Christopher (Kit) Carson (WPA)

 

Peter Van Valkenburgh

  1870 - 1955 (biography)

1938  

lithograph 

11 3/4 x 9 1/8" image 

signed only on the stone 

about 28 impressions 

dated under the signature on the stone; bears the blindstamp of the California Federal Art Project in the lower right; date stamped verso: JUL 29 1938 

WPA Graphics Achenbach Collection 65.37.973 

ivory wove Warren's Oldstyle 

published 

California Federal Art Project WPA 

AFAE200 

$400.00 

Kit Carson was born Christopher Houston Carson in Madison County on December 24, 1809, and spent his early childhood in Boone's Lick, Missouri. He left home at age sixteen, becoming a frontiersman and trapper.

Between 1828 and 1831, he used Taos, New Mexico as his base for fur trapping expeditions. Carson lived among the Indians and his first two wives were Arapahoe and Cheyenne.

John C. Fremont hired him as a guide for numerous expeditions to Oregon and California. During the Mexican American War in 1846, Carson acted as a guide for the U.S. General Stephen Kearney. Carson returned to New Mexico and became a rancher. During the Civil War he helped to organize the New Mexico volunteer infantry.

After the Civil War, he moved to Colorado where he died in 1868. Kit Carson is both a positive and a negative American legend.