Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides.
I recommend Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides - 501 pages of adventure plus
many notes to back up the story of Kit Carson and the opening up of the
southwest. I attach two reviews of this book.
Mack Kelly
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
With Blood and Thunder, Hampton Sides has taken an implausibly broad canvas
of time, people and events and created a brilliantly realized portrait on an
epic scale. The United States conquest of the Southwest involved territory
ranging from St. Louis to Mexico City and California, as well as a large array
of principal figures. Sides has wisely chosen Christopher "Kit" Carson and Santa
Fe as the human and geographical touchstones.
Carson was the consummate frontiersman, who had traveled widely across the West
as a trapper, scout and adventurer long before the events of the Mexican War
brought his abilities to the attention of the U.S. military. Illiterate but
fluent in five Indian languages as well as Spanish, he'd had two Native American
wives before marrying into an old Spanish family from Taos. Carson, who seems
often to have been at the right place at the right (or wrong) time, had a deep
understanding of the complex clash of cultures taking place. And yet his
ultimate devotion to duty and patriotism earned him an enmity among the Navajo
that extends to the present day. In Sides's depiction, Carson was a humble loner
who became an unflinching killer when circumstances or superiors demanded it.
The center of events, in many ways, was Santa Fe, the old Spanish territorial
capital almost forgotten by the authorities in Mexico City, more or less
functioning under self-government often at the expense of the settlers and
natives. It was also the long-sought terminus of the famous trading trail
bearing its name, believed by the United States to offer the best possible route
to California and the Pacific coast. In truth, it was more symbolic than
anything else: a dusty backwater of an empire under collapse, whose occupants
were subject to routine raids from a number of tribes.
President James Polk entered office with one absolute intention: to extend the
western boundary of the territorial United States to the Pacific Ocean. While
not the author of the concept of Manifest Destiny, he was the first president to
initiate military action under that theory. There's no doubt Polk inaugurated
the Mexican War with little or no basis beyond his own will. At that point, the
native peoples of the region were considered by the authorities to be little
more than noisome pests to be easily dispatched with on the way toward an
audacious land-grab from Mexico.
How wrong they were.
The Navajo warrior Narbona was in his 80s when the U.S. Army straggled in from
the east, and he watched them come. His age and great wealth, measured largely
in herds of horses and flocks of sheep, along with his long experience through
peace and war with the Spanish settlers, placed him in a position of influence
within an intricate, matrilineal, clan-driven tribe. To what degree he
understood the role of chieftain that the Americans thrust upon him can't be
known. It appears he accepted at least the premise in an effort to educate the
Americans about Navajo culture and concepts of land ownership and use. At the
same time, he was quietly determined to maintain the Navajo way of life.
Briefly, it appeared there might be hope for both sides, but Narbona was shot to
death by a U.S. trooper who believed one of Narbona's warriors had stolen a
horse. With the death of this wise man, all possibility of avoiding open warfare
vanished. The Navajo faded back into the vast desert mountains and canyons of
their homeland, leading to a protracted and fruitless series of expeditions
against them that became successful only after the United States, led by Carson
under the command of Gen. James Henry Carleton, initiated a scorched-earth
policy. This finally culminated in the Navajo surrender and the infamous Long
Walk to a barren redoubt in eastern New Mexico, where the defeated tribe began a
disastrous period of disease and confinement.
Although the campaign against the Navajo anchors Blood and Thunder, Sides also
details a panoply of events surrounding the Mexican War and its aftermath. These
include the taking of California from the Spanish and British, as well as the
ill-fated and short-lived Bear Flag Rebellion; the last of the famed rendezvous
of the mountain men at Green River, Utah; and the bedraggled Confederate army's
failed attempt to extend the Confederacy into the Southwest. There was a
constant undercurrent of outrage and barbarity on all fronts and among all
principal parties, Americans, Spanish, Mexican and Indian. Toss in accounts of a
number of explorers, fortune-seekers, scoundrels, politicians, inept military
adventurers, madmen and fools, and it all begins to sound like a collaboration
between Cormac McCarthy and Federico Fellini.
But this is neither film nor novel. The truth of history is often fickle and
difficult to determine, and Sides demonstrates his awareness of this with a
riveting narrative focus. Like the authors of many other recent works of popular
history, Sides dispenses with footnotes but offers an exhaustive bibliography
that underscores the scope of this monumental undertaking. Not only does Blood
and Thunder capture a pivotal moment in U.S. history in marvelous detail, it is
also authoritative and masterfully told.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Lent
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text
refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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