“Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West”, by Hampton Sides

624 pages, Anchor, ISBN-13: 978-1400031108

First, a disclaimer: while Hampton Sides’ (great handle, huh?) Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West would appear to have Kit Carson as its lead, he is, in fact, a supporting character in the Conquest of the American West; President Polk and the Army of the United States are the real stars of this epic, which makes the subtitle of the book a little misleading…well, make that a lot misleading. But don’t be put off, Dear Reader, as the Conquest of the American West is most certainly explored in all of its bloody, dusty glory. Sides’ detailed book touches on several well-known subjects of the West, ranging from the ill-fated Donner party, to the wars with Mexico and the American Civil War, and the eventual attempt to subdue and conquer the Native American tribes. While the book mainly discusses the Navajo, it also touches on the other Native tribes, as well, in an even-handed manner: it is so tempting to see Native Americans as always good and aggrieved and the encroaching Americans as always bad and bedeviling, but the truth, of course, is so much more complicated. There were several groups of people fighting over land and resources, especially competing tribes of Indians, so when the Americans joined the fray, it was like just another tribe laying claim to the land around them – albeit a tribe with superior technology and resources. Nobody “stole” anything from anyone: the most powerful tribe won and kept the spoils, as other tribes had won and lost in the past.

Sides, like the mountain men he writes about, has a talent for encapsulation: his thumbnail sketches of these characters are comprehensive and concise at the same time, from the commander of the Army of the West Stephen Watts Kearny, to the ambitious “pathfinder” John C. Frémont, to the murderous parson Major John Chivington, to the governor of New Mexico Charles Bent, to the enigmatic curate of Taos Padre Antonio Martinez, to the Navajo leader Manuelito, to the diarist and correspondent Susan Magoffin and, last but not least, to Narbona, one of the wealthiest Navajo of his time due to the number of sheep and horses owned by his extended family group and the de facto leader of the Navajo nation. Sides had originally set out to write a book on the removal of the Navajos from Canyon de Chelly and their Long Walk to the Bosque Redondo, hundreds of miles from their homeland, where they were told to become farmers on a decidedly unsuitable plot; but in the course of his research, a much larger story unfolded, the story of the opening of the West, from the heyday of the mountain men in the early 1800’s to the clash of three cultures, as the newcomers from the East encountered the ancient Puebloans and the established Hispanic communities in what is now New Mexico, to the Civil War in the West and its aftermath.

It is to Sides’ credit that he has given all sides a chance to say their piece. It might be easy to say the author was “pro-Indian” or “pro-Army”, but he really isn’t; I believe that he presented the best and the worst of all parties involved. History is messy and complicated, and at the time events are occurring no one knows or understands how events will be viewed by future generations; it’s so easy to look back and think “If only…” Sides presents that messiness and how some of those complications came to be.