Guest Review by Tom Clagett

History
Kit Carson: The Life of an American Border Man
By David Remley
University of Oklahoma Press
289 pages, hardcover, $24.95

One of the most colorful and quintessential figures in the history of the Southwest, Christopher “Kit” Carson’s lively adventures as a frontier scout, trapper, and Indian fighter based in Taos in the mid-1800s were luridly exploited in fanciful dime novels from the time period. Despite the fact that numerous biographies exist of this mountain man—nearly 20 have appeared about Carson in the last 60 years—author David Remley, whose previous books include Adios Nuevo Mexico: The Santa Fe Journal of John Watts in 1859 (Yucca Tree Press, 1999), says writing about Carson “remains a risky job” because unlike Davy Crockett and “Buffalo Bill” Cody, Carson “never said much about himself.” (Even Carson’s own autobiography, which he dictated to a clerk in 1865, was heavily padded by an editor.)

Some recent biographers, using present-day standards and attitudes, have called Carson “trigger-happy,” and an “outlaw” with “gun skills … like Billy the Kid and Jesse James,” and characterized him as having “a hit man’s sense of aesthetics,” comments that come across like opinion as opposed to fact, designed to provoke rather than reveal. In Kit Carson: The Life of an American Border Man, Remley neither condemns nor apologizes for Carson. Instead, he presents a spirited, balanced portrait of a complex man, who was a product of his times, showing Carson as humane and responsible, as well as violent and aggressive, and a man whose “sense of duty” was both his moral strength and tragic downfall.

That sense of duty illuminates much of Remley’s account. Carson’s strong Scots-Irish roots and upbringing dictated “a life of loyalty.” Yet, Carson was also a man of contradictions. Loyalty to his family didn’t prevent him from running away from his Missouri home at age 12 to go west. Remley suggests Carson felt bad about leaving, but didn’t go back. Carson was despised by the Navajos, but lived amicably among several Indian tribes during his time as a scout and trapper. He was married three times, twice to Indian women, and was a loving father, yet was rarely home. Barely able to write his own name, he could speak fluently with many tribes. Acting as guide for explorer and surveyor John Fremont, he trekked across the Rocky Mountains to California; but, having once gotten seasick, he refused to ever board another ship.

Remley doesn’t excuse Carson’s part in the bitter tragedy of the 1864 Long Walk when he forcibly relocated the Navajo tribe hundreds of miles from their homelands to Bosque Redondo in southeastern New Mexico. He also acknowledges that an ailing Carson submitted several letters of resignation during the campaign to its commander, General James Carleton, but Carleton refused to accept them. For Carson, duty became destruction.

Whether he was admired or hated, Carson belonged to the West, and Remley tells his story with fairness.

Thomas D. Clagett is the author of William Friedkin: Films of Aberration, Obsession and Reality (Silman-James Press 2003).

[back to the top]

Book Briefs by Ashley M. Biggers

Art
Art of Turquoise
Texy by Mary Emmerling, Photography by Jim Arndt
Gibbs Smith
112 pages, hardcover, $19.99

Some people associate the color turquoise with calm; others associate it with power. But it is always associated with the Southwest, where the color and the gemstone have become an integral part of our culture. No matter where it appears, the color holds its own. This collection of photography is a turquoise lover’s dream: Pages upon pages celebrating the color wherever it appears, be it on a Kitchen Aid mixer, a rocking chair, or a beaded moccasin, and in every shade from pale aqua to jade. This book will be eye-candy for anyone looking for inspiration in home decorating and personal style.

[back to the top]

History
New Mexico and the Civil War
By Dr. Walter Earl Pittman
History Press
128 pages, paperback, $19.99

In the 150th anniversary year of the beginning of the Civil War comes New Mexico and the Civil War, a concise history of the battles waged in the New Mexico Territory. Although the territory was distant from the main battlefields, control of the Southwest was at stake in each skirmish fought here. In precise prose, Dr. Walter Earl Pittman recounts events from the first Confederate occupation of the territory, in Mesilla in 1961, to the Battle of Glorieta, which has been described by some as the “Gettysburg of the West.” Although he avoids the character studies (as found in epics like Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides) that would truly bring this chapter in New Mexico history to life, Pittman propels this book with the inherent drama of war and suspense of military tactics. Civil War historian and Roswell resident Pittman is the author of five books, and serves on the boards of directors of the Lincoln County Historical Society and the New Mexico Military History Society.

[back to the top]

Photography
The Rio Grande: An Eagle's View
Photography by Adriel Heisey, Edited by Barbara McIntyre, Foreword by Robert Redford
Wild Earth Guardians
240 pages, hardcover, $75

From the environmental nonprofit group WildEarth Guardians, which protects and restores wildlife, wild rivers, and wild places in the Western United States, comes a photographic paean to the Río Grande.

New Mexico photographer and pilot Adriel Heisey traced the great river 1,900 miles from its headwaters in the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado, through New Mexico and Texas, to its outpouring in the Gulf of Mexico. The soaring aerial photographs in this handsome coffee-table book capture the dynamic and fragile nature of this, the third-longest river in the United States and one of the most endangered. In the foreword, filmmaker and environmental advocate Robert Redford comments, “Most of the time, I suspect, we experience our great rivers as a passing glance from a car window, a flickering companion that, at a distance, decorates a riverside drive. As consoling as these moments might be, by comparison, Adriel’s pictures offer the force of revelation.”

From passages carved through mesas, to meanders through agricultural fields at first light, these images capture the many identities of this great river. But, as Redford comments and the book supports in its other accompanying text, “Photographs, however beautiful, can’t surmount the Río Grande’s many modern challenges. But they can show it’s important that they be surmounted.” All New Mexicans and friends of New Mexico would do well take this message to heart.

[back to the top]

Poetry
Sting and Nest
By Barbara Rockman
Sunstone Press
104 pages, paperback, $16.95

“These are my necessary poems,” writes Santa Fe poet Barbara Rockman in her first collection, Sting and Nest. “In several ways, the writing of them saved my life … Saved me by providing a vehicle through which I learned to balance motherhood and marriage with my identities as woman, writer, and teacher.” Rockman has crafted a rich collection about domestic life—from her daughter’s braces to possible conversion from Judiasm, and from her own walks in the rain to hiding under the covers while her dog sniffs out her last bite of toast. As she strikes upon universal themes, Rockman perfectly balances a light, compassionate touch with unsentimentality, as she does in a beautiful passage from “Soon, My Mother Will Die.” She writes, “Like leaves flattened to the soles of my shoes, / the imprint of her long walk presses into mine.” Fans of Emily Dickinson will enjoy this title.

[back to the top]

Cooking
New Mexico Tasty Recipes
By Cleofas M. Jaramillo
Gibbs Smith
48 pages, paperback, $8.99

Concerned that Hispanic culture was rapidly vanishing, Cleofas M. Jaramillo was instrumental in founding La Sociedad Folklórica de Santa Fe (The Folkloric Society of Santa Fe) in 1935—an organization tasked with keeping Hispanic traditions alive then and today. Jaramillo published two books: Shadows of the Past (1941), a collection of folktales, and New Mexico Tasty Recipes (1939), a cookbook. This reprinted edition of her cookbook doesn’t follow the conventions of modern ones: You’ll find few precise measurements for ingredients or cooking times here. If you’re comfortable cooking intuitively based on an ingredient list and general instructions—as in her salsa recipe, which reads, “Mix chopped onion, green chile, ripe tomato & crushed clove of garlic.”—you’ll be able to create these recipes for items like capirotada (bread pudding) and atole azul (blue-corn gruel). The true significance of this quaint book is that it preserves traditional ways of life that, even as Jaramillo wrote in the 1930s, were slipping into obscurity. Along with recipes and menus, the book includes several lovely essays—one on Holy Week at Arroyo Hondo, where the author grew up, and two about Southwest foods penned by the author’s brother, Reyes N. Martinez.

[back to the top]

Discover more Southwest books in our archives.