Blood and Thunder - Superb book about Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West

Catbert · August 7, 2020 3:17PM

I'm 2/3 through this book and it is a fascinating, educational, and compelling book that presents a fair picture from all sides involved. This is a history book that is an easy read and not boring! Highly recommend and I want to quote a few passages (I made edits for brevity so not all is a direct quote).

1849
Chapter 32 “The Finest Head I Ever Saw”

Backstory - Colonel John Washington sought a meeting with key Indian leaders (that included a key leader of the Navajo known as Narbona) to have them submit to U.S. jurisdiction and thereby stop their raiding of horses, sheep and enslaving or killing those who had come west or those residents who had been conquered with prior allegiance to Mexico. They agreed to Washington’s terms.

The council broke up but then a U.S. (New Mexican) militiaman saw a “horse among the Navajo that he insisted had been stolen from him. The Navajo didn’t dispute this, but they indicated it had passed through so many hands that is was impossible to ascertain the true owner and that the theft was a long time ago”

A scuffle ensued and the Colonel demanded that the horse be returned. This was resisted and Washington threatened “Unless the horse is restored, you will be fired upon”. By this time, the horse and “thief” had taken off for the hills. Washington told a Lieutenant to seize another horse. The Indians then turned around and sped away. Washington ordered fire. 7 Indians were killed (no US soldiers), including leader Narbona. A New Mexican souvenir hunter came and scalped Narbona.

The impact of this event captured by the author in Chapter 34 “Men without Eyes”:

“Washington failed to grasp the mistake his troops had made. In their first encounter with the Dine’, they had met and then promptly killed (and mutilated!) the most eminent Navajo alive, and quite possibly the one man who could have brought about an accord with the United States.” (all over a horse).

The author further describes how this became a turning point for the Navajo who no longer trusted the white men from the East.

Washington and his troops continued westward through the Chuska Valley. A Lieutenant Simpson wrote “The country is one extended naked, barren waste”. Everything was “dead and lifeless, the soil an all-pervading dull, yellow, buff-color”. This land, he declared, was “under a curse”.

"Simpson was not unlike most of his countrymen in failing to appreciate such spare terrain. The desert was unfamiliar (and uninviting) world to most Anglo sensibilities. By outlook if not by profession they were still farmers, most of them: their idea of beautiful land was never far removed from valuable land, and valuable land was any that could be used…..they were used to finding beauty in greens and blues, in mountain streams, plunging waterfalls, sailboats, and flowery meadows full of fat cows."

"If the Great Plains was regarded as the “Great American Desert” – as it was labeled on maps – then this stark realm was Hades itself. The scale of it dwarfed a man, not only spatially but also chronologically; it suggested gulfs of time that mocked human relevance in the terror of creation.”

"It was thought they lacked the retinal nerve that allowed them to see the land for what it was; they could see it only for what it refused to be – namely, the green picturesque scenery and tillable farmland of the settled world from which they had come."

This perspective of what and how the land should be used was also what they expected for the Indians they encountered. Their nomadic, hunter gatherer lifestyle did not fit their box.