Arizona, Here I Come!

Before I get into today's main topic, I have happy news. I just signed with Northern Lake Publishing, a new company run by Craig Hart, a mystery writer whose writing I admire. He specializes in publishing mystery and suspense, and will be marketing my Romancing the Guardians ebooks. I'm excited about this opportunity.

Now for my other news. A month from now Hubby and I will be in Arizona on a combination vacation and research trip. First, we will visit my niece and her family near Phoenix. Then we’ll drive to the northeast corner of the state, to the town of Chinle in the Navajo Nation. The Navajo named this area Ch’ini’li, meaning “where the water flows out”, referring to water flowing out of nearby Canyon de Chelly, which we plan to tour with a knowledgeable Navajo guide.

First anglicized as Chin Lee, the name was changed to Chinle on April 1, 1941. Long before that, the location served as a center of trade and war for the Spanish against the Native Americans. Later, Chinle was the site of an 1864 peace conference between Kit Carson and the Navajo, ending their war with the U.S.

Kit Carson, ca. 1860s; public domain

The Chinle community was established after the Diné (Navaho people) returned from the Long Walk, when thousands of them were forced from their homes and marched over 300 miles to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. A number died along the way. To learn more about that terrible walk, read this article:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Walk_of_the_Navajo

Navajo at Fort Sumner, 1864; public domain

After the Treaty of 1868 was signed, Navajos returned to their homelands and many families came back to Canyon de Chelly and the Chinle area. The first trading post (only a tent) was established there in 1882. This grew into a camp by 1885. A government school was established in 1910.

Canyon de Chelly has provided food, water and shelter for groups of people for over 5,000 years including Archaic, Basketmakers, Ancestral Puebloans, and Hopi.  Today, about 40 Navajo families live and farm in the canyon which limits access into the area.

Nearly 84,000 acres of tribal lands were established as Canyon de Chelly National Monument under the National Park Service by President Herbert Hoover on February 1, 1931.  To better manage the park, the National Park Service is working with the Navajo Nation, Bureau of Indian Affairs and other stakeholders to establish a cooperative management agreement.

Notable areas in the park include Spider Rock, White House Ruin, Antelope House Ruin and Mummy Cave Ruin. And I’m going to see them all. I can’t wait!

Where we will stay in Chinle; Our guide will pick us up there. Shouldn't be snow in late April. I hope!

Lyn Horner is a multi-published, award-winning author of western historical romance and romantic suspense novels, all spiced with paranormal elements. She is a former fashion illustrator and art instructor who resides in Fort Worth, Texas – “Where the West Begins” - with her husband and a pair of very spoiled cats. As well as crafting passionate love stories, Lyn enjoys reading, gardening, genealogy, visiting with family and friends, and cuddling her furry, four-legged children.

Amazon Author Page: viewAuthor.at/LynHornerAmazon (universal link)

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Kit Carson A True Frontiersman

By Paisley Kirkpatrick

American frontiersman, soldier, western guide, trapper, and Indian agent

Although Carson's later career serving his country in the army and establishing relations with Native Americans was impressive, the name Kit Carson will forever bring to mind thoughts of the wild frontier and westward expansion. When America had a love affair with the untamed land west of the Mississippi River, Carson's reputation as a guide soon turned to that of legend, and the myth of Kit Carson was born.

Christopher "Kit" Carson was born in Madison County, Kentucky, on December 24, 1809. His father, Lindsey Carson, fought in the American Revolution. He married Rebecca Robinson in 1796. Kit was the sixth of ten children. When Kit was just nine years old, his father was killed in a tragic accident. Times were tough on the family and Carson never learned to read or write. At the age of fourteen he became an apprentice to a saddle maker. After less than two years, he left the saddle maker and joined a group of traders who were on their way to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Carson's career in the West spanned from 1825 to 1868, a period of rapid national expansion, exploration, and settlement. From 1827 to 1829 young Carson spent time working as a cook, driving a wagon, interpreting Spanish, and mining copper. In August 1829 he gained invaluable experience after joining a trapping party. For the next year or so, Carson trapped animals along the streams of Arizona and southern California.

In 1831 Carson returned to New Mexico, where he immediately joined up with the experienced trapper, Thomas Fitzpatrick. They headed north into the rugged central Rocky Mountains. For the next ten years, Carson worked as a trapper all over western America in what is today known as Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. During the time spent in the wilderness of North America, Carson learned everything he needed to know in order to become a respected guide.

In 1836 Carson married an Arapaho Indian woman. The couple had two children, only one of whom—a daughter—survived. After his first wife died, Carson married a Cheyenne woman. The marriage did not last, and Carson took his daughter to St. Louis, Missouri, to further her education. For the next eight years, Carson split his time between his daughter in St. Louis and his trapping duties in Taos, New Mexico.

In 1842 Carson's fate arrived by steamboat when explorer John C. Frémont landed in St. Louis. Frémont came to St. Louis looking to hire the well-known guide Andrew S. Drips to lead his expedition to the Wind River in Wyoming. Unable to find Drips, Frémont chose Carson instead. From June until September, Carson guided Frémont's party west through South Pass to the Wind River Mountains and then back to Missouri. Over the next several years, Carson worked as a guide for Frémont on three expeditions through Oregon and California.

I live in the El Dorado National forest located in the Sierras,

a mountain range in California and Nevada. The views along Carson Pass are breathtaking.

Our English guests took these photos along our drive while exploring the area. The pass was named for Kit Carson.

In 1846 Carson served in California with Frémont at the outbreak of the Mexican War. During this time his duties were quite dangerous, as he carried dispatches, or messages, between command posts in enemy territory. President James K. Polk called Carson a hero and appointed him lieutenant in the mounted (on horseback) rifle regiment. However, the Senate rejected this appointment, and Carson returned to Taos.

By 1849 Carson had settled near Taos to farm and do occasional scouting for army units fighting hostile tribes. Carson also served in the Office of Indian Affairs, first as an agent and then as a superintendent of Indian affairs for the Colorado Territory. In 1854 he became the agent for several southwestern tribes. For years, Carson worked to keep peace and to ensure fair treatment of Native Americans.

While working for the Office of Indian Affairs, Carson often clashed with his superior, Territorial Governor David Meriwether. Carson disagreed with many of Meriwether's policies and thought that Native Americans were being treated unfairly. In 1856 their conflicts boiled over when Meriwether suspended Carson. Meriwether later arrested Carson, charging him with disobedience and cowardice. Carson soon apologized and got his job back working as an agent.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, Carson left his position with Indian Affairs and was soon appointed a lieutenant colonel commanding the First New Mexico Volunteer Regiment. During the war, he fought against invading Confederates at the battle of Val Verde. Carson also directed successful campaigns against the Apache and Navajo from 1862 until 1864. In his last battle he defeated the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache tribes in the Texas panhandle. In 1865 he was appointed as brigadier general of volunteers. For the next two years he held assignments in the West until he left the army in 1867.

In 1868 Carson was appointed superintendent of Indian affairs for the Colorado Territory. He never had a chance to work in this position. He died May 23, 1868, at Fort Lyon, Colorado.

Read Bury My Heart...and Yours Will Break! ~Tanya Hanson

My copy of the powerful book,  Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown,  sits beside me now, dog-eared to death, pages browned with time and coffee spills. Dates and names highlighted including such beautiful and poetic terms as Time of the Big Leaves, Yellow Leaves Moon, and Moon When the Chokecherries are Ripe. This American classic from 1970, subtitled "An Indian History of the American West, was described by the Washington Post, "not how the West was won, but how it was lost."

Such beauty aside, this is not a book for the faint-hearted. There are chapters I can’t bear to re-read, and many of today’s words have been hard to write. But since we at Sweethearts of the West, whether authors, readers, guests and commenters, love the American West, this book is not to be missed. The title comes from the last “Indian War” in December 1890, against Minneconjou (Sioux) chief Big Foot at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, in The Moon When the Deer Shed. (This “battle” deserves its own blog post sometime.)

The TV and movie Westerns of my childhood often presented Indians as bloodcurdling enemies out to massacre innocent settlers. The occasional good “brave” was a mono-syllabic caricature, often a doofus.  No American history class I’d ever taken explained the truth about “Manifest Destiny.”  Maybe because we couldn’t handle it. Brown’s book documents America’s westward expansion through the eyes and words of the great chiefs, vividly explaining four hundred years of injustice, broken treaties, and betrayal.

I hope things are different in classrooms now. During my career teaching American Lit, I spent a whole unit on the history and plight of the Native Americans because no teacher or prof ever told me the complete truth about, say, Christopher “Kit” Carson (1809-1868). His expeditions through the Rockies made him a national hero, and his first two wives were Indian. Yet in 1864, he relentlessly hunted down a group of Navajo. Not content with destroying their hogans (homes) and livestock, he chopped down their carefully tended grove of peach trees.

No one ever told me about the horrors of Sand Creek. Or of the Cavalry at Fort Robinson sending good-will blankets to the Oglala Sioux--—blankets infected with smallpox.

Or of Palo Duro Canyon, The Place of Chinaberry Trees. Only a few white men knew of this well-hidden canyon in the late summer of 1874. Without fear and stocked with food to last until spring, Kiowa, Comanche and Cheyenne sought sanctuary from the whites. Almost two thousand horses shared rich grass with the buffalo.  On September 26, the Bluecoats descended upon them, the warriors holding off long enough for their women and children to escape. But by days’ end, General Ranald “Three Fingers” Mackenzie rounded up the tribes’ treasured horses and had more than a thousand shot to death. (In a subsequent book, I learned that the horse-loving Cavalry greatly resisted these orders, and that the slaughter of the terrified beasts took more than eight hours to complete.)

From the Nez Perce of the Pacific Northwest, I learned their poignant history in a personal way because my husband’s relatives hail from this area. I know Paty Jager hails from here, too and her expertise on the Nez Perce far exceeds mine. But of the many massacres and heart-rending betrayals in the book, the Nez Perce tragedy really speaks to me.

As with Squanto who helped the Pilgrims in 1620 and the Taino who treated Christopher Columbus like a god in 1492, the Nez Perce tribe met the white man in peace. In 1805, the tribe saved the Lewis and Clark expedition from starvation and dysentery, fed and welcomed them, and tended their horses for months while the party explored the Pacific shore. For the next seven decades of friendship, the Nez Perce proudly declared they had never shed white blood.

Their home turf was Oregon’s Wallowa Valley, the Valley of Winding Waters. By the 1870’s, simply put, settlers and gold-seekers wanted the valley. Negotiations failed. In May 1877, the young Nez Perce peace chief Heinmot Tooyalaket (1840-1904) chose to lead the tribe to refuge in Canada, the “Grandmother’s Land” (referring to Queen Victoria), following in the footsteps of Sitting Bull. The whites called this young chief, Joseph. By all accounts, he was a highly respected peace chief among Indians and whites alike.

The fleeing Nez Perce consisted of 800: 450 “noncombatants” and 250 warriors, and 2,000 horses. Outsmarting the U.S. Cavalry for 1,700 miles through the Bitterroot Mountains and Yellowstone country, the Nez Perce journey has been called the most brilliant retreat in American military history. Newspaper accounts of the day had Americans cheering them on.

However, the Nez Perce were severely weakened by the capture of many of their horses. In October, the weary Joseph and his band stopped to rest only 30 miles from their destination. By that time, U.S. reinforcements and sharpshooters had arrived. After five days in bitter snow, Joseph surrendered.

Then he delivered the most quoted of all the great chiefs’ speeches, of which I include a few lines.

“…I am tired of fighting… it is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. ..I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I will find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where he sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”

Lieutenant Charles Erskine Scott Wood, who translated Joseph’s heart-rending speech, resigned his commission not long after and became a powerful attorney who fought for the rights of the dispossessed.

When Joseph died September 21, 1905, exiled at the Colville Reservation in Washington State, his physician claimed “a broken heart” was the cause of death.

His name, Heinmot Tooyalaket, translates as Thunder Rolling in the Mountains.

Listen for him. Read this book. Try to keep your eyes dry and your heart from cracking while you read.

~by Tanya Hanson

www.tanyahanson.com

My next book, Soul Food, # five in the Hearts Crossing Series, comes out May 4. To start the series and tempt you, I'm giving away a pdf copy today of book one, Hearts Crossing Ranch, to one commenter. Don't forget to leave your e-mail address.