The Frontier Partisans Podcast

An interview by Ceili Cornelius rounding up Jim Cornelius' take on Kit Carson's life and legacy.

Recommended books:

Dear Old Kit — memoir annotated by Harvey Carter

A Life Wild and Perilous: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific by Robert Utley

Give Your Heart To The Hawks: A Tribute to the Mountain Men by Winfred Blevins

Kit Carson and his Three Wives: A Family History by Mark Simmons

Kit Carson and the Indians by Tom Dunlay

Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the West by Hampton Sides

Music: Blue Frontier, composed by Jim Cornelius

Graphics: Lynn Woodward, Woodward Creative

For more frontier history, visit www.frontierpartisans.com

 

Mountain Man, scout and explorer Kit Carson served as an American soldier in the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, and in campaigns against the nomadic raiders of the American Southwest. His leadership of the 1863-64 campaign against the Navajo remains controversial and casts a shadow over his legacy to this day...

Music: "Blue Frontier" by Jim Cornelius

Graphics by Lynn Woodward, Woodward Creative

As his time as a Mountain Man drew to a close, Kit Carson would sign on to guide the exploratory expeditions of U.S. Army officer John C. Fremont. His role with Fremont would make him the most famous frontiersman of his era.

Music: "Blue Frontier" by Jim Cornelius

Graphics: Lynn Woodward, Woodward Creative

A teenaged Kit Carson ran way from his apprenticeship as a saddle maker in Missouri. He took the Santa Fe Trail to Taos in the New Mexico territory and eventually signed on with a fur trapping expedition that would shape him into a Mountain Man.

Music: "Blue Frontier" by Jim Cornelius

Graphics: Lynn Woodward, Woodward Creative

The Scots-Irish were a frontier people. Hailing from the contested borderlands of England and Scotland, they migrated in the 17th Century to Ulster (Northern Ireland); and many then moved on to the North American backcountry in one of the great folk migrations of the 18th Century. Tough, resilient, restless and often violent, they formed the dominant culture on the Trans-Appalachian Frontier. These were Kit Carson's people.

Note: The date cited for the attack by Klamath Indians on Fremont and Carson’s camp is incorrect. The attack came on May 9, 1846.

 

Music: "Blue Frontier" by Jim Cornelius. Art by Lynn Woodward, Woodward Creative.

An introduction to the world of the Frontier Partisans.