Kit Carson’s Own Story of His Life presents the firsthand account of the legendary American frontiersman Christopher “Kit” Carson as he dictated the story of his life in the 1850s. Beginning with his flight at age seventeen from his apprenticeship in Franklin, Missouri, Carson describes his entry into the West—joining a caravan bound for Santa Fe and launching a remarkable career as a trapper, hunter, guide, rancher, U.S. Army courier, Indian agent, and military officer. Over decades on the frontier, his exploits made him one of the most famed figures of the American West, often compared to Daniel Boone.
In 1856, while living in Taos, New Mexico, an illiterate Carson dictated his memoir to Colonel and Mrs. D. C. Peters. Though this manuscript remained unpublished for decades, Kit Carson’s Own Story of His Life was first edited and brought to print by artist and writer Blanche C. Grant in 1926. This edition offers an unvarnished look at Carson’s numerous adventures and experiences that helped shape both his life and the history of the western United States, and it has since become a central source for subsequent biographers of Carson.