Blood and thunder

Blood and thunder : an epic of the American West / by Hampton Sides ; read by Don Leslie.— Westmister: Books on Tape, 2006.

17 sound discs (21 hr.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.

ISBN: 9781415933152

Unabridged ed.

Subtitle from container.

Directed by Staci Snell.

1. Carson, Kit, 1809-1868. 2. Indians of North America – Wars – West (U.S.). 3. Navajo Indians – History – 19th century. 4. New Mexico History 1848- 5. Southwest, New – History – 1848- 6. United States. Army – History – 19th century. 7. United States – Territorial expansion. 8. West (U.S.) – History, Military – 19th century.

978.02

This is the history of the New Mexico territory in the early nineteenth century, centering on the life of one of its most famous citizens: mountain man, scout, and United States Army officer Christopher Carson. Kit Carson was so famous in his own time that he regularly appeared as a hero in the “blood and thunder” popular fiction of the day. Short of stature and speech Carson struck many who met him for the first time as the antithesis of his fictional portrait. He drank little and swore less, As Sides puts it; he “was a loveable man. Nearly everyone said so. He was loyal, honest, and kind. … He was also a natural born killer. It is hard to reconcile the much-described sweetness of his disposition with his frenzies of violence. … If you crossed him, he would find you. He pursued vengeance as though it were something sacred, with a kind of dogged focus that might be called tribal—his tribe being the famously grudge-happy Scotch-Irish.”

True to its subtitle, this is more than just a biography of Carson. It chronicles in vivid detail the character and actions of a series of American Army commanders in the Southwest from the war with Mexico through the end of the Civil War and their Mexican, Confederate Texan, and American Indian adversaries. The aggressively expanding United States, in its rush to claim and keep the Pacific Coast of California, its “Manifest Destiny,” found itself in the middle of a two-century old war between its new Spanish speaking conscript citizens and an earlier claimant to the land, the Navajo. It was a clash between town-dwelling settlers and roaming pastoralists, and it was carried on by the young men of both cultures in brutal raids of murder, stolen livestock and slaves, the slaves being the women and children of the defeated.

Hampton Sides exceptional work of narrative non-fiction has been made into an excellent audio presentation by reader Don Leslie and director Staci Snell.