Too many revisionists spoil the history

Some 150 years ago, Christopher “Kit” Carson was the nation’s No. 1 Western pioneer hero. He helped blaze a trail through Nevada to the West Coast, receiving much gratitude from America’s government and her people.

Now he’s “the most hated white guy in history.” What a travesty.

It’s caused by the conceit of a generation so infatuated with its own version of political correctness that it’s willing to debase the memories of some of the country’s most important characters to make themselves feel better.

Mark Twain also is well on his way to getting the Kit Carson treatment. Nevada tribes dub him a racist for calling Paiutes “diggers.”

Even the Washington Redskins of the National Football League find themselves in this Kafkaesque revisionism. The federal bureaucracy that watches over trademarks says the team will lose its trademark because the Redskins nickname is “disparaging of Native Americans.” It’s an absurd and unsustainable position from which to administer trademarks. What else do people find “disparaging”?

I wish it were all a joke. But it is not. Consider what happened last summer to the Kit Carson Memorial Park.

The park is the burial site of Kit Carson, and it has been named for Kit Carson since before the town of Taos, N.M., took over upkeep.

But the town council decided that the park’s historic name needed to be changed because Kit Carson has too much stuff named after him and a couple of people said they felt “uncomfortable” in the park knowing of Carson’s Indian fighting history.

So they renamed it Red Willow Park.

Better than “Taos City Park No. 4, I guess.

The irony comes in knowing that the people of the Taos Pueblos love Kit Carson. He was a great friend and protector to Native Americans there. The anti-Carson folks in Taos, I suspect, are composed mostly of newly arrived “white eyes” who drive from art gallery to art gallery in their G-Class Mercedes cars with bumper stickers reading, “Coexist.”

I could be wrong about that. The bumper sticker might read, “I Heart Bernie Sanders.”

But I’m not wrong about this: We ought to take great care before making modern snap judgments about historical figures.

In this case, the Taos Town Council made a judgment rooted in a very bad understanding of history.

Carson biographer Hampton Sides says, “Carson is often depicted as an Indian hater and nothing could be further from the truth. He’s become the most hated white guy in American history. He has eclipsed Custer.”

When moderns diminish guys such as Kit Carson, they rob others of the chance to grasp real history, warts and all. And that’s a crying shame.

When Kit Carson led his “scorched earth” campaign against the Navajos, it was by the order of President Abraham Lincoln. Was Lincoln a racist? Shall we rename the Lincoln Memorial?

C’mon, let’s get historically sober. It was a time of war, and the Navajos were not exactly innocent pacifists. Navajos terrorized Spanish settlers and other tribes in the region for generations. The U.S. Army and Kit Carson stepped into the middle of that conflict.

Transport the 2014 Taos Town Council back to that time, and I damn well guarantee you they’d be big Kit Carson fans.

Calling Carson an Indian fighter is something like describing a bird as a biped. It’s true, but it wholly misrepresents the nature of a bird.

My home state of Nevada is celebrating 150 years of statehood. It will culminate on Nevada Day, Oct. 31, 2014.

Kit Carson gets little respect here, too. We have a beautiful statue of Kit Carson tucked away on the legislative grounds in Carson City.

The inscription on the statue talks about Kit Carson like a weird uncle. It even says that Carson City is named after the Carson River, not Kit Carson.

Of course, the Carson River is named after Kit Carson, but never underestimate the power of PC denial.

We won’t settle the Kit Carson conundrum today, so let’s conclude for now with Kit Carson’s assessment of himself: “I don’t know if I did right. I don’t know if I did wrong. I did the best I could.”

Sherman Frederick, former publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and member of the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame, writes a column for Stephens Media. Read his blog at www.reviewjournal.com/columns-blogs/sherman-frederick.