Did you know that Herman Melville mentioned Kit Carson as one of the great American frontiersman in “Moby Dick”?
Kit Carson and Methodist minister John Chivington found themselves on the same side in 1862 when Chivington stumbled upon and destroyed the Confederate supply train in the decisive moment of the New Mexico Civil War battles. Two and a half years later, in, arguably, the most despicable act in American history, in a dawn surprise attack Chivington’s Colorado volunteers massacred Black Kettle’s peaceful village of Cheyennes who were flying an American flag and a white flag of peace. Carson testified on this as follows: “Jis to think of that dog Chivington and his dirty hounds, up thar at Sand Creek. His men shot down squaws, and blew the brains out of little innocent children. You call sich soldiers Christians, do ye? And Indians savages? What der yer ‘spose our Heavenly Father, who made both them and us, thinks of these things? I tell you what, I don’t like a hostile red skin any more than you do. And when they are hostile, I’ve fought ’em, hard as any man. But I never yet drew a bead on a squaw or papoose, and I despise the man who would.”