Reader Report: ‘Kit’ Carson’s trek through Orange County

There was no difficulty recognizing the figure astride a white horse leading a column of U.S. Army scouts on an extraordinary 145-mile expedition that began 170 years ago this month and passed through what today comprises Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Niguel, San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente.

First Lt. Christopher “Kit” Carson, 37, the legendary frontiersman, Western explorer, Indian fighter, guide, trapper, confidante of President James K. Polk and, years later, brigadier general, was immediately identified by his piercing blue eyes, reddish-brown hair that cascaded down his neck, shaggy mustache, battered hat, faded woolen shirt and shabby buckskin trousers.

The two-year U.S.-Mexico war was in its fifth month, and Carson, Army Brig. Gen. Stephen W. Kearney and Navy Commodore Robert F. Stockton, in command of 516 soldiers, sailors, Marines and scouts, were en route on an urgent march from San Diego via Orange County to Los Angeles.

Upon reaching Los Angeles, the Mexican government’s regional capital, they were to demand Mexico’s surrender and seize California and the future states of Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming, all of which had been a Spanish colony since the early 16th century and, most recently, had been ruled by Mexico since its successful War of Independence against Spain in 1823.

Two weeks before the American forces began preparing for their journey, they had engaged the enemy at the Battle of San Pasqual near a village of the same name that lay in a valley approximately seven miles southeast of Escondido.

It was at San Pasqual on Dec. 6, 1846, that a mounted force of 150 Mexicans and Californios — the latter described by Paul Apodaca, a professor of American Studies at Chapman University, as Mexican citizens, descendants of Spanish settlers and inheritors of land titles from the Spanish Crown — ambushed about 100 Americans led by Kearny and Carson.

The Mexican and Californio cavalrymen and lancers, commanded by Gen. Andres Pico, the brother of Pio Pico, a former Mexican governor of California, attacked the Americans at midnight during heavy fog and rain. The helpless and disorganized U.S. Army dragoons proved to be no match for the enemy, and 13 Americans were killed and at least 15 were wounded, including Kearny, who was stabbed in the groin. Five of Pico’s men were killed and about a dozen were wounded.

Carson and two other men, on orders from Kearny, were sent to San Diego to seek help.

“The trio took separate routes 35 miles across the desert through cactus and rocks without shoes to avoid detection by the enemy. Even the redoubtable Carson was crippled,” according to a passage in “So Far From God: The U.S. War With Mexico, 1846-1848” by John D. Eisenhower, son of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the general and president.

When the the men reached San Diego, however, they learned that Stockton had already sent 180 crew members of the U.S. warships Cyane, Congress, Savannah and Portsmouth that were home-ported in San Diego, the only California city in American hands, to rescue the beleaguered Americans, added Eisenhower.

When the American troops and their rescue party returned to San Diego, the wounded were treated, they recuperated and rested, and the force of 55 Army dragoons, 379 sailors and Marines, and Carson’s 84 scouts, set out in late December bound for Los Angeles.

“Carson and his scouts rode ahead of the column,” wrote Neal Harlow in his book “California Conquered, War and Peace on the Pacific.”

The going was ponderous, he said.

“In the train were six artillery pieces of various caliber hauled by poor mules, accompanied by some 10 ox-carts and a four-wheel carriage, all heavily laden and drawn by oxen of the poorest sort. As they moved slowly north, it rained like the devil, carts broke down and packs slipped off the mules.”

Initially hugging the coast, and then moving inland, the caravan reached the deserted Mission San Luis Rey and proceeded again along the coast through what today are San Onofre and Camp Pendleton. On the fifth day, the column, which included cattle and sheep to feed the marchers, entered what would become Orange County at San Clemente and then to today’s Doheny State Beach and Mission San Juan Capistrano, which had been heavily damaged in the Dec. 12, 1812 earthquake that killed 40 worshippers attending Mass.

As the American column paraded through the tiny town surrounding the Mission, the Navy band played “Life on the Ocean Waves,” according to Michael Mathes, author of “Campaign for Los Angeles” published this year by the California Historical Society.

The following day, the U.S. commanders were approached by emissaries of Mexican Gen. Jose Maria Flores, who demanded a truce to prevent future bloodshed. But the Americans refused and pressed on.

During the next several days, the column, followed by units of Gen. Flores’ cavalry corps, traveled through present-day Laguna Niguel and Aliso Viejo until reaching the western edge of today’s city of Irvine, near the UCI campus.

Then it traveled on to eastern Newport Beach, near what today approximates the intersection of Birch Street and MacArthur Boulevard, and onward to eastern Costa Mesa, close to where the 55 Freeway and MacArthur meet, according to current Orange County maps compared with one drawn of the march route by Maj. H. W. Emory, a U.S. Army topological officer who accompanied the expedition, 1848.

On Jan. 6, 1847, the column passed through what is now Orange and received a taste of Santa Ana winds, which began to blow so fiercely “that sleep was hard to come by, and it also increased the American’s vulnerability to attack had the enemy decided to press the advantage,” wrote historian Mathes.

Then passing through the village of Santa Ana, the administrative headquarters of Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, a 63,414-acre Californio-owned ranch where cattle grazed, the column rode through what today are Orange, Villa Park, Tustin, Garden Grove, Anaheim, Fullerton and Buena Park into Los Angeles County where, near Whittier, Mexican Gen. Flores and his forces finally lashed out at the Americans who were attempting to ford the San Gabriel River 15 miles southwest of Los Angeles.

“Carson and some of his men plunged into the lead. They dragged two field pieces through the knee-deep water,” as “some 500 Mexicans and Californios fired briskly and suddenly charged the column as it crossed the river,” wrote M. Morgan Estergreen in “Kit Carson, Portrait in Courage.”

The Americans counter-charged, the Mexicans inexplicably ran off, and the U.S. won the Battle of San Gabriel, suffering three killed and and 12 wounded. The enemy received an approximate similar number of casualties.

On Jan. 9, 1847, Flores’ forces again hit the Americans, this time eight or nine miles southwest of Los Angeles on a wide mesa where Vernon now stands.

Flores’ artillery open fired with several cannons, but the Americans answered with better-aimed firepower, and the enemy ran off for a second time. This short battle, which carries the names Battle of Los Angeles or Battle of La Mesa, ended with one American killed and five wounded. The enemy suffered one death and nine wounded.

The U.S. had won the last battle in California of the U.S. War with Mexico.

The next day, 13 days after the American column had left San Diego, it entered L.A. without a shot being fired from either side, and the American flag was raised in the city’s central plaza. Three days later, Lt. Col. John C. Fremont, who had traveled with a party of troops from Northern California, accepted the Mexicans’ surrender of California and the vast lands that would become future U.S. states when he signed the Treaty of Cahuenga alongside Mexico government representatives at a site near present-day Studio City.

On Feb. 2, 1848, Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with American representatives, and the war officially ended. On Sept. 9, 1850, California became the nation’s 31st state.

As for Carson, at war’s end, he retuned to his home in Taos, New Mexico, and became, successively, a farmer, rancher and superintendent of Indian Affairs in Colorado, rejoined the Army, was given the rank of brigadier general and fought with distinction in the Civil War.

He died of a throat aneurism on May 23, 1868 at the age of 58 at Fort Lyon, Colo. His death followed the passing 10 days earlier of Josefa, his third wife, while giving birth to a healthy child. Carson’s last words on his deathbed were “Goodbye, doctor and friends, and adios compadres.”

Carson, the sixth of 11 children, was born in Kentucky in 1809, left home at 15 to seek adventure in the West and did not learn to read or write until becoming a general. He is buried next to Josefa in Taos, and his home is a National Historic Site.

During his life, and since his death, Carson has been either praised or scorned by historians and the public, says Apodaca.

Congress signaled him out with commendations following the San Diego-Los Angeles expedition and his Civil War service. His name is synonymous with Army exploits against recalcitrant Native Americans and, as well, he has been lauded for his enlightened policies toward those same people. His heroism in the face of danger, recorded in books and by magazines and newspapers, has provided Americans an escape from reality, said Apodaca.

But, Apodaca added, Carson has been credited by his detractors with the deliberate, wanton killing of Native American and for herding countless others onto reservations where they died in poverty and of neglect, disease and hunger.

“Carson was a product of his time. He was a mixed bag and probably will be judged forever as a genuine American folk hero, the zealous enemy of the Native American, or both,” said Apodaca.

---

DAVID C. HENLEY, a Newport Beach resident, is a long-time newspaperman and foreign correspondent.