Editing Kit Carson (section)

== Indian Agent (1854–1861) ==
Between January 1854 and May 1861, Carson served as one of the first Federal Indian Agents in the Far West. He sold his interest in the Rayado ranch and opened an office in a room of his Taos home, gratis—the office would be perpetually underfunded. He was responsible for the Maoche [[Ute people]], [[Jicarilla Apache]], and [[Taos Pueblo]] in a vast expanse of northern New Mexico Territory (which then included southwest Colorado).<ref name="Remley" /> His duties were broad and insurmountable: "prevent conflict as far as possible, to persuade the Indians to submit to the government's will, and to solve problems arising from contact between Indians and whites".<ref name="Dunlay">{{cite book |last1=Dunlay |first1=Tom |title=Kit Carson & the Indians |date=2000 |publisher=University of Nebraska Press |location=Lincoln, Nebraska |isbn=0-8032-1715-3 |page=149}}</ref>

The seven years as agent is probably the best documented of his life because of the correspondence, weekly and annual reports, and special filings required by the position (he had a private secretary because he could not write; some believe the secretary took the dictation also for his memoir<ref name="DearOldKit" />). He summarized meetings with tribes - almost a daily occurrence when home - such as disputes over who stole whose cow, and the day-to-day effort to help with food, clothes and presents for tribes. He negotiated a halt of Plains tribes killing Taos Pueblo Indians desiring the traditional hunt of buffalo near Raton. Carson had the advantage of knowing at least fourteen Indian dialects as well as being a master of sign language.<ref name="Dunlay" />

One complex issue was captives. For example, captives stolen from Navajo by Ute were sold in the New Mexico settlements, or of a white child from central Texas settlements taken captive by Plains tribes then sold in New Mexico. As agent, Carson intervened.<ref name="Dunlay" /><ref>{{cite book |last1=Brooks |first1=James |title=Captives and Cousins, Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands |date=2002 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |location=Chapell Hill, North Carolina |isbn=0-8078-5382-8 |pages=passim}}</ref>

Much of Carson's work as agent has been overlooked because of the focus on his mountain-man explorer or blood-and-thunder image. This was a significant period for him as well as the region, which experienced a large folk migration of Hispanos into Indian lands, as well as the [[Colorado gold rush]] and its impact on the tribes.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sanchez |first1=Joseph |title=New Mexico, a History |date=2013 |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |location=Norman, Oklahoma |isbn=978-0-8061-4256-2 |pages=122–126}}</ref> Carson's view of the best future for the nomadic Indian evolved. By the late 1850s, he recommended, to make way for the increasing number of white settlers, that they should give up hunting and become herders and farmers, be provided with missionaries to Christianize them, and move onto reserves in their homeland but distant from settlements with their bad influence of ardent spirits, disease, and unscrupulous Hispanos and Anglos. Carson predicted, "If permitted to remain as they are, before many years they will be utterly extinct."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sides |first1=Hampton |title=Blood and Thunder, An Epic of the American West |date=2006 |publisher=Doubleday |location=New York City, New York |isbn=0-385-50777-1 |page=334}}</ref>