Kiowa author N. Scott Momaday reviews "Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West" by Hampton Sides.

"Kit Carson is at the center of this book, even as he was at the center of the history it records. Born Christopher Houston Carson in Kentucky in 1809, he grew to only 5 feet 4 inches and was wiry, blue-eyed, soft-spoken and fearless. He had all the instincts of a survivor, and indeed all the qualifications of a hero, as heroism was understood by Americans of the dime-novel era. Like Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill Hickok, he filled the pages of blood-and-thunder pulps, but in fact his exploits were far greater than theirs, and his authenticity beyond compare.

It is sometimes difficult to determine what constitutes the stuff of legend, or when a man enters that mythic dimension. For Billy the Kid, say, who resembled Carson in several respects � both men were slight of build, both were nerveless, both were intensely loyal, and both were coldblooded, efficient killers � it might have been a moment after his daring escape from the Lincoln County courthouse, in which he rode out of sight, receding into history, passing from time into timelessness. For Kit Carson the moment came early in his career. As a young mountain man at a rendezvous on the Green River in 1835, he dispatched a French Canadian trapper, Joseph Chouinard, in a duel fought over the beautiful Arapaho woman Singing Grass, who became the first of Carson�s wives. There were other definitive moments in Carson�s life, each revealing another aspect of the legend, and each exacting some price. He suffered wounds and fame alike. Of Carson and the blood-and-thunder phenomenon, Sides writes:

�He was the prototype of the Western hero. Before there were Stetson hats and barbed-wire fences, before there were Wild West shows or Colt six-shooters to be slung at the O.K. Corral, there was Nature�s Gentleman, the original purple clich� of the purple sage. Carson hated it all. Without his consent, and without receiving a single dollar, he was becoming a caricature.�

If Carson personifies the force of conquest in Sides�s masterly retelling of this American epic, the Navajo leader Narbona embodies the soul of resistance. He was born in 1766 and grew up in sight of Tsoodzil, or Blue Bead Mountain, an 11,000-foot dormant volcano sacred to the Navajos, marking the southeast corner of Navajo country. It remains a symbol of the spirit of the Din�, the Navajo people, and of their everlasting and fierce dedication to their land. In his long life Narbona became a great warrior and the pre-eminent leader of his people. In terms of Sides�s epic, he is the incarnation of his people, standing in the way of Manifest Destiny."

Get the Story:
N. Scott Momaday: Cowboys and Indians (The New York Times 10/29)
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Review: Kit Carson stars in 'Blood and Thunder' (10/11)