Traditional Muzzleloading Association
The Center of Camp => People of the Times => Topic started by: Craig Tx on December 25, 2024, 11:12:21 AM
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On this day in 1839, frontiersman Kit Carson allegedly carved his name and the date on a huge boulder on Sawtooth Mountain in the Davis Mountains.
Carson was born in 1809 in Kentucky and grew up in Missouri. He ran away to Santa Fe in 1826 and subsequently embarked on an arduous and wide-ranging career as a fur trapper. As a guide and hunter for John C. Frémont in the 1840s, he gained national fame through Frémont's published reports. Carson was an Indian agent in Taos, New Mexico, in the 1850s. He served in the Mexican War and in the Civil War, commanding a New Mexico volunteer regiment in the battle of Valverde. His connections to Texas history included helping foil the Snively Expedition in 1843 and leading the attack against a large number of Kiowas and Comanches in the first battle of Adobe Walls in 1864. He died in Colorado in 1868. Engineers of the State Department of Highways and Public Transportation discovered the inscription on Sawtooth Mountain in 1941.
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I've read a lot about Kit Carson - he was one tough guy! Something that interests me:
He went with a troop of Dragoons to arrest a man named Fox who was planning on murdering two men named Elias Brevoort and Samuel Weatherhead to take their gold. Fox was captured and arrested. Kit wouldn't take any reward money and in gratitude was given "a pair of splendid silver mounted pistols, specifically made at the Colt factory and inscribed to commemorate the event".
I think this happened in 1853, but I'm sure of that.
I wonder just what those pistols were and if they still exist. Maybe they were '51 Navy models. Anyone know more about this?