BLACK JAMES WALLACE (1825 1896) Kit Carson

Sale 2208 - Lot 42

Price Realized: $ 48,000

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 30,000 - $ 45,000

WITH CARSON'S SIGNATURE AND INSCRIPTION BLACK, JAMES WALLACE (1825-1896)
Kit Carson. Albumen print, 11 1/4x8 1/2 inches (28.6x21.6 cm.), on the two-toned original mount, with Carson's signature and inscription "With the Compliments of the original," in ink, on mount recto. 1868

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This is the last picture of Carson, which was taken two months before his death. The portrait was made around March 20, 1868 during his visit to Boston with Ouray and Ute chiefs. The print is signed by Carson and is the largest extant photograph of him. The photograph was acquired from the late Carl Denzel Family Collection; by agent (Michael Dawson) in 1994. Denzel was the director of the Southwest Museum, Los Angeles, and a collector of Americana, including 19th-century photographs.

A complex frontiersman, highly respected by both the military and the Native Americans. He was fluent in Spanish and French, and spoke several Native American languages including Ute, Navajo, Apache, Comanche, Cheyenne, Crow, and others. Carson was already sick when he made the trip east with the Utes in the winter of 1867. He helped to arrange a treaty between Chief Ouray and President Polk and acquired a large body of land for the Ute nation. The group continued on to New York and Boston before returning west. (Sadly, the government broke the treaty several years after Carson's death.)

Colonel Edward W. Wynkoop described his friend as follows: 'Kit Carson was five feet five and one half-inches tall, weighed about 140 pounds, of nervy, iron temperament, squarely built, slightly bow-legged, and those members apparently too short for his body. But, his head and face made up for all the imperfections of the rest of his person. His head was large and well-shaped with yellow straight hair, worn long, falling on his shoulders. His face was fair and smooth as a woman's with high cheekbones, straight nose, a mouth with a firm, but somewhat sad expression, a keen, deep-set but beautiful, mild blue eye, which could become terrible under some circumstances, and like the warning of the rattlesnake, gave notice of attack. Though quick-sighted, he was slow and soft of speech, and posed great natural modesty."

Christopher Houston Carson was born in 1809. His father fought in The Revolutionary war, emigrated to Kentucky, and died when Kit was 8 years old. After his mother remarried (she'd had ten children with her first husband,) Kit was apprenticed to a saddle maker. At sixteen, he escaped with a trading party to the frontier. He settled in Taos where he stayed with Matthew Kinkaid, a trapper, who had been a friend of his father's. Kinkaid taught him the skills he needed to survive in the wilderness. Carson soon became a legend in his own time. As early as 1835, at the age of 27, he was included in Samuel Parker's book, A Journal of an Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains." Carson met and worked for several years with John C. Fremont, who spread the word about his exploits. He was a great soldier, and though he often found himself in skirmishes with Native Americans, he was also greatly trusted and respected by them.

As his reputation increased, Carson was the subject of dime novels. In a particularly poignant moment when fact and fiction collided he tried to rescue a Mrs. White, whose husband was killed by the Apaches. However, White was killed shortly before Carson and military troops entered. Apparently, at her side was a copy of a book about Carson, an adventure where he rescued a woman in similar circumstances. In his 1856 autobiography, Carson wrote, "I have often thought that Mrs. White must have read it, and knowing that I lived nearby, must have prayed for my appearance knowing that she might be saved. I did come, but I lacked the power to pursuade those that were in command over me to follow my plan for her rescue. They would not listen to me and they failed…."

Carson married two Native American women before he met his third wife, Josefa, the daughter of a wealthy Taos family. They had seven children plus a few Native American children they adopted. He was a loving father, and when home a good husband. His wife died as a result of childbirth a month before he passed away. He has remained an American hero and was recently the subject of a documentary on PBS.