everyone else's work. how do you reconcile those relationships? it's very interesting. >> it's like a double helix relationship. it helps explain the american west. you have a guy like fremont who is very intelligent, widely read and very ambitious. he had intimate ties to important people back east in washington. foremost among them was a senator. his father-in-law was a

senator. he was charismatic. he was a beautiful man by all accounts. the women swooned over him. he was, as you say, in love with the vertical pronoun. he was the most intelligent man in the room, but the first to admit it. he was all of those things. then you have carson who is the opposite. the modern people would say that they enabled each other. they were codependent. there was something that carson needed. if we want to get deep into the psychology, his father died at an early age. he was orphaned. he was an apprentice. he was probably looking for a father figure. he knew there was a world back east of well-educated, intelligent, literate people.

this was a society he could never be part of. here comes fremont. he meets them on a steamship near st. louis. he gets a job to be a scout, go explore the american west. fremont one him over. it was a friendship, like i said earlier, once you became carson's friend, and he was your friend, it was impossible to unfriend him. he believed in absolute two-way loyalty. he expected you to be loyal to him. he was loyal to fremont for the rest of his life. fremont saved his life several times. carson saved his life many more times. they needed each other. he was very deferential throughout his life to anyone

who is better educated than he was. the fact that he was illiterate played a role in some of his insecurities. he also needed someone. most men who are married, no we need to know what to do so we can go out and do it. he was one of those guys. when you gave him a punchlist, he went and did it. sometimes he was incredibly violent. he was hard to reconcile with some of the aspects of his personality. to really understand carson, you have to understand the other guys in his life. one of them was fremont. the other one was a guy named james henry carlton, who forced him to go on to the navajo campaign. >> when you think about loyalty,

that is a common descriptor that comes back to carson over and over. if you fast-forward through his whole life, and get to the end of his life, and he dies destitute because he has no assets. the only asset he has our accounts receivable that his friends will pay him. he has $9000 on paper, but in his pocket he has nothing. this american hero, the everyone put on a pedestal forever, dies alone with no money. that is the flipside, he was loyal to people, but the people he trusted in financial matters did not repay it. what does that say about his blind loyalty? he was a sucker in some ways. he also grew up. he came up out of a culture that was not a money culture, it was a barter culture. the currency in new mexico when he was coming up was beaver pelts and navajo rugs, and

whiskey. by the time he died, the railroad was coming west. the money culture was taking over the west. the thing about carson's, many people say, he was the ultimate american who was a blind follower of duty. he was a patriot who wanted to do what he did to advance anglo- american culture. in fact, i don't think it's true at all. he ran away from missouri to the new mexico territory. it wasn't even a territory yet. it was still mexican territory. he was trying to get away from america. the happiest years of his life for the years that he spent as a mountain man, living with the arapahoe.

he lived with these breezy french dudes trapping beaver and the rivers of the remote american west. that was not a money culture. obviously it produced money. it was a lucrative trade. he lived in a different world. to understand carson, his motivation, his life is not about being a patriot. his life is about loyalty. this was individual loyalty and tribal loyalty. this is how you survive as a man-to-man. this was the code we talked about yesterday and some of the seminars. we talked about the code of the west. for him, the code of the west was absolute loyalty to your group. the enemy of your group is your personal enemy. that is hardwired into your brain. when you are 19-year-old kid, coming up to this man-to-man culture, certain tribes were your friend. the arapahoe and the cheyenne were your friend.

other tribes are your enemy. the black sea in the comanche where your enemy. by the time you're 30, that was so baked into his personality, that's the way he viewed the american west. >> as we are sitting here looking back, it's very clear that that was not an appropriate course of action. what he did was very bad. if you look at it through the lens of his people in his time, it's a different story. people were cheering him on. it reminded me of another character from one of your books, captain delong. he had an idea to go on a polar exploration to find an ocean of middle the polar ice cap. if he found a secret passage,

you will get to this warm, tropical sea. >> there will be one very soon. looking back that, you think it strange that anyone would believe that. can you talk about the importance of judging the characters, whether it's kit carson or theodore roosevelt? we can look at them in their time period versus from where we sit. you have to scrape away what we are today and all the advances that we made is a culture and the people. and as a democracy. and get back to where you were. i don't know if i have succeeded. a lot of people have criticized the book for it being pro-tran8

. other criticized it for not being pro-kit carson enough . especially some of the mountain men rendezvous reenactment guys. i feel like i am doing my job if a lot of people are criticizing me. the truth is somewhere in the middle. like i say, this book -- i am curious how many have red blood and thunder? a good number. it is not a biography of kit carson . it's really using a character, a single character. i cannot think of a better character in the american west except for fremont who could do this. as a way to understand the ebb and flow and all these clashing forces, this cauldron of the american west. he is the

guy. he was everywhere. he did all this trouble in oregon, mexico, washington, d.c. , everywhere in between. he did it on the back of a mule. i did it in a volkswagen. it was diesel. it as good mileage. i am amazed at the span of this man's life and where all he went. and the fact he was illiterate also created some profound challenges because historians love documents. and he did not really have any. i live in santa fe and a found out about the kit carson papers . i went to the national, excuse me, the state archives. ordered up the box. they rolled out the box and i hit paydirt. maybe no one knows about this. i open the box and sure enough they had the kit carson papers

, both of them. it was a real problem researching the book. but then i realized i live in santa fe, new mexico, new age capital of the world. we had a bunch of siances with carson himself. that is what the book is about. direct communication. unfortunately, or fortunately, even though he was illiterate he was probably written more about than anyone on that stage at that time. there are tons of accounts all over the place. you have to go to a library at yale or a huntingdon library in pasadena to really get to the story and sift through what is false and fiction and what is real. >> in your research, you work on this book for five years.

how did you sift through the nonsense and the facts? i would imagine there are equal amounts of both. >> from a technical historian research aspect, how did you do that? >> kit carson is like a jack-in- the-box and he pops up everywhere. people have called me and said i think kit carson was in the backyard . there is a tree with his initials carved into it. i don't know. probably not since he was illiterate. caves he supposedly lived in. whatever. he was indeed everywhere. which actually produces this kind of skip tears -- kind of conspiracy theory. he could have been anywhere. carson city, nevada, kit carson park , carson national forest,

everything is named after this guy. it creates this kind of illusion he must've been everywhere. he was almost everywhere. what was the question? there is all kinds of stories. a classic example, he was in a fight with the comanches and he was outnumbered like 100 to 1. he was by himself. he reached around and slid the throat of his mule. so the mule fell. and it created a barricade so he could fight the 100 comanches . but the smell of the blood of the mule scared off all the approaching attacking horses because they knew the smell. therefore, would not come close.

as far as i can tell it did not really happen. i am almost sure. >> i heard that before. >> hundreds of these things you have to sift through. 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. the real story is more interesting. he really did do amazing things. it seemed like whenever he was in the heat of action, he was the guy that saved the day and was the coolest under pressure. and killed the most people and got to safety or got the message to washington. he was also a transcontinental courier and brought messages to washington, including possibly in one of the saddlebags was news that they discovered gold in california.

i was skeptical on that one. he hated washington, by the way. they treated him like tarzan. like he came out of the wild. he did not know how to use a fork and stuff like that. >> you elated to kit carson park. that is a great example of some of modern-day society's attempts to fix some of the wrongs from old days. like mount mckinley in alaska that is been renamed to denali officially. >> you climbed? >> i threw up my way up. not pretty. denali and this discussion about washington redskins constantly.

kit carson park , tell the story about what happened. >> maybe you heard but, sort of similar to what has been happening in richmond and charlottesville back east with confederate monuments and the question of what to do with them , should we change their name or remove statues? kit carson park is in the center of a place where people meet and a central park. he is buried there, he and his wife. it's right on kit carson avenue up against kit carson national forest . it's part of the history of this town. but i understand that native americans hate this guy. we do live in a democracy. we cannot pick and choose our history but we live in a democracy. if people want to debate and rethink and reboot, i think 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 had a spasm and they did not have a good answer. they said we will call it red willow park. they never consulted the people of the red willow. the indians were not asked what they thought. they pitched a fit. we are back to square one. i think it's called kit carson park. it's tough. kit carson was involved in the indian wars. one of the last chapters of his life, he was a mountain man, he was a hunter and a rancher and a scout and a transcontinental courier, ultimately a brigadier general. in the last act of his life he was an indian fighter against

the navajo and the apache tribes. they hate him. what do i really think about it? i don't know. as long as you debate these things and really know what you are talking about and there is education behind it and it's not a knee-jerk reaction, i am fine with it. he is buried there, however. it's a question of what you do with the grave. will you move it? i don't know. it's a debate that will live on. it is an important one. my usual answer to this question of what to do with the statues is not to tear them down but build more statues. we need native american statues . african-american statues. more and more statues involving women in the west. we only honored the dead white guys.

the biggest correction to this problem is to build more statues. >> aside from building more statues, what would you say, you are not a politician, from a practical standpoint, how do you see us getting past this divisiveness? it seems the rhetoric on both sides, people are only retreating more and more into the corners. >> maybe there is a lot of people in the middle that are reading and thinking through. how do you see us getting past this? it just seems to be getting more and more hyped up, almost on a weekly basis with the media. >> it's tough. i thought we lived in a divisive time before trump was elected. now it has gotten unimaginably worse. to the point where families cannot talk to each other. they cannot go on vacation together. it's unbelievable how this has happened. there have been other

times in our history where it has happened. in 1950 when mccarthyism weirded's head, there are desperate times where people were not able really able to talk to each other. we seem to move past these errors and i hope we continue to do so. we will move past this one. on this debate, conferences like this one where we have had interesting perspectives presented in a very civilized format, i have to say honestly, how privileged i feel to have been invited to this conference. there are dozens of people who are pitt dissipating in the conference who made their professional life work the study and understanding of the american west. i have written one book. >> i have a laptop and a microphone. >> i made the west my home and i wrote this one book. i am not a scholar of the american west like a lot of

amazing people are. civilized conversation and listening to each other and venues like the aspen institute are certainly important ways for us to get a conversation going that will be to something positive. >> one of the things i loved about your book was i read it pretty soon after moving west. they gave me this baselevel knowledge. but then when you look at the 50 pages of footnotes, it gives you a jumping off point to read infinite number of other subjects. that is what i loved about it. if you had to pick to life and three books that you would recommend after people read blood and thunder, where should they go? where she they go and what subjects should they follow and what book should they read?

>> so many. one book was mentioned in an earlier seminar. the diary of a trip west, i cannot remember the title. down the santa fe trail. a woman who came west with the army of the west. and he was a young woman and pregnant from kentucky. she just happened to be a brilliant writer who took all of this down. i quote her widely in the book. i highly recommend this book. as an early document of the american perception of the american west. one of my favorite books of all western literature is, beyond the hundred the meridian. you have to read it. it is an amazing book. it does not figure into my book.

maybe some of mccarthy's novels. he lives in santa fe. he is a powerful writer, if you want to read a novel, i think he has one of the great ones. >> when you think about when you were writing this book, whether any mentors or heroes or influences you looked to when you thought i would love to write this sweeping history of the west? was there anyone you thought about? if they could turn out their writing i would feel good about it? >> i grew up in memphis. the first writer i ever met was a memphis historian. the really interesting character. named shelby foote.

civil war historian. he had a beard and a pipe and an accent. and his son, huggy and i were in a rock band together. august. have you heard of them? we were pretty good. we would do everything we could do cranking up the hendrix and pink floyd to prevent shelby foote from finishing his trilogy of the civil war. but i later got to know shelby and understood what he was trying to do. he was a novelist who later came to writing history. he was a narrative historian. i did not know that is what i was aspiring to be. i did not know it had a name. but that is exactly what i tried to do. and was very consciously trying to do with blood and thunder. was to write a big sprawling narrative history that is hopefully very readable and brings in a lot of history.

but reads like a novel. if that is possible. it was also shelby gave me a great piece of advice when i did an interview with him for a magazine. he said, he had a great accent, hampton, you should never ever talk about your work. ever. basically his point was, you talk about your work and great work is written of the pressure. remember the old pressure cookers. my grandmother cooked beans in them. if you let up the pressure in bits and pieces, there is no pressure left. you go to cocktail parties, i will write this book and tell you about this thing, you go to dinner parties and you start letting up the pressure. it's so hard to write a book. there is 1 million reasons for not writing 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'm tried to solve. i think that is good advice. partly superstitious. like maybe i will not write the book and i will feel like an idiot when i see that person at the next talk to party. it is also an important wasn't. good work is in fact done under pressure. keep it inside until you are really ready to show it to the world. >> i could keep asking questions for 10 hours. we will open it up for questions from the audience for a little while. i am sure there are questions. we have microphones. we are recording this. if you could wait for a microphone. >> where would you put irving

stones book, men to match my mountains in the context of talking about fremont or just as a piece of work on the west? >> it's a great book. isn't that a novel? it is fiction. several clicks on the dial. a lot of people will tell me and i think they mean it as a compliment, i really enjoyed your novel. and i wince. it is not a novel. every single fact my book was so hard earned or i got it from somewhere, some book or document , it's not a novel. it's only a few clicks away. i am aspiring to make it read like a novel in terms of pacing and structure or characters or whatever. then there is several

clicks over this way and you get into historical fiction. which is great. it is wonderful. i read a bunch of historical novels while writing this book. irving stone is one of them. i grew up and i read a lot of, who is the guy who wrote right time? -- right time? he was great writing historical novels. whenever i am reading a historical novel i am always toggling back and forth in my mind between what is real and not real. i need to know. i feel like i am not on solid ground. i keep coming back to wanting to do narrative, nonfiction. it has always bothered me that i lifted -- work in a profession that has a negative in front of it. it's very weird. it may be the only profession.

that says i am not this, i am something else. shouldn't it be the other way around? shouldn't it be truth or non- truth? shouldn't it be truth or not? how is it, it basically presumes that lying and making stuff up is the default position of the human condition. i love novels also. nonfiction. derek jeter is a non-basketball player. who does that? we have one back here. >> i am actually from the navajo nation. it is quite interesting, i am getting your book. i have not ready yet.

i have a problem with your language and you are celebrating he killed the most people. i am part of the group that survived the interments and the long walk. it's 150 years in july that my people have signed the treaty to survive and be returned back to its homeland. i understand about complexities of humans. i just came back from germany and how they teach about hitler and the rise of that. and the perception. i am just wondering, you have not mentioned at all native people or historians. or authors or people from those communities that have been affected. have you been including them? where are those voices? >> good question. up until fairly recently, navajo history or any native american history was largely oral history. up until recently, there were

not a whole lot of navajo accounts of what happened. i certainly use the ones i had to work with. i used a lot of oral history. i am not sure how many pages in my book are devoted to the navajo conflict. many. most of that is based on oral histories that were taken during the great depression. there were a bunch of riders who went into navajo country and a lot of other places and took oral histories. from people who remembered what happened then. not what my great great grandfather did but more like what my father told me. in terms of the navajo part of my story, i would say a large part is based on the wpa research. that was taken.

i also think it's important to understand the term of the navajo situation, there had been for hundreds of years from essentially a low-grade war going on between the navajo and the spanish, than the mexicans. in which they stole each other's sheep and cattle and women and children. and killed shepherds and each other whenever possible. and this was a war that has gone on for over 200 years. at the point of the united states came west and sort of took over this part of the world. i think it's one of the weaknesses of the navajo interpretation of all of these events, the navajo never recognize this war took place. the navajo seem to often argue that the united states just kind of came out of nowhere and visited this scorchers campaign

up on them for no reason. that there had not been multiple treaties violated, that there had not been multiple attacks and massacres on both sides, that it led up to this culminating event. many of my navajo friends in santa fe where i live, i don't think are very honest about that. they don't look honestly at the fact that this is a war that had two or three multiple sides. this war extended to the comanches and other native tribes. if you go to those tribes and talk about the navajo, they will talk about how the navajo are ancient enemies. that they were amazing attackers and stole our women and children. this was a untenable situation that was going on for a long long time. unless the navajo are arguing that we should go back to that time where we steal each other's women and children and cattle and sheep and women this sort of world of where life is

nasty, and a short, i think you have to honestly reckon with what was happening in the 1860s and this war that was proposed, not by kit carson but by a guy named james henry carlton. on orders that were signed by and approved by abraham lincoln. that is when you begin to realize that kit carson is an important but actually only kind of an executive role in this thing. this was a war that was ordered from the very highest levels of the u.s. government. it becomes a much more complicated story. it does not make it better or worse. in fact, it's a big problem that people have with my book. if you write about them you automatically celebrate them.

that would mean you cannot write about anyone who is a villain or anyone who is 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 cousins scorched earth campaign against the navajo and all its brutality and all is vivid cruelty really. but that is not mean i am celebrating kit carson . it just means i am writing a book in which kit carson is a central character in a much bigger story. >> how do you evaluate carson compared to custer, william cody , possibly davy crockett and daniel boone? given the qualifications, what historically has been deemed admirable characters. we recognize the faults of all of them. how do you put them in comparison with carson? >> i am not an expert on his

other characters really. most of them were showmen or people who were really good at putting themselves in the center of the story. carson was a horrible businessman. he died destitute. he was not someone who could sort of take the pieces and build an edifice that could make money for himself. he was also not a narcissist. like custer. he really was not. whatever you want to say about custer, i mean carson, unfortunately so many of these guys have a name that begins with a c. i get all mixed up. carson was not anything like custer. in terms of his demeanor and his body language. in his chivalrous demeanor. he was a very different kind of

cat. he is supposedly distantly related to daniel boone when he came out of missouri. his family was distant cousins. some people have said therefore , the baton was handed over from daniel boone in kentucky to the carson in missouri. this kept the family moving westward. that seems skeptical and dubious to me. i forgot it was you mention. davy crockett. there are people who try to say this is a progression of white american folk heroes. i actually just think that they are all actually pretty different they all came out of a different time . they had different sorts of roles they were living in as they moved their way west. what is different really about carson, the underlying tragic aspect that was part of his

personality. which was, he really participated in the destruction of the world he loved. unwittingly for the most part. he came west. those were his happiest days. in his 20s when he was a mountain man. he was living with the cheyenne and the arapahoe and the mountain guys and living in this free world. they nearly trapped the beaver to extinction. and then he became a hunter and participated in the hunting of the buffalo which we know where that ended. and then he participated as a scout in the topographical expedition which ultimately led to the mass exodus of immigrants west on the oregon trail. and led to the mormons

coming. and 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 the new west. yet he was central to the creation of this west. he destroyed his own paradise. he did not fully realize that. he did not fully see it until the end of his life. that he had been a central figure in the destruction of this world he loved so much. >> we have a few over here. >> there is an antidote that i think might have been told in

kit carson's autobiography. he was helping the army chasing some indians who had captured a white woman. when they finally arrived, the woman had already died. but among her affect he found blood and thunder novel about kit carson. would you talk about that and about his reaction to that? >> great question. this was the moment as far as i can tell when kit carson first encountered his own myth. the time he first became aware of these books that were written with him as a central character. a woman name and white, you cannot invent these names was on the santa fe trail one her party was attacked by apache indians. all the men were killed.

she and her baby daughter and a black slave were captured. kit carson sort of got the call to go find her. this is one of the things about kit carson, with no official title, he was great at reading tracks and he lived near the santa fe trail. so he went after this party of apache in search of her. after something like 14 days or two weeks on the trail, deep into the planes of the panhandle of texas, he found her. with the element of surprise lost, they scattered and he found her in this camp with an

error through her heart she had been killed. her baby and the slave were never found again. by her side and very close to where she was he found this blood and thunder. in the blood and thunder which you cannot read but have someone else read to him, 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 miraculously in finding her and saved the day and rescued her and killed a bunch of indians and restored her to her family. back in boston. he read this thing and he heard the story around the campfire. and someone said, do you want this? this is your copy. you need to have this. he said, no. burn it. he was so fed up with the book,

he did not understand it, he thought it had be giving people false hope and thought she could be saved. this great american hero had failed. it haunted him for the rest of his life. it is a true story. it is one of the true stories. it's a fascinating little side chapter of his life. >> time for one more. >> what about his personal life? you mentioned he was married. did he ever have children? was his marriage successful? it's hard to believe it would be. what about his personal life? >> good question.

he had three wives. not at the same time. his first wife was and arapahoe . one of the loves of his life in they had two children. one of whom died young and the other lived on a little bit longer. but she died in childbirth with the second child. his second wife was cheyenne. she kicked him out of her tp in what is known as the cheyenne divorce. that did not work well at all. and his third and final wife for the rest of his life was spanish. i cannot remember how many years they were married. she was 18 years his junior. he was shorter than she was. she was a beauty. she would be played by a hot

movie star. people wondered what did she see in this greasy mountain guy. they were married and they had eight kids. the kids are spread all over colorado and new mexico. when i went on the book tour, i met descendents of many of the carson family. of course there is johnny carson. [ laughter ]no relations. it was a great part of his life, the notion that ulises, he will get back to his wife. he seemed to be constitutionally incapable of saying no to errands that were proposed to him by the u.s. government or other people. he was constantly on the road.

she had to raise these kids pretty much by herself. i am sure she resented him. her family has a lot of stories along those lines. he seems to always be in oregon, montana, back east, we do not even get to the civil war. when will he come home and be a normal guy and have his family? i think it was one of the great regrets of his life but he did not do that. that is how he ended his life story. he had an aneurysm on his aorta and he had been diagnosed but wanted to go to washington, d.c. to negotiate a treaty for the ute indians that were his closest tribe which he successfully did do. he got a secondary diagnosis that it was indeed an aneurysm

on his aorta. i later learned is a classic sign of syphilis. but, he got on a train this time . not a horse or a mule. he got on a train and took the train all the way back to denver because he knew that his wife was pregnant and he wanted to be there. he got there a couple of days before she gave birth to their final baby. she died in childbirth. he died a month later. some say of a broken heart. but really it was that aneurysm. that is the end of the story. he was true to his wife. by all accounts was a loyal and true husband. but was hardly ever there. except in the last years of his life. they are very together in kit carson park . which may be renamed.

and that is sort of the end of the story. that is the saga of blood and thunder. thank you so much for listening tonight.[ applause ] this weekend on american history tv on c-span three. saturday at 10:00 p.m. eastern on real america. the 1968 broadcast, the nixon answer, southern town hall. >> i do not believe that nuclear bombs or nuclear weapons should be used in vietnam. i do not think they are necessary. i think nuclear weapons should be reserved only for what we hope will never come and which i think great diplomacy and will have to be great diplomacy can avoid. a confrontation with a nuclear power. sunday at six clock p.m. on american artifacts. we will tour the baseball americana exhibit at delivery of congress which includes baseballs magna carta. pre-civil war documents that spell out the basic rules and organization of the game.

and it 8:00 on the presidency, former president george w. bush, cokie roberts and friends reflect on the life of former first lady barbara bush. >> she had this motto that you will be judged about the success of your life. by your relationships with your family, your friends, your coworkers. and people you meet along the way. >> watch on american history tv. this weekend on c-span 3. next historians talk about westward expansion after the louisiana purchase in 1803. and the political reasons for traveling west. they also discuss kit carson and other mountain men and the impact that westward expansion had on the civil war and slavery. the aspen institute posted this 40 minute talk. it is part of a three-day conference in aspen, colorado on the american west. welcome back