This little man--he is described by one who knew him as a small man, not over five feet six inches in height--had, long before he ever heard of Frémont, ridden and walked along every important stream of the Rocky Mountains; had journeyed across the "American Desert" a dozen times, back and forth; had seen every foot of the Rockies from the Forks of the Missouri to the Bayou Salade; had seen all of New Mexico; had visited old Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California as we now know them; had camped at every resting ground along the Arkansas and Platte; had fought and traded with every Indian tribe from the Apaches up through the Navajos, Cheyennes, Comanches, Sioux, and Crows; had even fought the Blackfeet, redoubtable Northern warriors.
In short, Kit Carson and his kind had really explored the West, and by 1842 had rendered it safe for the so-called "exploration" that was to make its wonders public. It is Kit Carson who might better have the title of "pathfinder." Yet this was something to which he himself would not have listened, for well enough he knew that he was not the first. Ahead of him were other apostles of the fur trade, so that even Kit Carson took the West at second hand, as later we shall see. He would not have vaunted himself as knowing very much of the West. Yet even to-day men of the East are exploring the West, and writing gravely of their "discoveries."
Five feet six, with twinkling blue-gray eyes, a large and well-developed head, with hair sandy and well brushed back, Kit Carson at his best was the reverse of impressive. He was simple, peaceable and quiet in disposition, temperate and strictly moral in a time and place where these qualities made one a marked man. Yet throughout the length and breadth of the Indian country this little man was more feared, single and alone, than any other trapper or Indian fighter in all the West. He was respected as well as feared. One who knew him well said: "Carson and truth mean the same thing. He is always the same, gallant and disinterested. He is kind-hearted and averse to all quarrelsome and turbulent scenes. He is known far and wide for his sober habits, strict honor, and great regard for truth."
One of Carson's historians describes him as five feet nine inches in height, as weighing one hundred and sixty pounds, and as having a "dark and piercing eye." This "dark and piercing eye" is something that, as we have noted, the average writer on Western themes and Western adventures will not willingly let die. As a matter of fact, however, we are to believe that our hero was a much smaller man than this description makes him out to be, and that, though of well-developed and compact frame, he was by no means of imposing presence.