June 27, 2021
We spent most of the rest of the day in the town of Taos, well-known as an artists' colony.
However, it is also the location of the final home of American frontiersman Kit Carson (1809-1868), and we started our Taos sojourn at the Carson Home, now a museum. Carson lived here with his third wife, Josefa. (He was married twice before to Native American women. The first died giving birth to their second child, and the second wife divorced him.) Josefa was just 14 years old when they married, and she bore him eight children. She died from complications of the final birth, and Carson, crushed, died a month later.
Once an all-American hero, Carson's activities have come under closer scrutiny in recent years. Was he a man of character and champion of Native Americans, or was he, like so many others, simply exploiting the local people? Respected historians take both sides, and it appears that the jury is still out.
The museum, of course, takes the more romanticized view of Carson.
Regardless of your feelings about Kit Carson, his home/museum, which focuses primarily on his family life, is an interesting place to visit. The first room had a History Channel biography of Carson playing on a small screen. We had limited time, so we opted to try to find it online when we got home. 
