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If the Hawken brothers were among the most famous riflemakers of the era, Kit Carson is arguably the Hawken rifle’s most famous user. Carson owned multiple Hawken rifles throughout his lifetime and used them extensively
in his often perilous adventures in the American West. Because of Carson’s fame and his presentation of some of his rifles to his friends during his lifetime, a select few of
his rifles survive today. They are among the most desirable of all American muzzleloading rifles. Christopher Houston Carson (1809-1868) was already a real life frontier legend when Theodore Roosevelt was a boy, and Roosevelt continued to admire Carson as an adult as well given he purchased a copy of Fredrick MacMonnie’s sculpture of Carson at Tiffany’s in New York as a birthday present for himself in 1915. The sculpture notably depicts Carson on horseback with a Hawken rifle in his arms and remains in the North Room at Sagamore Hill, and in letters referring to Carson, Roosevelt expresses clear admiration.
Kit Carson worked the legendary Santa Fe Trail while still
a teenager and became one of the famous mountain men who worked in the Rocky Mountain fur trade until 1840. In 1841, he worked as a contract hunter feeding the residents of Bent’s Fort on the Santa Fe Trail. He then worked as
a guide on multiple western expeditions, including the famous Fremont Expeditions in 1842 and 1843 that
helped pave the way for the famous Oregon Trail and the 1845 expedition to California and Oregon. While working for Fremont in California, Carson met Edward Fitzgerald Beale (1822-1893), also known as Ned Beale. Beale was a midshipman in the U.S. Navy but was detached to serve with the ground forces in California in the Bear Flag Revolt and Mexican-American War. At the Battle of San Pasqual on December 6, 1846, Beale, Delaware scout Chemuctah, and Carson famously snuck through the enemy lines to get reinforcements from San Diego, saving the day for the Kearney and the besieged American troops after suffering severely in the journey.
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