This is a carte de visite showing Christopher Kit Carson, explorer, trapper, Indian agent, and scout. Carson explored the west to California and north through the Rocky Mountains. He lived among and married into the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes. He was hired by John C. Fremont as a guide, and led the expedition through much of California, Oregon and the Great Basin area. He achieved national fame through Fremont's accounts of his expeditions.
During the Mexican-American war from 1846 to 1848, Carson was a courier and scout, celebrated for his rescue mission after the Battle of San Pasqual and for his coast-to-coast journey from California to Washington, DC to deliver news of the war to the U.S. government. In the 1850s, he was appointed Indian Agent to the Ute and Jicarilla Apaches. In the Civil War, he led a regiment of mostly Hispanic volunteers on the side of the Union at the Battle of Valverde in 1862. Later during the Indian Wars, Carson led armies to pacify the Navajo, Mescalero Apache, and the Kiowa and Comanche Indians.
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