Kit Carson and John C. Fremont were once unmitigated Western heroes. They remain important figures in Western American history. But both have been subject to revisionism. A recent biography of Fremont, John Charles Fremont: Character as Destiny by Andrew Rolle, critiques the ex lorer as an ill-fated adventurer and opportunist (it is Rolle who compares him to Lawrence of Arabia). Carson has been branded a genocidal racist, especially for his Navajo campaign of 1863 to 1864. Carson's supporters and defenders, whom I will call Kittites, have argued that Carson was not an Indian-hater, but merely an Indian fighter when provoked; moreover, he was married to two Indian women, raised a daughter from his first marriage, adopted another Indian son, treated the Utes with considerable equanimity when he was their agent in the late 1850s, and treated the Navajos as well as he could as a commander under orders to kill all Navajo men on sight and capture women and children until they surrendered unconditionally. Carson resisted his commander, General James Carleton, by not killing all the males, but often freeing them to convince their tribe to surrender and agree to be relocated to Bosque Redondo. The numbers of Navajos killed, livestock butchered, hogans burned, and crops wasted have all been exaggerated, according to the Kitties. Carson did not administer the Long Walk, nor did he pull up the peach trees in Canyon de Chelly, nor did he preside over the disastrous reservation Carleton provided for Navajo re-education in farming and Christian civilization.