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One of the first biographies I remember as a lad was about the western adventurer Christopher "Kit" Carson. That juvenile biography focused on how smart and resourceful Carson was and how those attributes molded him into a cowboy legend. To paraphrase a somewhat vulgar expression, BLOOD AND THUNDER: An Epic of the American West, yields the same stuff, but with a waaaaay different presentation.
In his powerful examination of politics, racism, religion, adventure and history, Hampton Sides weaves an intricate tale with Carson as the focal point.
"Carson was present at the creation, it seemed," writes Sides. "He had witnessed the dawn of the American West in all its vividness and brutality. In his constant travels, he had caromed off of or intersected with nearly every major [Indian] tribal group or person of consequence. He had lived the full sweep of the Western experience with a directness few other men could rival."
An astute scout and frontiersman, Carson was empathetic with the plight of the Native American. That does not mean, however, that he was necessarily their friend. BLOOD AND THUNDER offers extremely violent and gory detail as the author describes acts of barbarity by both Indians and whites, particularly the American military forces.
But this is not merely a biography. Sides reports on a group of dynamic characters, including Narbona, de facto leader of the Navajo tribe; the ambitious John Fremont, who sought to "conquer" California; and others, such as President James Polk and General Stephen Kearny who sought to expand the American landscape. Over the course of the book, they come inexorably together like spokes to the hub of a wheel.
Carson was the first hero of the American West, lauded in dime store novels as a "swashbuckling protagonist," a portrayal he was long ignorant of and ultimately displeased with. A particularly wrenching episode occurred when the scout found such a book among the possessions of Ann White, a woman he had sought to rescue from Indian hands.
"He imagined her reading it while enduring her miserable captivity. In [the] story, Kit Carson finds the kidnapped girl and saves the day, fulfilling his vow to her distraught parents....In this instance, Kit Carson had failed to avert a disaster; he feared [the author's] fiction may have given Ann White a false hope." Amid such scenes, one can easily envision BLOOD AND THUNDER as a movie in the mold of Lonesome Dove; the cover of the book begs for a sticker denoting "soon to be a major motion picture."
While Sides should be commended for his attention to detail, there are points in this 400-plus-page volume that become superfluous, even repetitive, as when he describes Narbona and his influence as an uber-leader of his people, or the customs of individual tribes and how the citizens of New Mexico perceived their American military invaders. The pace alternates, fast and slow. Some of the minor role players almost seem like red herrings, their contribution to the overall picture somewhat distracting.
But fans of American history, and particularly the Westward expansion of the mid-19th century, will doubtless find Sides's accounts riveting. For one in particular, it brought back memories of the innocence of early childhood, when the good guys wore white hats and gunshot wounds never seemed to bleed.
--- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan
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