Typed as spelled and written
by Lena Stone Criswell
THE MARLIN DEMOCRAT
Eighteenth Year - Number 58
Marlin, Texas, Wednesday, December 11,
1907
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KIT CARSON
(This article was found on the last page of the December 11, 1907 paper - in
the upper bound corner of the paper but far too interesting to pass up - lsc)
Feat of which the Hardy Frontier
man Had no Recollection.
One of the most noted of the hardy western frontiersmen was Kit Carson, to whom,
with Daniel Boone, belongs the credit of having always dealt fairly with the
various Indian tribes, as they themselves acknowledged. The withdrawal of
Carson by the government was the cause of a great war. Captain Henry Inman in
his book "--The Old Santa Fe Trail," relates an amusing incident of the gallant
pioneer.
"My own conception of Kit Carson as a child was that the was ten feet high, that
it would have required the strength of two men to lift his rifle; that he
usually drank a river dry and picked the carcass of a whole buffalo clean as
easily as a lady does the wing of a quail. Years after, when I made the
acquaintance of the foremost frontiersman, I found him a delicate, reticent,
undersized, wiry man, the very opposite type of what my childest brain had
created.
One day while Kit was at the fort, I came across a periodical that had a full
page illustration of a scene in a forest. In the foreground stood a
gigantic figure dressed in the traditional buckskin.
On one arm rested an immense rifle. His other arm was around the waist of
the conventional female of such sensational journals, while in front half a
dozen Indians lay prone, evidently slain by the hero in the impossible attire in
defense of the preposterous female. The legend stated how all this had
been effected by Kit Carson.
I handed it to Kit. He wiped his spectacles, studied the picture intently
for a few seconds and then said:
"Gentlemen, that thar may be true but I hain't got no recollection of it."
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Copyright permission
granted to Theresa Carhart and her volunteers for printing
by The Democrat, Marlin,
Falls Co., Texas.
