Was legendary Western figure Kit Carson a hero or a villain? That may depend on which historian you listen to.
Susan Lee Johnson, the noted historian of the southwest, spun a yarn about Kit Carson and two women who told his story.
Johnson is a professor at the University of Wisconsin and a 2011 to 2012 Clements Research Fellow. For the fall 2012 semester, she will be researching and writing her new book at SMU.
“We have four or five scholars that come from other universities to finish their manuscript to be published in a book,” Ruth Ann Elmore, the assistant to the director of the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at SMU, said. “She is one of those scholars.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Johnson gave a presentation in the Texana Room of the DeGolyer Library. Under several flags from the Texas Revolution and the ever-watching eyes of a portrait of Sam Houston, history professors and students listened.
Her presentation detailed findings from the research she has done on two women who wrote about the legendary Western figure.
“They published books at a moment when movements for social justice shook historical practice to its core and when academics began to eclipse amateurs in the field of Western history,” she said.
Johnson began her talk in Taos, N.M. in 1973. The Taos chapter of the American G.I. Forum called for changing the name of Kit Carson Memorial State Park. The group wanted the change in order to honor Jimmy Lujan. Lujan was a soldier in World War II who died in a Japanese prison camp.
Christopher “Kit” Carson was born in Kentucky in 1809. He was a trapper and a guide hired by the government. “He is most well known for the disposition of the Navajos,” Johnson said. “He led the campaign that sent them on the Long Walk to detention.”
She said, “Carson isn’t just a historical figure, he is also a figure of memory and popular culture.”
Johnson attributed his modern fall from grace to the changing times.
“Pushed by activism along racial lines of residents of the West, agents of empire like Carson tumbled precipitously from grace, and defenders and detractors battled over his memory,” she said.
Johnson called the two women minor historians.
Quantrille McClung and Bernice Blackwelder were two independent historians who both authored books about the Western legend.
They were taken aback by the dust-up in New Mexico.
“They had both spent years writing about Carson, and the negative press disturbed them,” Johnson said. The people in New Mexico used the terms “tramp, Indian killer and brutal Anglo soldier carrying out the brutal policies of the U.S. government.”
McClung was a former librarian in Denver. She wrote “Carson-Bent-Boggs Genealogy,” which was published in 1962. Blackwelder was a former employee of the CIA, a former voice teacher and an apartment manager. She wrote “Great Westerner: The Story of Kit Carson.”
Their focus was on the less well-known, intimate life of Carson, who was married three times to two Native American women and one woman of Hispanic descent. She said the two women painted Carson as more of a family man.
Andrea Boardman, executive director of the Clements Center, enjoyed the lecture.
“I like the way she structured the material. It’s like she’s working on different platforms,” she said. “You can see the mosaic of how she’s telling the story. Her writing is very beautiful and conceptual in how she conceives it and develops it.”
Jenna Valadez, a graduate student at SMU, felt differently.
“There’s so much to it. I’m not sure it was the right setting because she needed more time,” she said. “But overall, I think it’s really interesting to think about the production of history. That’s important because you have to know where your information is coming from, and when you start talking about how it’s produced, it clarifies it more.”
