Last Chance Mustang

by Mitchell Bornstein

  Led by 558 Spanish horses and fueled by a lust to discover the legendary Seven Cities of Gold, Spaniard Francisco Vasquez de Coronado set out in 1539—traveling into the vast expanse of what was later to become Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Coronado’s expedition soon encountered the native Great Plains Indian tribes, and, in turn, the Plains tribes first encountered the horse. While some tribes feared this great and powerful beast, still others worshiped the horse—viewing it as a symbol and vessel of their holy spirits. As their apprehension subsided, many tribes turned to pilfering the Conquistadors’ most prized possession—their Spanish mounts.

  By the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Spanish had established various horse farms in and around Santa Fe, New Mexico. When Don Juan de Oñate arrived in the Santa Fe area in 1598 accompanied by seven thousand animals, including horses, cows, and donkeys, the climate was ripe for conflict between the native Indians and the Spaniards. By the close of the seventeenth century, Santa Fe’s horse population had swelled into the thousands. With this growth, the Indian horse raids grew increasingly frequent and successful. Eventually, the Indians overran Santa Fe and chased the Spaniards from their settlement. The thousands of remaining Spanish horses, subsequently acquired, ridden, and traded by the Indians, became the foundation stock for the Great Plains wild horse herds and the famous Indian Mustang warhorse.

  As horses escaped from the Spanish expeditions and settlements and as countless others were stolen by the native tribes, the Spanish horse of the Conquistadors became an ever-present fixture on the unspoiled Great Plains. Spanish explorers and settlers identified these free-roaming horses by various terms imported from their homeland. Caballos silvestres and caballos salvajes translated to English as feral animals who belonged to the wilderness. Cimarrón, a term that in its original form was associated with a runaway slave, represented an ownerless animal.

  While these and other expressions were utilized to describe the ever-increasing wild horse populace, each failed to gain widespread acceptance. Not a one seemed sufficient until the Spanish term mesteño took hold. As a Spanish idiom developed to identify animals lost in transit to their summer and winter ranges, mesteños were sheep who went missing from the Mesta—an organization of sheep owners. By the early nineteenth century, the free-roaming horses of the Plains were being identified by the English derivation of mesteño—“Mustang.”

  The New World now had a name for its newest, yet oldest, inhabitant—the Mustang horse.

  Despite eight centuries of breeding, the Spanish horses of the Cortés expedition and those that followed bore a striking resemblance to their ancestors: the Arabian and Barb desert warhorses. After centuries of selective breeding, the defining Arabian and Barb characteristics had become synonymous with the Conquistadors’ horses. While many Spanish mounts closely resembled the Arabian, still others carried the Barb’s dominant characteristics. Countless remaining horses possessed features readily identifiable with both breeds. These dual-featured horses became known as the Spanish Andaluz Mustang.

  It was a horse first bred on one continent destined for greatness on another.

  The years 1640 to 1880 have been identified by anthropologists as the age of horse culture and the period of the Indian horse. During this time, the wild Mustang ruled the western frontier’s grasses, prairies, ranges, and mountains. Galloping across these virgin lands, and gifted with superhero-like strength, speed, and resilience, it was an animal that would forever alter the Indian people and the Indian way of life. Over time, as the wild horse’s numbers and skills increased, so grew the native tribes’ fortunes. And once early American culture and society had advanced, the reign of the wild horse and the fortunes and prosperity of the native peoples would promptly recede. But to the end, the Mustang horse—a compatriot in life, battle, and death—would remain loyal and true to the native tribes.

  In the years following the 1680 Indian-led raid on Santa Fe, the native warriors were hard at work figuring out their latest and greatest possession. If one ventured upon a mounted warrior, it was certain that his steed bore a Spanish brand. Out on the range, decommissioned Spanish mounts and free-roaming tribal horses soon populated the once barren and lifeless vast plains. In no time, these runaway and retired horses reproduced and the frontier soon had its first generation of ownerless, unbranded wild horses—the first true American Mustangs.

  As the tribal herds increased exponentially, the Mustang assumed a vital and ever-present role in Indian life. The Great Plains tribes—the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Gros Ventre, Mandan, Arikara, Lakota, Dakota, and Blackfoot—quickly mastered the art of controlling and riding these spirited beasts. Many warriors possessed anywhere from fifty to two hundred horses; tribal herds often numbered close to sixteen thousand head. Among the swelling numbers, two horses were prized possessions: the buffalo-catcher and the Indian warhorse. So vital to a brave, these horses were often tied to a warrior’s wrist or hitched to a tent peg during slumber. Well-trained and fine-tuned, both the buffalo-catcher and the warhorse were taught to respond to leg cues so that a mounted brave had complete use of his hands.

  Depicted as early as the 1830s by artists George Catlin and Alfred Jacob Miller, the Indian horse and the wild Mustang were detailed with “… the compact body, graceful carriage, high-carried tail and refined head, with tapering muzzle and concave face, of the Arabian type.”3 Though the Mustang was a small horse, appearances were deceptive. In describing the Indian horse, one European cavalryman observed “only now and then noble animals of beautiful form.” Still, he concluded, “it is unbelievable how much the Indians can accomplish with their horses, what burdens they are able to carry, and what great distances they can cover in a short time.”4

  While the Indian horse lacked beauty and size, the Native Americans knew that they had discovered something special: an animal that would hunt until its prey was downed, an ally in battle that would fight until the last enemy was defeated, and a companion that would run until there was no ground left to cover.

  In short order, the Mustang horse became the focal point of Indian culture. Constant turnover and escape fueled the need for more horses as the Native Americans sought out and captured many of the frontier’s free-roaming horses. According to Mustang chronicler J. Frank Dobie, the tribes with closest affiliations to the Spanish explorers were the first to develop the ability to rope and capture the free-roaming wild horse. On the hunt, groups of braves would target a wild Mustang, run it ragged, rope it around the windpipe, and then choke it down to the ground. Once the horse was incapacitated and tied, a brave would blow in its nose, allow it to rise, mount it, and then ride the bucks out of the crazed beast. Over time, the native tribes turned to other methods of capture, including pens, traps, and decoy mares.

  As the Indian way of life and the Mustang horse became inextricably intertwined, the distinction between the two- and four-legged species started to blur. The buffalo-catcher held in its lungs the breath of deceased Indian ancestors. The great warhorse carried on its back the spirits of great chiefs and warriors long since lost in battle. An ever-trusted mount, the Mustang was a link to the past and a means of survival in the present.

  All who subscribed to tribal life revered and respected the Mustang horse. As recounted by Chief Bobby Yellowtail of the Crow:

  They were called by the white men “old Indian Cayuses.” That was a kind of impolite name for an inferior breed of horses. But we developed those kind of horses that could catch up with the buffalo and run right into the herd. It takes a real horse to do that! And he was a prince of a horse, and the Indians called him “his buffalo-catcher.” Now that’s the kind of horse we developed. He could go clear down to Nebraska country and come back. No oats! No hay! Live off of what he could pick up on the road. No shoes! Live on sagebrush … whatever he could find. We had a superior horse, although he had no pedigree. His pedigree was Indian Cayuse.5

  Over the course of years and then decades, the great
Indian tribes bore witness to the strength, power, and spirit of the great horse of the frontier. They learned to muster and then harness the strength, power, and spirit of the American wild Mustang.

  For the native tribes, the only item more coveted than a buffalo-catcher steed was a warrior’s warhorse, often one and the same, oftentimes not. The warhorse was a true prized possession. A warrior in its own right, the Mustang warhorse was not for menial tasks. Not mounted until the final moments before battle, the Indian warhorse was afforded all of the respect and care of a partner in battle. Gifted with speed, intelligence, and agility, this marvelous specimen was preserved solely and singularly for the rigors of combat. As such, the warhorse took part in a ritualized prebattle ceremony that turned it into an awe-inspiring walking, visual declaration of war.

  Painted in bright colors, adorned with herbs, eagle and bear claws, and objects said to possess magical properties, the warhorse was a walking and breathing symbol of Indian cultural mores. Emboldened with painted symbols vertically from the poll to the hoof and horizontally from the sternum to the dock, it was a four-legged walking résumé of both rider and warhorse. Long stripes and paint specs on the chest and flanks represented tribal affiliation. A painted rectangle on the flank indicated that the mounted warrior had commanded a war party. Blotchy marks meant that the horse’s owner had been lost in battle. A palm print said that the enemy had been killed in hand-to-hand conflict. Red and white circles around the eyes enhanced vision and accentuated the intimidating stare of the horse; lightning bolts represented speed and power.

  Though the Plains Indian warhorse was a sight of beauty for foreigners, cavalry officers, and enemies alike, its painted symbols spoke to threat, violence, death, and power. When it arrived for battle it inspired awe—a medium of communication, a work of moving art and culture, and a method of intimidation all in one.

  By the mid-nineteenth century, estimates approximated that 5 to 7 million wild Mustangs roamed the western frontier. Conservatively, Dobie estimated 1 million wild horses populated Texas and 1 million elsewhere. In the far West, horse ranches throughout California turned to castrating stallions deemed inferior breeding stock. Back on the Plains, though some tribal herds included castrated horses, not surprisingly many Native Americans, like the Spanish, viewed geldings as the virile stallion’s lesser, substandard version. While many warriors shunned riding atop geldings, they did not, surprisingly, reject the use of saddles.

  Composed of animal hides lined with hair and wood framing, the Native American saddles were a far cry from the bareback style of riding commonplace throughout the tribal world. Indian ways were changing, and in yet another sign of shift many tribes shod their steeds with mockersons—green buffalo hides—intended to protect a horse’s soles through the rough and unforgiving terrain. By the mid-nineteenth century, tribal herds once solely comprised of 100 percent Spanish blood were now nearly dominated by unbranded, wild Mustang stock.

  As the century progressed, the tide started turning for the buffalo and wild horse–centric tribal societies. Up to this point, with rich ancestral lands, millions of buffalo, and free-roaming Mustangs to sustain a nomadic, subsistence survival, life had been good. When Andrew Jackson penned his signature to the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Native American tribes of the East were abruptly put on notice that they stood in the way of advancing westward expansion. Soon relocated to the Great American Desert west of the Mississippi, the tribes of the East had experienced the opening salvo in what was to be a century-long assault against America’s earliest inhabitants: the Indian, buffalo, and wild Mustang.

  By the latter half of the nineteenth century, ever-increasing cattle roamed the land once dotted with buffalo and wild Mustangs. When Joseph McCoy built stockyards in Kansas and started shipping steers to Chicago via railroad in 1867, the cattle business kicked into overdrive and the range swelled with bovine stock. Once the American Civil War had concluded, lust for property and gold deposits sitting atop and under reservation lands meant that yet again the native tribes would be relocated. Shortly thereafter, when the transcontinental railroad was completed on May 10, 1869, the death knell for the ranges of the great American West rang loud and clear.

  The cattle business flourished in the latter decades of the nineteenth century and the era of the great cattle drives rapidly took hold. Once cowhands throughout Texas and the American West discovered that the wild Mustang made an excellent cow pony, thousands upon thousands were captured and put to work. With a never-say-die attitude, a thrill for the hunt, the awe-inspiring stamina of its desert ancestors, and the herding instincts of an alpha-oriented wild breed, the Mustang was a natural. The hard-charging, intelligent, adaptable, structure-seeking and imposing Mustang personality was on full display, but to those who knew this horse it was nothing new. As detailed by Washington Irving, “The Indian’s steed, well trained to the chase, seems as mad as the rider and pursues the game as eagerly as if it were his natural prey, on the flesh of which he was to banquet.”6

  The 1870s saw the slaughter of thousands upon thousands of Mustangs as the tribes lost skirmish after skirmish to government soldiers. The Great Plains tribes—the Sioux, Cheyenne, and others—stood hopelessly by as the frontier’s tribal and wild horse herds were decimated under the aim of cavalry rifles. With the native tribes laying claim to thousands of head, the resulting carnage was unfathomable, and the worst was yet to come.

  Between the years 1850 and 1900, the U.S. government ratified 363 treaties with two hundred Native American tribes. The vast majority were either blatantly ignored or flat out violated. There was no secret when it came to the plan for the Indians: to transition the tribes from a nomadic, migratory lifestyle to a static, agricultural-based existence. The native peoples were being forced to reject their way of life and adopt a lifestyle that mirrored that of the white settler.

  As highlighted by a report prepared by General William T. Sherman, Native American culture was a continuing threat to westward expansion: “All Indians who cling to their old hunting grounds are hostile and will remain so until killed off.… We must take chances and clean out Indians as we encounter them.”7 The buffalo and the wild Mustang, both integral to the nomadic tribes, became the instant target of this government policy to resocialize and indoctrinate the native peoples. A telegram sent by General Sheridan to the War Department addressing the wild horse didn’t mince words: “… the main objective is to get them away from the Indians.”8 It was the first but certainly not the last time that the political establishment would declare all-out war on the free-roaming American Mustang.

  The final years of the nineteenth century saw the cattle population explode across the West. Range degradation was inevitable and extensive as 22.5 million foraging head of cattle roamed the frontier. The rich and palatable wheatgrass, bluebunch, giant wild rye, dropseed, and oat grass, along with the protective topsoil, were all destroyed and replaced with unpalatable sand, sage, yucca, and winterfat. As the government slaughtered thousands of wild horses and pursued its overt war against the native tribes and their herds, the range degradation problem provided justification and validation for the eradication of the wild horse. Identified as an enemy of the land, the destroyer of the range, and a feral and unwanted beast, the Mustang quickly became public enemy number one.

  By the close of the century, the scourge of the West, the previously ownerless free-roaming Mustang was under the control of newly created state stockmen associations and subject to state “estray laws.” The wild horse that had roamed the North American continent for three centuries, the steed that had discovered and then built the great American frontier, was now legally identified as a “maverick,” “estray,” and “unbranded stock.” The wild horse of the West was now the property of its greatest foe—the stockmen who raised and grazed cattle. Wild Mustangs were now under the control of those who needed and wanted their land. And by operation of law, the stockmen were now empowered to remove the single greatest obstacle to unhi
ndered cattle grazing—the free-roaming wild Mustang.

  Extending well into the latter half of the twentieth century, state “estray laws” and stockmen associations presented a looming legal obstacle to those who sought protection for this nation’s free-roaming wild herds. By the time public outcry was finally acknowledged and received, the state estray laws, the stockmen associations, and their members had very nearly annihilated the free-roaming wild Mustang. And as a telltale sign of the dark times yet to come, by the close of the nineteenth century the State of Nevada authorized the killing of all wild horses within its borders.

  The era historically identified as the period of the horse brought together a steed as wild as the plains and a people who knew of no borders. Over the course of decades and then centuries, the Native American peoples forged a complex, interdependent relationship with this fiercely independent and then fiercely loyal wild horse of the frontier. Together, the native peoples and the wild Mustang rose in numbers, developed skills, and became a formidable force and an integral part of early American history.

  By operation of time and destiny, for better or for worse, over time the fortunes and the fate of the wild Mustang and the North American Indians became invariably and inevitably forever intertwined. And as fate eventually turned on the native tribes, the fortunes of the wild horse quickly soured. Nevertheless, there can be little disagreement, during the heyday of the tribes the native Indians were a great and proud people graced in battle and in life with a fierce and loyal companion.

  * * *

  Standing locked in his stall, and not unlike the Indian horses chased down by the cavalry, Samson had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. He was, like so many great Mustangs before him, born wild, free, and proud. But where Samson’s freedom had been taken, his wild ways could not and would not be tamed. Like his ancestors that roamed the virgin plains, similar to the great warhorses and buffalo-catchers, the will to fight, the desire to survive, was inside of him.