A Newer World: Kit Carson John C Fremont And The Claiming Of The American West [Paperback]

InA Newer World, David Roberts serves as a guide through John C. Frémont's and Kit Carson's adventures through unknown American territory to achieve manifest destiny.

Between 1842 and 1854, John C. Frémont, renowned as the nineteenth century's greatest explorer, and Kit Carson, the legendary scout and Indian fighter, boldly ventured into untamed territory to fulfill America's manifest destiny.

Drawing on little-known primary sources, as well as his own travels through the lands Frémont and Carson explored, David Roberts recreates their expeditions, second in significance only to those of Lewis and Clark. Additionally, Roberts analyzes how Frémont and Carson advanced the Americanizing of the West, writing with a modern-day sensitivity to the Native Americans, for whom these expeditions were a tragedy.

A Newer Worldis a harrowing narrative of hardship and adventure and a poignant reminder of the cultural tragedy that westward expansion inflicted on the Native American.David Roberts (1943–2021)​was the author of dozens of books on mountaineering, adventure, and the history of the American Southwest. His essays and articles have appeared inNational Geographic,National Geographic Adventure, andThe Atlantic Monthly, among other publications.Chapter 1: A Disorder of Enormous Masses

They set out, fifteen men on fifteen mules, shortly after dawn on August 12, 1842, carrying two days' worth of food -- dried buffalo meat, macaroni, and coffee. In the lead, as usual, rode Kit Carson, threading a trail through tangles of downed limber pine, across tilted slabs of granite where the mules' hoofs skated and slipped, beneath waterfalls and around cobalt lakes. And as usual, calling the shots from the middle of the pack, John C. Frémont straddled his mule as the alien landscape enfolded him, his quicksilver spirit veering between exultation and despair. Directly l3.