Kit CarsonMonday, February 18, 2008 at 9pm (check local listings)pbs.org/americanexperience

To some, he was one of America’s greatest heroes: a brave and loyal guide who laid out apath for the westward-moving nation, an Indian tracker who could follow any trail, and afearless warrior featured in dozens of best-selling novels. But to others, Christopher “Kit”Carson was a villain who waged a merciless crusade against one of the West’s greatestNative American tribes. In the end, his contradictions would define his legacy – and tellthe true story of how the West was won.

On Monday, February 18, PBS’s AMERICAN EXPERIENCE premieres Kit Carson, fromEmmy Award-winning director Stephen Ives (New Orleans, Las Vegas: AnUnconventional History, Seabiscuit). The 90-minute documentary draws upon richarchival materials, original recreations, and interviews with authors Hampton Sides andSally Denton, Western historian Paul Hutton, Navajo historian Harry Walters, and more,to reveal the many facets of a complex and controversial figure who became a legend in hisown lifetime.

“Kit Carson was the greatest living symbol of the desire Americans had to mythologize theWest and take real things and turn them into something else,” notes author and historianDayton Duncan. “He just was who he was and other people projected onto him their ownbeliefs, their own myths. In that respect, I think he is like the West itself: it’s a real place,there were real things that happened and they were fascinating, dramatic, and tragic. Butthat wasn’t quite enough for us as a society.”

When he ran away from his home in Missouri in 1826, Kit Carson was just sixteen yearsold. But the call of the West was impossible to resist: it promised boundless opportunityand freedom from the restraints of family, adventure, danger, and excitement. With nomoney, few prospects, and almost no education, Carson set out for Taos, a high-desertsettlement in the far corner of the Mexican frontier, and the hub of the southwestern furtrade.

He spent most of the next dozen years earning his living as a trapper, one of a small bandof white men living among the native peoples of the mountain West. They were deep inthe wilderness, on unfamiliar soil, surrounded by hostile strangers: survival depended onmaking alliances with friendly tribes whenever possible, and then living more or less asthe tribes did. Eventually, Carson learned at least half a dozen American Indian tonguesand mastered the universal sign language used by the western tribes. And when he was

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twenty-five, took an American Indian wife, an Arapaho woman with whom he eventuallyhad two daughters.

Then, in 1842, Kit Carson happened to meet a young Army lieutenant named John C.Fremont, who was about to embark on an expedition to map and survey the West, and hadyet to hire a guide. After more than ten years as a trapper, there was no trail Carson hadnot traveled, and no wilderness challenge he couldn’t meet, and Fremont hired him on thespot. The encounter would change both Carson’s life and the West forever.

Over the next two years, Carson led Fremont and his men on two separate expeditionsacross the far West, and established himself in Fremont’s eyes as the ideal scout. WhenFremont later published his account of the expeditions, they included the first maps everto be published of the overland route to the Pacific that would become known as “TheOregon Trail.” They also contained enthusiastic and lavish praise of Kit Carson. “Carsonbecame a great romantic figure as an explorer, a guide, as a frontiersman, as an Indianfighter in these books that were supposed to be reports, but were actually grand adventuretales. These books were best-sellers in their day,” says historian Paul Hutton.

Then, in 1849, came a new literary hero, Kit Carson: The Prince of the Gold Hunters.Written by an East Coast hack who claimed it had been based on actual events, the bookbecame an overnight sensation, portraying five-foot-five Carson as a Herculean adventurerwho referred to Native Americans as “redskins,” “critters” and “varmints,” and cheerfullyslaughtered them by the dozen. Scores of similar books followed, solidifying Carson’simage in popular American folklore as a brutal killer of American Indians.

Carson himself was largely oblivious to his fame. As America’s westward migrationgathered steam, he accepted an appointment as an Indian Agent for the tribes of NorthernNew Mexico Territory. For seven years, he struggled to mediate the mounting conflictbetween whites and native peoples, and to find some means of peaceful accommodation.

But eventually, his popular reputation caught up to him, and compelled him into a newrole. "More than any other westerner," says director Stephen Ives, "Kit Carson straddledtwo worlds, as the West he'd encountered as a young man increasingly gave way to whatwe eventually would think of as the American West.  He is the ultimate symbol of thattransition, the embodiment of both the heroism and tragedy of America's drive to becomea continental nation.”

Having joined the Volunteer Army to help repel a Confederate invasion during the CivilWar, he found himself increasingly drawn into the national effort to “civilize” the West.In 1862, he was ordered to wage war on the nomadic tribes of New Mexico Territory –foremost among them, the Navajo – and to see to it that they were removed to areservation that had been established in eastern New Mexico, called the Bosque Resdondo.

Never one to defy an order, Carson waged a brutally effective campaign, destroying theNavajo crops, orchards and livestock, and forcing thousands of men, women and childrenon a 3,000-mile journey that survivors remembered as a death march. In the end,although Carson spent much of his life advocating for native peoples and would continue

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to do so until his death, his name would be inextricably linked to one of the most tragicepisodes in American history – the “Long Walk” of the Navajos.

“In many ways, Kit Carson exemplifies the contradictions and complexities of a little-understood era in America’s history,” says American Experience executive producer MarkSamels. “His storied life simultaneously elicits both pride and shame, much like thehistory of America as a growing nation.”

CREDITSAn Insignia Films production for AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

Produced byAMANDA POLLAK

Edited byGEORGE O’DONNELL

Written byMICHELLE FERRARI

Directed bySTEPHEN IVES

Narrated byMICHAEL MURPHY

Music byJOEL GOODMAN

Associate ProducerLINDSEY MEGRUE

CinematographyMICHAEL CHINSTEPHEN MCCARTHYPETER NELSONBUDDY SQUIRESDYANNA TAYLOR

AMERICAN EXPERIENCE is a production of WGBH Boston.Sharon Grimberg, series producerMark Samels, executive producer

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Major funding for AMERICAN EXPERIENCE is provided by the Alfred P.Sloan Foundation. Major corporate funding is provided by LibertyMutual. Additional funding is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and bypublic television viewers.

ACCESSIBILITYAMERICAN EXPERIENCE is closed captioned for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers, anddescribed for people who are blind or visually impaired by the Media Access Group atWGBH. The descriptive narration is available on the SAP channel of stereo TVs andVCRs.

ABOUT AMERICAN EXPERIENCETelevision's most-watched history series, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE has been hailed as"peerless" (Wall Street Journal), "the most consistently enriching program on television"(Chicago Tribune), and "a beacon of intelligence and purpose" (Houston Chronicle). Onair and online, the series brings to life the incredible characters and epic stories thathave shaped America's past and present. Acclaimed by viewers and critics alike,AMERICAN EXPERIENCE documentaries have been honored with every major broadcastaward, including twenty-four Emmy Awards, four duPont-Columbia Awards, and fourteenGeorge Foster Peabody Awards, one most recently for Two Days in October.

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