Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West by Hampton Sides
Many
Americans know little about the history of the American Southwest, other than
the false impressions we have gotten through cowboy movies. In some of our
minds, the fight for the Alamo was part of the Mexican-American war; “Manifest
Destiny” was a righteous ideology justifying the absorption of western lands by
the United States; the Indians were savages; and Kit Carson gets jumbled in
with those other buckskin-wearing frontiersmen, Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett.
The actual history of the area and its people is far more complicated and
interesting than these stereotypes would make it seem. Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West by
Hampton Sides is a well-researched, detailed, and entertaining history of the
territory taken from Mexico by President James K. Polk as a result of the
Mexican-American War. Basically a biography of Kit Carson-- hunter, trapper,
explorer, guide, U.S. Army officer and both friend and foe of Native
Americans—this book sets Carson’s life in the context of the greater American
experience. And a violent and bloody experience it was, as emigrants from the
East struggled to wrest New Mexico, Arizona, California and Colorado from the
control of the indigenous people and residents still loyal to Mexico. Later, after the discovery of gold in
California and Colorado, and still later the Civil War, additional factions
contributed to the turbulence in the area. Carson was at the center of much of
the action. He lived in the vast wilderness west of the Missouri River from the
age of sixteen and, although illiterate, could speak English, Spanish and
various Native American languages. He became the go-to man when Santa Fe Trail merchants
or the U.S. Army needed a scout or guide. He assisted John C. Fremont’s
exploration of California. He was a scout and messenger for General Kearney, the
first U.S. Army officer in the newly acquired territory. He was an agent for
peace and war with Native American tribes, particularly the Navajo. And he was an
officer in the Union Army, fighting in little known battles of the Civil War
fought in New Mexico. The life of Kit Carson and the story of New Mexico are
intertwined and filled with contradictions: cruelty and kindness, courage and
cowardice, nobility and dishonor. Blood and Thunder is fascinating reading, relaying an American history we should all
be aware of.