Who knew Kit Carson was the hero of Taos? Come to think about it, I didn't know much about Kit Carson at all, apart from the name recognition. Well, it seems he lived a good deal of his life in and around Taos. His home is in the center of Taos and the condo I'm renting is just off Kit Carson Road, so it was inevitable that we get together.
His home is about 200 years old and part of it was once a saddlery. Is any of this familiar? You might say I had an instant rapport with that house, even if it is made of adobe. It seems pretty comfortable. Adobe is a good material. The thickness makes for coolness in summer and warmth in winter and the fireplaces in each room add to that comfortable home feeling. The place did a good job of conveying the fact that a family actually lived there and had all the chores and family times that families do.
One of the most poignant stories about Kit Carson had to do with the dime novels about him that became popular in his lifetime. He had scouted for Army expeditions at least twice and, although Carson was pretty diffident and not talkative, the Army commander of the expeditions wasn't. In fact, the commander seems to have been good at some exaggeration here and there. Probably didn't do his career any harm either. So, Carson became the superhero of his day, credited with a whole bunch of things that no one could live up to in reality.
On one occasion, an Indian raid had occurred near Taos and a woman had been carried off by the raiding party. In a story right out of the dime novels, a rescue group rode out with soldiers and Kit Carson with them. They caught up with the raiding party. So far, so good. But they could only do so much. They drove off the raiders but in the fight, the woman they wanted to rescue was killed. With her she had one of those novels about Kit Carson. It is said that that is when Carson really began to feel the burden of those books. Perhaps it behooves us to realize that the issue of "the media" has been with us for longer than we think. It creates heroes and it also creates burdens, even for those heroes.
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