These days, writings on Kit Carson are apt to focus largely upon his defeat of the Navajos in the winter of 1863-1864 and their removal in the "Long Walk" to a reservation at Fort Sumner straddling the Pecos. An interesting sidelight on that episode involves the fate of some valuable trees.

Recently, I heard from fellow author David Remley of Silver City, who is completing a new book on Kit's life for the University of Oklahoma Press's Western Biographies Series.

He asked whether I could clarify the matter of Carson's part in destruction of the Navajos' vast peach orchards in the tribal stronghold of Canyon de Chelly. On that point, earlier writers have been much confused.

Spaniards first brought the peach to the desert Southwest, where it flourished on settlers' farms and in mission gardens.

Pueblo Indians must have introduced it to the Navajo, who found the sweet fruit much to their liking. Their orchards on the floor of Canyon de Chelly supplied them with food and a desirable trade item. The peach thereby became a staple in their economy.

Col. Carson, as head of a volunteer regiment, had been sent by New Mexico's departmental commander, Gen. Henry Carleton, to defeat the tribe and send it to the Bosque Redondo Reservation.

Since the American occupations in 1846, six treaties had been negotiated with the Navajos and all were promptly broken. The new strategy given to Carson called for destruction of the tribe's hogans and crops and capture of their livestock.

This "scorched earth" policy, while brutal, did serve to accomplish the government's objective of subduing the enemy while inflicting minimal casualties.

Kit's military force, scouring western New Mexico and eastern Arizona in the dead of winter, obliged Navajos by the thousands to surrender and accept removal to the Pecos.

In January 1864, Col. Carson ordered his subordinate Capt. Asa B. Carey to invade the deep and isolated Canyon de Chelly in Arizona and bring out the Indians who had taken refuge there. He was also instructed to destroy dwellings and the peach orchards.

At the same time, Kit was summoned to Santa Fe to confer with Gen. Carleton. He reported, prematurely as it turned out, that the war was winding down and most Navajos were in captivity.

In the field, Capt. Carey thought so, too. At Canyon de Chelly, he found few tribesmen and evidently decided it was no longer necessary to lay waste to the orchards. The reason we now suppose that is because he makes no reference to tree-chopping in his official report.

Still, numerous books have credited Kit Carson and Capt. Carey with responsibility for wholesale destruction of the Navajo peach orchards. "So, what's the truth?" Remley asked me.

Dipping into my deep files, I pulled out a study by geographer Stephen C. Jett of the University of California, who had examined this question at length.

He mentions that the late Navajo expert Frank McNitt had found a military document in the National Archives and provided him a copy. It resolved the peach problem once and for all.

According to the contents, in August 1864 Capt. John Thompson and 35 men had re-entered the depths of Canyon de Chelly and, finding some Navajo diehards still there, began a massive cutting of peach trees, the number downed being more than 3,000.

In a follow-up expedition, Capt. Edward Butler, commander of Fort Wingate, N.M., destroyed 1,000 more of the Chelly trees. Seemingly, that ended the Navajos' engagement as orchardists.

A curious story in the national press in 1993 related how a good-natured champion steer wrestler, Francis Draper, having read that "Kit Carson led his troops through Canyon de Chelly, destroying 5,000 Navajo peach trees," out of compassion was starting a fund to replant new trees, "where none had existed for more than 100 years."

According to Prof. Jett, however, that was not so. He notes that when the Navajos were allowed to return home in 1868, they found a significant number of peach trees in Canyon de Chelly that had escaped the army axes.

"By the 1880s," he says, "the orchards were fully re-established!"

Historian Marc Simmons is author of numerous books on New Mexico and the Southwest. His column appears Saturdays.