blood and thunder the epic story of kit carson

Rich in detail and spanning more than three decades, this is an essential addition to our understanding of how the West was really won. Sides shows us how this illiterate mountain man understood and respected the Western tribes better than any other American, yet willingly followed orders that would ultimately devastate the Navajo nation. Blood and Thunder The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West. Fueled by the new ideology of “Manifest Destiny,” this land grab would lead to a decades-long battle between the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistant rulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness.Īt the center of this sweeping tale is Kit Carson, the trapper, scout, and soldier whose adventures made him a legend. In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territories claimed by Mexico. From the author of Ghost Soldiers comes a magnificent history of the American conquest of the West-'a story full of authority and color, truth and prophecy' ( The New York Times Book Review).Rich in detail and spanning more than three decades, this is an essential addition to our understanding of how the West was really won. Central to this story is the famous mountain man Kit Carson, a man of many contradictions: though extremely intelligent he was also illiterate he could speak many of the native languages, understood the Indian ways, and even had Indian wives but he also participated in the slaughter and removal from their lands of these same Indians.

Sides shows us how this illiterate mountain man understood and respected the Western tribes better than any other American, yet willingly followed orders that would ultimately devastate the Navajo nation. center of this sweeping tale is Kit Carson, the trapper, scout. In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territories claimed by Mexico. authoritarianism offers a searing rebuke of the exceptional narrative that dominates our.

Blood and thunder the epic story of kit carson