Mountain Man Myths

America was a newly formed country with a rugged, untamed landscape that only the adventurous spirits of the often fabled, but very real mountain men matched. Jim Bridger, Jeremiah Smith, Kit Carson, and a man who history cannot agree, whether it is his birth year or actual events from his life, Jeremiah Liver-Eating Johnson, are notable mountain men that existed and live on in facts, legendary tales, and the imaginations of historians an adventurers alike.
Well, what is a mountain man? The University of Virginia’s American Studies’ article, The Stuff of Legends: The Ways of the Mountain Men explain a mountain man was someone who went to the Rocky Mountains to trap beavers. Why? During the early Nineteenth Century, there was a demand for Beaver

Weapons were not always used in battles portrayed on the silver screen or actual history. Some were waged with political motives in mind. Dunlay explains that one mountain man in particular, Kit Carson, was an Indian Agent (157). Although Carson imposed the white man’s policies on the Navajo, Dunlay questioned if Carson was a “company man” (158). Carson’s complex Indian relations as an Indian murderer, agent and even husband as he married twice into the Arapoho and Cheyenne tribes, exemplify the complexities of relations between not just the Native Americans and Carson, but all mountain men (Walker 2015, 5). Albuquerque’s Convention and Visitor Bureau calls Carson a rancher, trapper, and soldier while distinguishing Carson’s outward appearance as a contrast to the traditional mountain man look and attitude by saying his lifestyle was temperate. It appears that this does not line up in my opinion with the facts Northern Arizona University provide detailing how Carson’s military drive won out against his sympathetic nature when he “attacked the Navajo people with his cavalry units, burning Navajo cornfields and poisoning water