page_title: Kit Carson
section_title: Hazards and hardships
hierarchical_section_title: Kit Carson / Mountain man / Hazards and hardships
caption_attribution_description: English: Miller was the only painter to portray during their heyday the men who "may be said to lead the van in the march of civilization,- from the Canadas in the North to California in the South;- from the Mississippi East to the Pacific West; every river and mountain stream, in all probability, have [sic] been at one time or another visited and inspected by them." Perhaps they numbered no more than a thousand, but their impact was incalculable. Here Miller has pictured two of that company, one of them probably Black Harris.
context_page_description: Christopher Houston "Kit" Carson, was an American frontiersman. His career as a frontiersman involved four chief occupations: mountain man, guide, Indian agent, and officer in the United States Army. He helped to open the American West to settlement. In his day, he was a celebrity known far and wide in the United States. In modern America, he is remembered as a folk hero.
  Carson began his adult life in 1829 as a mountain man. He trapped beaver about ten years for the fur trade. During these years, Carson became an "Injun killer" — he was forced to kill many Native Americans to protect himself from attack, theft, and murder. Carson became known as one of the greatest of "Injun killers" through novels, newspaper accounts, and other media. When the fur trade died out in the 1840s, Carson looked for other work.
  In 1842, Army officer John Charles Frémont hired Carson to guide him on three separate expeditions into the West. All three expeditions involved mapping and describing remote and uncharted areas of the West. These expeditions were hugely successful. Frémont's reports to the government made Carson a frontier hero, and were read by many Americans.
context_section_description: The mountain men faced many hazards including biting insects, bad weather, and diseases of all kinds. There were no doctors in the lands where mountain men worked. These men had to set their own broken bones, tend their wounds, and nurse themselves. Native Americans were an ever-present danger. Even a friendly Native American could turn at once into an enemy. Most mountain men had a Native American wife or mistress. The mountain man's main food was buffalo. The mountan man dressed in deer skins that had stiffened after being left outdoors for a time. This suit of stiffened deer skin gave him some protection against the weapons of his enemies.
caption: Two Trappers, (Alfred Jacob Miller, about 1858)
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