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A Warrior’s Last Days
Kit Carson arrived in Pueblo, CO, riding in the back of Daniel Oakes’ wagon about the second day of April 1868. A runner was sent to the town’s doctor, Michael Beshoar, telling him that Carson was ill and needed to see him as soon as possible. Beshoar was working at his second job which was editor and publisher of a local newspaper. He hurried to his medical office only moments before Carson.
After the examination, Carson spent the night in Pueblo and met with the doctor the next morning for an opinion. He was told that he had an aneurysm of the carotid artery, a bulge in the weakened wall of the artery, and he should have bed rest for a few days before continuing to travel. The old scout refused the bed rest saying he belonged with his wife for the birth of their eighth child. He was given some wild cherry syrup laced with opium and tincture of veratrum to slow his heart. He paid the doctor three silver dollars and left to rejoin his wife.
Three days after Kit and the now 40-year-old Josefa Carson settled back into the borrowed three-room apartment belonging to Tom Boggs in eastern Colorado, their eighth child was born. It was a daughter and Kit insisted she be named Josefita after her mother. It was April 13.
Despite his weak condition, Carson began making plans for building their house. He sent a letter to an admirer he had met in New York on the trip he had just completed saying that he was improving and was happy to be among family again.
In the early evening of April 27, Kit was reclining on a pallet of buffalo robes because their furniture had not been moved from Taos and there were no bedsteads. In the next room, Josefa was sitting on the dirt floor combing the hair of Teresina, their 13-year-old daughter. She suddenly called out to her husband in Spanish and he rushed to her in time to catch her in his arms. In Spanish, she said, “Kit, I am very sick” and was dead in what seemed to Carson only a minute. Her death has been attributed by some to what was commonly referred to as “childbed fever” or puerperal fever but it can only be guessed from the distance of time.
A week after burying Josefa, Carson sent a letter asking that her older sister care for his children in the case of his own death. He also gave instructions for both his body and that of his wife to be relocated to Taos after his death. Ignacia, Josefa’s sister, and her husband began packing and within three days began the 200-mile trip to Boggsville in eastern Colorado. They arrived on May 15 but had missed Carson by a day. He had been moved by army ambulance to Fort Lyon the day before. The day after arriving at the fort he had dictated a will to Army surgeon Dr. Henry Remsen Tilton and signed it with the “C. Carson” he had learned years ago, the extent of his writing ability.
Slightly more than a decade before, an army officer had called Carson “the master horseman among a race of horsemen.” It had been over a year since “The General,” as Carson was often referred to now, had been able to mount a horse even with help.
The two earliest verified pictures of Kit Carson were taken in the mid-1840s. The earliest shows a determined, clean-shaven face with a set jaw and hair almost to the shoulders. The second oldest has Carson in a hat and heavy coat. They both picture a mid-30s man with the direct, calm, and strong look of someone who had been given a leadership role with a brigade of rugged mountain men at 19. The deep chest and wide shoulders are there regardless of his 5’6” height.
On Carson’s last trip to the east, he sat for a few pictures with the Ute delegation and, of course, a political figure or two. While on his return he was prevailed upon to sit for a couple of individual pictures. The reproductions of these two are probably the most published photos of Kit Carson. Without the touchups, they show a man whose body has changed considerably. He was a man dying. He now had a mustache that he had allowed to grow toward the end of his military duty. But somewhere in those eyes, one can still find the man who had commanded independent, willful trappers, had plunged headlong into more fights than could be recorded, had guided some of the more important expeditions of his time and returned them to safety, had been a stern but trusted barrier between Indians and settlers, and had directed military campaigns.
On the afternoon of May 23, 1868, Kit Carson called out to Dr. Tilton who “sprang to him.” There was a gush of blood from his mouth and the doctor “supported his forehead on my hand, while death speedily closed the scene.” Carson, not yet 59, had died.
Each age and generation has its necessary warriors. They protect us all. They make the way for the foundations of our culture, our society, to be built. They then protect that culture, that society, as it grows and matures. Abroad they face enemies and dangers in order to keep them from us. At home, they stand behind thin badges to keep what has been so dearly paid for in the past and present. Theirs is a life not just of duty and struggle but often of split-second actions that change lives forever. It is a heavy task that they take from our shoulders.
In explaining to a superior his handling of a crisis as Indian Agent, Carson replied, “I do not know whether I done rite or wrong, but I done what I thought was best.” I suspect that is a good place for a lot of us to begin.
Published in General
“In the next room, Josefa was sitting on the dirt floor combing the hair of Teresina, their 13 year old daughter. She suddenly called out to her husband in Spanish and he rushed to her in time to catch her in his arms. In Spanish she said, “Kit, I am very sick” and was dead in what seemed to Carson only a minute. Her death has been attributed by some to what was commonly referred to as “childbed fever” or puerperal fever but it can only be guessed from the distance of time.”
Very sudden death in an apparently health woman who had just delivered. Most likely a pulmonary embolism. Puerperal fever would have made her very ill for several days.
For a lesson in Man’s inhumanity to Man, read about Josef Semmelweis and his discovery of the cause of puerperal fever. The man was hounded to death for suggesting that obstetricians wash their hands between patients.
In 1847, the future General William Tecumseh Sherman met Kit Carson in Monterey, California. Sherman wrote: “His fame was then at its height, … and I was very anxious to see a man who had achieved such feats of daring among the wild animals of the Rocky Mountains, and still wilder Indians of the plains … I cannot express my surprise at beholding such a small, stoop-shouldered man, with reddish hair, freckled face, soft blue eyes, and nothing to indicate extraordinary courage or daring. He spoke but little and answered questions in monosyllables.”
Colonel Edward W. Wynkoop wrote: “Kit Carson was five feet five and one half-inches tall, weighed about 140 pounds, of nervy, iron temperament, squarely built, slightly bow-legged, and those members apparently too short for his body. But, his head and face made up for all the imperfections of the rest of his person. His head was large and well-shaped with yellow straight hair, worn long, falling on his shoulders. His face was fair and smooth as a woman’s with high cheekbones, straight nose, a mouth with a firm, but somewhat sad expression, a keen, deep-set but beautiful, mild blue eye, which could become terrible under some circumstances, and like the warning of the rattlesnake, gave notice of attack. Though quick-sighted, he was slow and soft of speech, and posed great natural modesty.”
Lieutenant George Douglas Brewerton made one coast-to-coast dispatch-carrying trip to Washington, D.C. with Carson. Brewerton wrote: “The Kit Carson of my imagination was over six feet high — a sort of modern Hercules in his build — with an enormous beard, and a voice like a roused lion … The real Kit Carson I found to be a plain, simple … man; rather below the medium height, with brown, curling hair, little or no beard, and a voice as soft and gentle as a woman’s. In fact, the hero of a hundred desperate encounters, whose life had been mostly spent amid wilderness, where the white man is almost unknown, was one of Dame Nature’s gentleman …” (from Wikipedia)
Josefa is pictured below
When I was a youngster, the museum in Trinidad, CO, had Kit Carson’s fancy buckskin coat. It had fringe and a lot of beadwork, being the work of Indians, or maybe his wife’s family. It was gone the last time I was there, but is apparently back on display. I found this image on Pinterest