In 1826 a seventeen-year-old Christopher "Kit" Carson ran away from his job as apprentice to a saddler in Franklin, Missouri and joined a merchant caravan bound for Santa Fe in the far Southwest. The flight marked his entry into the pages of history. In the decades that followed, Carson gained renown as a trapper, hunter, guide, rancher, army courier, Indian agent, and military officer. Along the way, his varied career as a frontiersman elevated him to the status of a national hero, on a p...

Step into the untamed American frontier through the eyes of one of its most legendary figures. Kit Carson's Autobiography delivers the raw, unvarnished account of a man whose name became synonymous with the wild expansion of the American West. From his humble beginnings as a runaway apprentice to his rise as a mountain man, Indian fighter, and frontier guide, Carson's own words paint a vivid portrait of survival, adventure, and the relentless push westward. This is not a sanitized tale of ...

"Notice is hereby given to all persons, that Christopher Carson, a boy about 16 years old, small of his age, but thick-set; light hair, ran away from the subscriber, living in Franklin, Howard County, Missouri, to whom he had been bound to learn the saddler's trade. . . . One cent reward will be given to any person who will bring back the said boy.''This notice appeared in the Missouri Intelligencer of October 6, 1826, at about the same time that Kit Carson, in the humble role of "...