Kit Carson (Christopher Houston Carson)

Christopher Houston "Kit" Carson entered the Mexican–American War already famous as a mountain man and as a guide for John C. Frémont's exploring parties. In 1846, after the Army of the West under Stephen W. Kearny occupied Santa Fe, Carson was pressed into federal service as a scout and courier. He rode with Kearny toward California, carried dispatches through hostile country, and guided columns in the California campaign that followed the Bear Flag and naval landings. Army correspondence and contemporary campaign narratives — not later dime novels — are the basis for placing him on this war's roll.

Carson's wartime work was reconnaissance, messages, and survival travel more than parade-ground command. That is why this register files him under Mexican–American War service tied to Kearny's New Mexico–California operations rather than as a cartoon frontiersman. Civil War brevet rank and later Indian Wars campaigns are other chapters; the documented hinge here is 1846–1847.

He died at Fort Lyon in the Colorado Territory in 1868. The ambrotype portrait used on this page is public domain. The register does not invent missing-in-action status; Carson's death and burial are accounted for. Readers who know him only from fiction will find a narrower, sourced wartime role.