What do you think?
Rate this book
Kit Carson: Indian Fighter or Indian Killer?
Contributors explore the latest historical research on one of America's most famous frontier heroes, debating his true actions and motivations and looking at the making of his legend in dime store novels, his life alongside Indians, the historiography of the Navajo roundup, and perceptions of Carson in the past and the present. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
105 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1996
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 16, 2013
If you are not a historian you likely will not appreciate this book. I believe one of my history professors recommended it in one of my classes and I put it on my "to read" list. I have to be honest. I had no clue who Kit Carson was and this is NOT a biography with neat personal stories or adventures. It is simply a collection of papers given at a symposium in the 90s when historians were arguing about Kit Carson's place in history. It is very repetitive and primarily of scholarly interest rather than enjoyable to the general public. I now know why I should know who he is and have a better understanding of how placing today's ideas of what is humane or moral into past history can be inappopriate. What is the norm today was not always the norm of our ancestors and we have to remember that when we judge actions taken in the past.
I enjoyed this book because as a student of history I have learned to appreciate "following the footnote". Scholars cite each and every fact they provide in their works and, while it is a chore, it can be quite advantageous to actually look up the sources cited. I am horrified by most non-scholarly articles today (mostly biased political stuff) that cite sources but the sources do not even come close to backing up the claims given! The information is often misquoted or misused. I don't know how anyone can justify writing something full of flat out lies and be proud of it. Lesson everyone needs to learn: You have to consider the source in EVERYTHING you read that claims to be fact! One of the papers in the book focused on pointing out in detail how one certain author did very shoddy research on Carson. I personally found that exciting (and know few of my classmates would agree with me haha).
Point being, the reason Kit Carson's reputation went from being a hero in the 19th century to being a genocidal killer in the 20th is simply due to fiction being misrepresented as fact in the more recent scholarly literature written about him. The symposium and papers presented were trying to fix this and educate people on who Kit Carson really was. We learn that his poor reputation came solely from dime novels from the early 20th century that were fictionally portraying him as a killer. The guy was still alive when they were doing this! Amazing... There even were interviews done with Navajo who knew him and even most of their recollections were of Carson being a good guy and a friend to the Indians and not a killer. These papers also provided some insight towards the Navajo point of view in general, which you often do not get in historical documents written by the US government.
I enjoyed this book because as a student of history I have learned to appreciate "following the footnote". Scholars cite each and every fact they provide in their works and, while it is a chore, it can be quite advantageous to actually look up the sources cited. I am horrified by most non-scholarly articles today (mostly biased political stuff) that cite sources but the sources do not even come close to backing up the claims given! The information is often misquoted or misused. I don't know how anyone can justify writing something full of flat out lies and be proud of it. Lesson everyone needs to learn: You have to consider the source in EVERYTHING you read that claims to be fact! One of the papers in the book focused on pointing out in detail how one certain author did very shoddy research on Carson. I personally found that exciting (and know few of my classmates would agree with me haha).
Point being, the reason Kit Carson's reputation went from being a hero in the 19th century to being a genocidal killer in the 20th is simply due to fiction being misrepresented as fact in the more recent scholarly literature written about him. The symposium and papers presented were trying to fix this and educate people on who Kit Carson really was. We learn that his poor reputation came solely from dime novels from the early 20th century that were fictionally portraying him as a killer. The guy was still alive when they were doing this! Amazing... There even were interviews done with Navajo who knew him and even most of their recollections were of Carson being a good guy and a friend to the Indians and not a killer. These papers also provided some insight towards the Navajo point of view in general, which you often do not get in historical documents written by the US government.
Displaying 1 of 1 review