A NEWER WORLD: Kit Carson, John C. Fremont, and the Claiming of the American West.

• Author: KREYCHE, GERALD F.
• Position: Review

A NEWER WORLD: Kit Carson, John C. Fremont, and the Claiming of the American West BY DAVID ROBERTS SIMON & SCHUSTER 2000, 320 PAGES, $25.00

Nowadays, few other than historians know much about John C. Fremont and Christopher (Kit) Carson, except that the first had something to do with California's revolt from Mexico and the latter went through a number of rough experiences as a mountain man. Yet, in their time, both achieved the pinnacle of fame. Fremont was the greatest explorer and cartographer of the American West. He also was a senator representing California, the first Republican candidate for president of the U.S., a millionaire gold mine owner, a general in the Civil War, and a thorn in the side of many. He died a pauper.

Carson, a former mountain man and beaver-trapper as well as an Indian fighter and killer, was Fremont's guide on three of his explorations out west. Carson also was an army colonel, mostly illiterate, who rounded up the Navajo in 1864 in Arizona's Canyon de Chelly and put them on their own Trail of Tears, forcing them into the Bosque Redondo in New Mexico. Much of Carson's fame came through dime novels written about his exploits, real and fictional.

Roberts' book primarily concentrates on the various western expeditions led by Fremont and the interactive relationship between himself and Carson. A good deal of biographical background is deliberately omitted in order to focus on the latter two themes. However, since there is scant documented data on Carson, the author throws in a good deal of lore as filler material.

Although the book grudgingly acknowledges Fremont's fame in his own time, it retrospectively and continuously second-guesses his decisions. Taking a cue from a psychoanalytic study of the explorer, readers are asked to look at and condemn...