Adaline needed a mother, and Kit soon married a Cheyenne woman, Making-Out-Road. But in short order, she divorced him Indian style. Kit came home one day to find his belongings and Adaline outside. Making-Out-Road went home to her family. At the 1840 rendezvous--which was the last one of those midsummer trapper/trader gatherings held during the heyday of the mountain man--Carson asked Father De Smet, a Catholic missionary, to baptize Adaline. Two years later, Father Antonio Jose Martinez baptized Carson, who left the Presbyterian Church to become Catholic.
By then, the era of the fur trade was drawing to a close. Settlers were beginning to trickle into lands once known only to the buffalo and the Indians. Kit Carson realized he had to change with the times. There was another, more important reason to change careers. Kit Carson was smitten with Josefa Jaramillo, daughter of a wealthy and influential Taos family.
The first time he saw Josefa, she was wearing a bright yellow dress. It was love at first sight. Her beauty was legendary. Although only in her early teens, she was well dressed and already quite refined. When she was 19, a visitor to Taos, Lewis H. Gerrard, described her as "beautiful...the haughty, heart-breaking kind...as would lead a man to risk his life for a smile."
Sometime during the spring or early summer of 1842 Carson reached an understanding with Josefa's father. That summer, William Bent was traveling east on the Santa Fe Trail. Carson joined him, taking Adaline with him. He arranged to leave his daughter with his sister, Mary Ann Carson Rubey, who was now living in St. Louis.
While in Missouri, Carson met John C. Frémont, a lieutenant with the Corps of Topographical Engineers, by chance on a Missouri River steamboat. When Frémont heard Carson was on board, he instantly retained the mountain man for $100 a month to lead an expedition across the Rockies. Carson needed the money to impress Josefa's father. It was the first of three Frémont expeditions in which Carson served as guide.
Kit and Josefa were married in Taos on February 6, 1843, which otherwise was a typical year for him. A few months after his marriage, he was off on the Santa Fe Trail with William Bent. He met up with Captain Philip St. George Cooke, who needed the now famous expeditionary scout to take a letter to the governor of New Mexico. Along the way he fought a little battle with the Utes. He went home to Josefa for a while, then headed back out with Frémont in July 1843.
Carson and Fitzpatrick guided Frémont's second expedition as far west as Fort Vancouver (Washington). The men wintered at Sutter's Fort in California before heading home in 1844. While they were on the Mojave River a party of Indians stampeded the livestock. In his memoirs, Frémont wrote: "Carson may be considered among the boldest...so full of daring....Two men, in a savage desert, pursue day and night an unknown body of Indians into the defiles of an unknown mountain--attack them upon sight, without counting numbers, and defeat them in an instant."
Thanks to Frémont's report--as well as various diaries, dime novels and newspaper accounts--Carson's fame spread throughout the United States. His services as a scout, hunter and Indian fighter were in demand. Frémont and others realized that Carson's quick thinking, frontier experience and knowledge of Indian culture could make the difference between life and death. Kit Carson was fast becoming a legend in his own time. Every schoolboy knew about his daring deeds.
Frémont's third expedition began in 1845, and Carson and the others were on the West Coast when they heard about, and became involved in, the trouble with Mexico. Frémont and Carson both participated in the armed movement known as the Bear Flag Revolt. They had a brush with Klamath Indians at Klamath Lake (Oregon) on May 13, 1846, the same day that the United States declared war on Mexico. Frémont contributed to the winning of California and was appointed its military governor. Carson continued to serve him loyally. On August 28, Carson was ordered to carry military correspondence and records to the secretary of war in Washington. Frémont later wrote: "It was a service of great trust and honor...of great danger also....Going off at the head of his own party with carte blanche for expenses and the prospect of novel pleasure and honor at the end was a culminating point in Carson's life."
After a dangerous desert trek across the Mojave Desert and the Colorado River, Carson and his good friend Lucian Maxwell met Brig. Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny in Soccoro. Kearny had quickly conquered New Mexico and now needed a guide. Carson surrendered the dispatches (Fitzpatrick would continue with them on to Washington) and led the general to San Diego. In December, Carson took part in the Battle of San Pasqual, in which Californios nearly did in Kearny's force. Carson, Lieutenant Edward F. Beale and an Indian guide walked barefoot nearly 30 miles from the battle site to San Diego to get reinforcements. By February 1847, Carson was again at Frémont's side, in Los Angeles. Frémont was claiming the civil governorship of California, and Kearny was charging him with insubordination. Frémont soon sent Carson off to Washington with dispatches that pleaded his case.
When Carson reached Santa Fe, he learned his beloved Josefa had barely escaped during the Taos Revolt, in which Taos Pueblo Indians and Mexicans had risen up against Governor Charles Bent and the other Americans. Bent had been killed, but his wife, Ignacia Jarmillo, and her sister Josefa had escaped injury by dressing as servants and fleeing to Santa Fe.
After spending a short time with Josefa, Carson continued on to St. Louis, where he showed the dispatches to Senator Thomas Hart Benton, Frémont's powerful father-in-law. Carson then went on to Washington, where he stayed at the Benton home. Jessie Frémont, the Pathfinder's wife, allowed Kit to sleep outside on the verandah instead of upstairs in the stiflingly hot guestroom. She also introduced Carson to Washington society.
