Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West (38 page)
Read Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West Online
Authors: Hampton Sides
Tags: #West (U.S.) - History; Military - 19th Century, #Indians of North America - Wars, #Indians of North America - History - 19th Century, #Frontier and Pioneer Life, #Frontier and Pioneer Life - West (U.S.), #Adventurers & Explorers, #Wars, #West (U.S.), #United States, #Indians of North America, #West (U.S.) - History - 19th Century, #Native American, #Navajo Indians - History - 19th Century, #United States - Territorial Expansion, #Biography & Autobiography, #Military, #Carson; Kit, #General, #19th Century, #History
“Prompt, self-sacrificing, and true”: An illustration depicting Carson and Alex Godey triumphantly returning stolen horses (with the scalps of the Indian horse thieves dangling from Godey’s rifle barrel).
“The finest head I ever saw on an Indian”: Narbona, Navajo elder, as sketched by expedition artist Richard Kern on August 31, 1849, the same day the great leader was killed by American troops.
The sacred peak of the South: Blue Bead Mountain (a.k.a. Mount Taylor), a landmark of Narbona’s country, as sketched by Richard Kern on September 18, 1849.
The great houses of Chaco Canyon, widely considered the most magnificent prehistoric ruins in the American West, as drawn by Kern on August 27, 1849.
“What a wild life!”: Army explorer (and notorious glory hound) John Charles Fremont, a.k.a. the Pathfinder.
“The better man of the two”: Jessie Benton Fremont, the explorer’s gifted—and utterly devoted—wife.
“An aggressive patriotism”: Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, the roaring apostle of Manifest Destiny.
“The hardest-working man in America”: President James K. Polk, land-hungry instigator of the Mexican War.
“We will correct all this”: General Stephen Watts Kearny, conqueror of New Mexico and California, sometimes called the father of the American cavalry.
“A year that will always be remembered by my countrymen”: Susan Magoffin, whose diary of the 1846 conquest has become a Western classic.
“A beauty of the haughty, heart-breaking kind”: Josefa Jaramillo Carson with unidentified child.
“Carson’s home, sentimentally if not in fact”: A lithograph of Taos, New Mexico, from the 1850s.
