Editing Kit Carson (section)

=== Third expedition, 1845 ===
In 1845, Carson guided Frémont on their third expedition (Frémont made a fourth, but without Carson).<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=http://www.historynet.com/kit-carson-the-legendary-frontiersman-remains-an-american-hero.htm|title=Kit Carson: The Legendary Frontiersman Remains an American Hero|last=Reidhead|first=S.J.|date=June 12, 2006|website=HistoryNet.com|access-date=October 8, 2017}}</ref> From Westport Landing, Missouri, they crossed the Rockies, passed the Great Salt Lake, and down the Humboldt River to the Sierra Nevada of California and Oregon. Frémont made scientific plans and included artist Edward Kern in his corps, but from the outset the expedition appeared to be political in nature. Frémont may have been working under secret government orders, since US [[President Polk]] wanted [[Alta California]] for the United States. Once in California, Frémont started to rouse the American settlers into a patriotic fervor. The Mexican general José Castro at Monterey ordered him to leave. On Gavilán Mountain, Frémont erected a makeshift fort and raised the US flag in defiance, before departing north. The party moved into the Sacramento River Valley past Mount Shasta, surveying into Oregon, fighting Indians along the way,<ref>{{cite journal |title=Kit Carson |journal=Rough and Ready Annual |date=1847 |pages=153–158 |url=https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=rCITAAAAYAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA152 |access-date=September 10, 2020}}</ref> and camped near [[Klamath Lake]]. Near here, a messenger from Washington, D.C., caught up with Frémont and made it clear that Polk wanted California.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Spence |first1=Mary |title=The Expeditions of John Charles Fremont Volume 2 |date=1973 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |location=Urbana, Illinois |isbn=0-252-00416-7 |pages=passim |url=https://archive.org/details/expeditionsofjoh02fr/page/n5/mode/2up |access-date=September 10, 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Hyslop |first1=Stephen |title=Contest for California |date=2012 |publisher=Arthur H. Clark Company |location=Norman, Oklahoma |isbn=978-0-87062-411-7 |pages=319–368}}</ref>

On March 30, 1846, while traveling north along the Sacramento Valley, Frémont's party met Americans who said that a group of Native Americans was planning to attack settlers. Frémont's party set about searching for Native Americans. On April 5, 1846, Frémont's party spotted a [[Wintu]] village and launched an unprovoked attack, killing 120 to 300 men, women, and children, and displacing many more in what is known as the [[Sacramento River massacre]].<ref>{{cite book|title= An American Genocide |last1= Madley |first1= Benjamin |year= 2016 |page=chapter 2|publisher= Yale University Press}}</ref>
<ref>{{citation |jstor=26932596|title=Ishi and the California Indian Genocide as Developmental Mass Violence|last1=Hitchcock|first1=Robert K.|last2=Flowerday|first2=Charles|journal=Humboldt Journal of Social Relations|year=2020|volume=1 |issue=42|pages=69–85|doi=10.55671/0160-4341.1130 |s2cid=229227250 |doi-access=free}}</ref> Carson, later stated that "It was a perfect butchery."<ref>{{cite book|title= Kit Carson's Own Story of His Life, As dictated to Col. And Mrs. D.C. Peters about 1856-1857, and never before published. |last1= Carson |first1= Kit |year= 1924|pages=69–70|publisher= Santa Fe New Mexican Publishing |location= Taos, NM}}</ref>

At Klamath Lake, in southern Oregon, Frémont's party was hit in a revenge attack by 15 to 20 Indians on the night of May 9, 1846. Two or three men in camp were killed. The attackers fled after a brief struggle. Carson, angry that his friends had been killed, took an ax to a dead Indian and, according to Frémont, "knocked his head to pieces".<ref>Sides 78–81</ref> In retaliation for the attack, a few days later, Frémont's party massacred a village of Klamath people along the Williamson River in what was called the [[Klamath Lake massacre]].<ref name=Couture>Amy Couture. {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20170816105914/http://archive.ijpr.org/Feature.asp?FeatureID=1705 ''Captain John C. Fremont Clashes With Klamath Indians'']}}, Jefferson Public Radio, 2011.</ref> The entire village was razed and at least 14 people were killed. There was no evidence that the village in question had anything to do with the previous attack.<ref>{{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 |pages=115–119}}</ref>