Kit Carson: As told by Ana

Inspired by Drunk History from College Humor and a comment Cat made, I have decided to create a new segment where I retell the history of badass historical figures. I will probably do most of my research on wikipedia and cracked.com so I wouldn't take what I write here as the truth. Unless you trust those sources, which I do.

Today I will tell the tale of Kit Carson, a frontiersman and a generally terrible person.

Kit Carson grew up in Missouri during frontier time, I assume it was something like Fifel Goes West. Anyways he had a buttload of siblings and then his dad died because a tree fell on him. So then Kit has to drop out of school and start hunting because his family was starving. Then when he is 16 some guy he meets decides to go to Santa Fe, presumably because he heard that song in Rent where we all learn that Santa Fe is awesome and if you go there you magically become upper middle class. So this dude is like "Hey, Kit, come to Santa Fe with me." and Kit is like "Okay, dude, It's not like I am doing anything else, I already chopped up that tree that killed my dad." So off they go to Santa Fe and on his way Kit learns every single Native American language ever spoken.

So now Kit is out in California and what not and just trapping away collecting a bunch of beavers and also hunting animals. He goes to this mountain men meet up thing-a-ma-jig, which historical accounts say was equivalent to Burning Man (the Nicholas Cage movie). There he meets this Native American girl called Singing-Grass and he decideds he wants her, but this other trapper named Mr. C wants her too. Then Singing-Grass chooses Kit, but wait, because it's the olden days the men decide to have a duel over her. So they get up on horses and start running at each other when Kit shoots off Mr. C's thumb and Mr. C fails to shoot Kit. In Mr. C's defense, he was holding a rifle and I bet that would be hard as balls to aim while riding a horse.

Kit then gets mad street cred for beating Mr. C and getting the girl, but then he knocks her up a couple of times and dumps her. Then he gets another chick and she leaves him, all the while they have pretty much killed all of the beavers that they could kill and fashions are changing and whatnot so business is pretty slow. Because of all the bad luck with women and business Kit is like, "What the hell? I might as well become Catholic." So he does and he marries a 14 year old as his third wife. I know that back in the day that wasn't sooooo creepy, but it's still a little creepy. Especially because they ended up having like 10 billion kids. Ouch. I sympathize with that woman.

Kit then hooks up with this other frontiersman, Freemont or somthing like that, and they decide to finish mapping the second half of the Oregon Trail. These guys are wandering through what is now Nevada and getting attacked by Native Americans all the time and starving and what not. Only because Kit is a badass are they able to survive because apparently he was the only one in the expedition that could hunt. They end up proving on their second expedition that there wasnt a river connecting the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean. I know that sounds super dumb, but people actually believed that shit back then. Kit also ends up rescuing some mexcian dude and his son after Native Americans killed their family. But, apparently rescuing wasn't good enough, so Kit tracks down the Natives and ends up killing a bunch for vengance.

Then the same two dudes, as well as a bunch of other dudes, decide to go back out for a third expedition. While they are out and about Freemont is a total douche and is picking fights with everyone: Mexicans, Native Americans, and Immigrants, I mean everyone. Then one night they are all going to bed and Kit is like "Wait, dude, you didn't post a night guard for our camp." and Freemont is like, "Nah dude, but it's safe I don't hear shit out there. Plus, we are badass enough that we don't need a guard." Then Kit is like "Though I am troubled by these actions, I do not percieve any danger and so I shall take rest." They all go to bed and are sleeping like babies. But then kit hears a noise and looks over and sees his friend and cuddle partner is dead and covered in blood. They were being attacked by Native Americans who killed 3 of their men. Kit kills one Native American before they could escape and he ends up going psycho and bashing the guys face in beyond recognition. I am talking like people had to pull him away psycho. Now Freemont and Kit are all like "We have to get revenge!" So they pretty much spend the day wandering around looking for any tribe they can and when they find one, even though it wasn't their attackers, they go barbaric on the tribe. They killed women and children and raped and plundered and set fire too. It was real bad, especially becuase this tribe was a pacifist tribe.

In case you hadn't noticed, this is around the time Kit becomes a terrible human being. And example of this would be when he captures a Mexican dude and his two sons who were pretty much innocents and had committed no crimes other than being Mexican and happend to be carrying official documents on them. Kit takes these dude to Freemont and asks what he want to do with them and Freemont is like "I don't want shit to do with them." So Kit kills them and leaves their bodies to be robbed and disgraced. It doesn't matter that he regrets it, it was awful.

Then Kit fights in the Mexican American war which wasn't too eventful other than they were loosing pretty badly so Kit snuck off to get reinforcements. He apparently traveled over 100 miles barefoot because his boots made too much noise. He got the reinforcements and they didn't loose. Hooray.

Then, because Americans were still super racist back then, Kit became the equivalent of a modern day action hero because people thought his mercilessly slaying Native Americans was a good thing. They wrote books about him being a badass and stuff.

This is where he just becomes satan. Kit is told by the government to get the Navajos to move to the reservation the government designated for them. The reservation was essentially a wasteland (I can confirm this, I have been there) and the Navajos were like "Feck no, we won't go." So instead of trying to reach some sort of peaceful agreetment, Kit poisens their crops, kills their livestock and destroying their villages. The Navajo become so poor because their entire trading system was in shambles, they were forced to surrender to the U.S., aka Kit.

Don't worry, reader, not all of the Navajo surrendered. About half of them, or 8,000 decided to tough it out in the back country. Like super badasses.

The most redeeming quality of Kit Carson was his famous last words. "I just wish I had time for one more bowl of chili." Was the last thing he said before he died of an anyerism or however you spell that.

The thing that really gets me about this dude was that it didn't matter how terrible he was to Native Americans or Mexicans, he is still viewed as a heroic frontiersman. Americans can be super dickholes sometimes.