A Valentine’s Day love story of the Old West

Maria Josefa Jaramillo and Kit Carson

One of the most romanticized figures in Western history, the legendary scout Kit Carson stood barely 5-foot-6, barrel-chested, freckled and sunburned, with thin reddish brown hair and watchful blue gray eyes.  The offspring of an impoverished Kentucky family, Carson became apprenticed at age 14 to a saddle maker in Franklin, Mo., the original starting point of the 800-mile Santa Fe Trail.  Although the boy liked his employer, he ran away in 1826 to join trader Charles Bent on a caravan headed west. Bent and his younger brother, William, along with partner, Ceran St. Vrain, built Bent’s Fort, which became a bustling trading post on the Arkansas River near present-day La Junta.

Upon arriving in Santa Fe, Carson headed north to Taos. A successful trapper, tracker, hunter, and later a scout, he had a remarkable gift for languages.  Although illiterate, he spoke fluent French, Spanish and eight or more Native American languages.

According Army scout Tom Tobin, “Kit wasn’t afraid of hell or high water, his private life was clean as a hound’s tooth, his word was as sure as the sun’s coming up, and he never cussed more’ n necessary.”

Between 1842 and 1847, Carson guided explorer John C. Frémont on his survey expeditions over the Continental Divide to the Great Salt Lake, the Northwest and California, opening up a vast territory for American settlement. With the support of Fremont and his wife, Jessie, Carson emerged as a national hero, the quintessential frontiersman celebrated in newsprint and dime novels.

On Feb. 6, 1843, 33-year-old Kit married Maria Josefa Jaramillo, a remarkably attractive girl who had barely turned 15. Although writer Louis H. Gerrard once unkindly characterized her looks as “the haughty, heartbreaking kind,” Josefa and her niece, Rumalda (three years younger) entranced Taos society with their dancing, beauty and liveliness. Josefa had a dark complexion, large bright eyes, a good figure and a graceful manner. To win her father’s approval, Kit had converted to Catholicism in 1842 and promised to wait a year before proposing marriage.

Carson’s bride came from a modestly prosperous family of ranchers and landowners who had settled in the Santa Cruz Valley in 1742.  She probably met Carson through her sister, Maria Ignacia Jaramillo, who was Charles Bent’s common law wife and Rumalda’s mother.

Kit had been married twice before, both times to Native American women. His first wife, an Arapaho named Waa-nibe, died shortly after the birth of their daughter, Adaline, in 1838. Two years later, Kit’s second marriage to an independent 17-year-old Cheyenne named Making-Out-Road ended when she left him to follow her tribe’s migration.  Among the Plains Indians, either party easily could dissolve a marriage. A wife simply gave notice by moving the man’s personal belongings (along with any children that were not her own) outside the teepee.

Although Kit and Josefa spent months and sometimes years apart, they were deeply devoted. Carson fondly called his young wife “Chipeta,” a Spanish nickname for Josefa. While her husband conquered the West, Josefa spent a good deal of time with her sister, Ignacia, Charles Bent’s wife.

During the Mexican War of 1846, Gen. Stephen Watts Kearney appointed Bent as Civil Governor of New Mexico following the American occupation of Taos. When Kearney moved south, a mob of Pueblo Indians and Hispanics broke into Bent’s home on Jan. 19, 1847. A quick-thinking Josefa led the women to safety, but Bent was killed and scalped.

After the Mexican War, the Carsons settled in the Rayado Valley, a ranching and farming supply center 50 miles from Taos. Since her husband was absent most of the time and Josefa became quite independent, managing a ranch, household and several children.  On one occasion, she even ransomed a 4-year-old Apache boy from the Utes by trading Carson’s favorite horse for the child.

A born wanderer, Carson always returned to Taos, bringing shawls, silks and other fabric for his wife, who loved to sew. After a sheep drive from New Mexico to California, he presented her with the Territory’s first sewing machine.

Partly because Josefa missed her family, in 1854 Carson transferred back to Taos and took over the Ute Indian Agency. Six years later, he suffered a fall while leading a party over the San Juan Mountains and was dragged over a precipice.  The accident left him with serious internal injuries.

During the Civil War, Carson resigned from the Indian Agency to become lieutenant colonel of the First New Mexican Volunteer Regiment. Shortly after his promotion to brigadier general in 1865, Carson took command of troops at Ft. Garland in southern Colorado. As his illness progressed, Carson moved the family to the Boggsville settlement on the lower Purgatory. By this time, Carson suffered so much pain that he could no longer ride a horse and had to travel by carriage.

In January 1868, Carson became the new superintendent of Indian affairs for Colorado Territory. Shortly afterward, he accompanied a delegation of Utes to Washington, D.C., where officials hoped to negotiate a treaty that would limit their vast territory.  Pregnant with their eighth child (one had died in infancy), Josefa made her husband promise to consult Eastern physicians about his health.

In Washington, an ailing Carson told Jessie Benton Frémont that he had to get home so Josefa would not hear of his death from a third party. He arrived back in Boggsville on April 11, exhausted and barely able to move. After giving birth to a daughter two days later, Josefa died of childbed fever on April 23. “Grandfather crawled on his hands and knees to be with her when she died,” his grandson later told the Pueblo Chieftain.  Despondent, Carson followed his beloved a month later on May 23, 1868.

Although Carson’s treatment of the Native Americans has been controversial, he played an important role in Western settlement. One of Colorado’s counties bears his name, along with an equestrian statue in Denver, a memorial park in Trinidad and the Kit Carson Chapel at Ft. Lyons.