The Mustang Mystique
Descended from animals brought by Spanish conquistadors centuries ago, wild horses roam the West and may be running out of room
- By Abigail Tucker
- Photographs by Melissa Farlow
- Smithsonian magazine, March 2010, Subscribe
To create her haunting, intimate photographs of wild mustangs, Melissa Farlow staked out water holes across the West. In Nevada’s Jackson Mountains, she slathered on sunscreen; in Oregon’s Ochoco National Forest, she wore snowshoes. Visiting a South Dakota mustang preserve on a Sioux Indian reservation, she was lost in fog for what seemed like hours; at last she heard a soft nicker from a horse just 20 feet away, hidden in the mist.
When Farlow was photographing a herd in Oregon’s remote Steens Mountain area, a pinto stallion charged out of the sagebrush at her, hooves churning. “All of a sudden I just sat down,” Farlow said.
It worked. Seemingly assured of his own supremacy, the stallion quit snorting and stomping, and before long the photographer found herself being sniffed by mares and foals.
Farlow spent part of her childhood astride a one-eyed cow pony in southern Indiana and has photographed the lustrous Thoroughbreds of Kentucky’s Bluegrass Country. But mustangs, she realized from spending months among them, are not ordinary horses. They are living emblems of the Old West, fleet exiles from a fenced world.
Mustangs are the feral descendants of 16th-century steeds the conquistadors brought to North America. The name comes from the Spanish mestengo, meaning stray. By the mid-1600s, Plains Indians were capturing and taming horses—which the Lakota called sunka wakan, or sacred dog—and the animals revolutionized their cultures. The Crow and the Sioux tribes mounted spectacular war parties and hunted on horseback. White settlers also pressed mustangs into service, as did U.S. troops—including George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Cavalry—that battled the Great Plains peoples.
A ranger in Texas’ Wild Horse Desert in the mid-1800s described a herd that took an hour to pass: “as far as the eye could extend on a dead level prairie, nothing was visible except a dense mass of horses.” Escaped cavalry chargers and other runaways mixed with the original Spanish herds. Perhaps as many as two million mustangs were rambling around the western half of the country by the end of the 19th century, according to Deanne Stillman, who consulted roundup, slaughterhouse and other records for her book Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West.
By the early 20th century, mustangs were being sold in Europe as horse meat, turned into glue, pet food and pony fur coats in the United States, herded and harassed by airplanes and shot for sport. In 1950, Velma Johnston, a bank secretary on her way to work in Reno, Nevada, followed a livestock truck leaking blood, then watched in horror as wounded mustangs were unloaded at a slaughterhouse. Johnston, later called Wild Horse Annie, spent the rest of her life fighting for laws that culminated in the federal Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, which protected mustangs on public lands. There were then about 17,000 wild mustangs left.
Today, some 37,000 of them roam more than 30 million acres of public land in the West, with large populations in Nevada, California, Utah, Wyoming and Oregon. In places where the animals are most concentrated—half of the horses live in Nevada—new problems are surfacing. Their overgrazing can lead to erosion and water pollution and make way for pesky invasive species like cheatgrass. Such ecological damage causes food shortages for the horses as well as the sage grouse, bighorn sheep, elk and domestic cattle that share their pastures.
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Comments (46)
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Is it legal for people to sell these coats made from pony pelts? Sound a woman on Ebay selling them. She's also selling coats made if monkey hair and all kinds of things. I can't inside this USAF legal in the usa today! Please help me.no need to post if you just reply.
Posted by Rebecca on November 3,2012 | 02:32 PM
Meet the Lady who walks with the Wild Horses
Eco-Tourism and Conservation
ISPMB has been..."Saving America's Wild Horses and Burros since 1960. Karen Sussman’s private land has seen Stephen Spielberg’s crew and Kevin Costner from “Dancing with Wolves”,interested parties and Wowed wild horse loving folks.
Karen Sussman is charming as well as educated about 400 hundred horses. She is the only women in the world with (4) wild horse herds. Karen has navigated herself to talk in front of Congress.
Nothing is impossible for Karen she has help organized the freedom for the Apache Sitgrave horses with Dr. Pat Haigh and the only free herd wild horses. She assisted to moving buffalos from Catalina Island to South Dakota keep them as an American symbol, yet her dreams got bigger.
Karen feels comfortable on her rural South Dakota farm and conservation with hundreds of acres on grazing prairie. The Lakota believe they would have a person come to them to re-unit the horses with their culture. They believe the horse woman is Ms. Karen. Return of (mustang). The Lakota people once relied on and lived with the wild horse. The horse was used in ceremonies, games, hunting, and war and in everyday life. The horse was a symbol of freedom, strength, pride and courage. It was necessary to travel many miles sometimes non-stop for days. The speed was required for hunting, war and games. Returning us to nature, Karen Sussman makes the magic of the natural world real again.
Princeton University is coming this summer to research the behavior of wild horses in natural herds and its founding president “Wild Horse Annie” is going to be Hollywood movie, Wild Horse Annie.
Yo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JDcQE0a0uw
You tube ~A must watch ~ a delightful story
International Society of Mustangs and Burros, Karen Sussman,
Address: ISPMB, PO Box 55, Lantry, SD 57636-0055
Messages will be returned in farm time
E-Mail: ispmb@lakotanetwork.com
Posted by Barbara Ellen Ries on May 31,2010 | 03:08 AM
I'm sure it doesn't make lot of sense to a lot of dishonest types, why we need to keep the remaining mustang herds intact as part of our cultural heritage. The most likely are greedy cattle ranchers who let their herds graze onto BLM land; there are those who probably see a profit in selling The Mustang for its meat, hide, etc.; or just those looking to purchase the Land they occupy.
Posted by Ted on April 6,2010 | 12:41 AM
“Mustang” is derived from the Spanish word “mesteno.” Spanish herding practices in the New World were “open range” husbandry. Ownership was proved by branding and ear marking. The Spaniards had specific terms for different classes of estrayed stock. Depending upon species the stock could be classified as "alzado" (strayed); "orejano" (unmarked and unbranded); "mostrenco" (stock abandoned or lost; usually applied to cattle); and "cimarrón" (stock that had returned to a state of nature and was too wild for humans to handle; the word "ladino" is also used). "Mesteno" came to mean stock (horse or anything else) that as "alzado," "orejano," and "mostrenco."
"Mustang” has nothing to do with blood; it's a legal status. The creatures that became the “mustangs” were NOT unique or special. They’re just the descendants of abandoned or strayed livestock.
The story doesn’t end there. Anglos come to Texas and the Plains on the Northern European horses (including draft horses) that they imported and have been breeding for 100 years or more in "the States." These horses will freely interbreed in from north to south.
And still the story does not end. As mechanization displaces the horse many in the West will just turn loose their now surplus, mixed breed horses. Open range stock practices are the rule in much of the West. These will make another genetic infusion into the ranks of the mustangs.
And today, in a very saturated equine economy, we again are receiving regular, credible reports of surplus horses being turned loose around the U.S, making one more genetic infusion into the mustang.
The story of the mustang is not very romantic although it is very interesting. It also demonstrates that the claims that these horses are something special are simply not true. The Wild Horse and Burro Act of 1971 was a bit foolish legislation based upon emotion, myth, and legend. It should be repealed and practical management measures instituted.
Posted by Guilherme on March 17,2010 | 09:51 PM
My background in biology is somewhat slim, but having just read “The Mustang Mystique,” by Abigail Tucker, I have to question by what miracle of nature the wild palomino pintos were descended from gelded Cavalry horses?
Posted by Lynden Couvillion on March 17,2010 | 10:28 AM
This article spotlights the absurdity of the BLM saying they "don't have the stomach" for letting nature take its course. Meanwhile, they apparently do have the stomach to let helicopters chase the mustangs miles in the dead of winter, resulting the breakup of family herds, in the miscarriage of mares' unborn foals, in young foals running their hooves off (literaly), in horses fighting and scrambling in a mass of panic as they are captured, and then in "processing them" or gelding the stallions, putting them in holding pens indefinitely. The 37,000 in captivity will hardly all get adopted. It goes on and on. Since when was nature more cruel? The BLM does have the stomach to squander $millions of our tax dollars to keep this insanity up and drive one of our western heritages to extinction. It lines the pockets of government contractors and favors the multi-million dollar industrial cattle barons who exploit subsidized welfare grazing, again, at our expense. Wake up America and take some action to stop it, instead of musing over some maudlin quasi-scientific article with pretty pictures.
Posted by J. Carabello on March 7,2010 | 01:26 PM
The photos accompanying this article are wonderful, but unfortunately the author has borrowed some questionable BLM rhetoric.
There probably are not as many as 37,000 mustangs on public lands. I have seen one estimate of only 15,000. Someone needs to come up with the correct number, for sure.
The horses are not responsible for overgrazing. Cattle, which outnumber the horses 100 to 1 on public lands, are to blame. The BLM represents cattle interests.
The horses are not starving. All one has to do to realize this is look at photos and videos posted on the Internet. They are lighter in winter, heavier in summer.
"Captured mustangs are sold to private owners." This statement is misleading. Very few horses have been adopted. Most spend their lives in holding facilties provided by the BLM at great expense to the American taxpayer. Those older than 10 can be sold at auction and usually are bought by "killer" buyers, who sell them to slaughterhouses.
It would be very unusual for a herd to double every 4 years. This assumes that every mare and foal survives foaling and no horses die during that time.
Thank you for helping to bring the public's attention to this matter.
Posted by Linda Castle on March 5,2010 | 03:54 PM
Anyone who thinks that the wild horses are inferior should take a look at some of the footage--before round-ups. I sure don't see any misfits. The law of natural selection works beautifully, when man doesn't interfere. I have never understood why they have been the scapegoat for damage that they do not cause. In Nevada, there are more pronghorn antelope than there are wild horses--this is according to the Nevada Department of Wildlife figures. The horses are beneficial to the range in every respect and fit beautifully into the ecosystem. Their digestive systems are such that they reseed the soil as they graze and their hooves help break the ice in the winter, allowing smaller, weaker animal to drink. They eat the drier forage that other animals don't eat, thereby helping reduce the danger of wildfires. It has been noted that wildfires have increased in areas where herds have been zeroed out. Their reproduction rate is less than 10%--this is according to the National Academy of Sciences. I would guess that it is even less than that. Many foals simply do not make it to maturity. The ones that do make it are strong and smart. What advocates are calling for is an "in the wild management" program that would be implemented by people who have the expertise and the horses' best interest at heart. This makes fiscal sense as well as being the right and humane way to take care of our wildlife--they do belong to us, as does that land that they rightfully share with our other wild creatures.
Posted by LOUIE COCROFT on February 27,2010 | 11:20 PM
Most of the responses to “The Mustang Mystique” by Tucker, echoes my deeply researched understanding of this complex issue. The horses in the mist are beautifully presented but the content of the article is sadly lacking in scope and research. Since I’ve been on the trail of tears for the wild horses of America, while researching the episodes for my series "Wild Horses In Winds of Change", I’ve interviewed experts on all sides of this crooked fence. There’s truth and solutions in the middle ground and the adaptable horse, who on this continent survived the dinosaur and whose blood proteins and bones have been found in caches with Clovis tools, knows there’s something good to be found on both sides of the fence. The problem is the boundaries aren’t logical, scientific, respectful or honorably drawn, let alone in a language horses can read. The boundaries are a drift of defensive, biased maneuvers and laws to protect self and special interests with the primary reason to gain wealth or if you’re a scientist, perhaps to gain a name for yourself. The BLM, established as Land Managers, were put in the position to protect the mustang, the very animal they and many of their ranching families had previously hated and destroyed. If the BLM would have been true stewards of the wild horse they would have studied their ability to survive, come to understand their herd structure and would have been able to stop ranchers and miners from releasing domestic stock into the wild. If you know the horses who are out there, you sure know when there are new ones about. Hooray to the advocates who are raising awareness of the mustangs in peril, in spite of an unyielding patriarchal force, many who like the Salazar's, are generational ranchers, with horse blood in their boots.
Posted by mara LeGrand on February 27,2010 | 03:57 PM
I have been studying the BlM for the last 4 years and you can go back and forth on cattle no cattle , this and that, they don't have food, they might not have food in the furture, its dribble. Blm is afraid of one thing 35000 that is what they are afraid of,at 35000 at even a 15 % growth rate they lose. They can't find homes for that 15%. They use to but not now. I want to introduce predators back into the eco system, with birth control I think we could get the horses up to maybe 50 or 45000. I want HMAS at 150 plus at least 70% of the HMA at 150 plus. Wolfs mountain lions will keep the herds strong, yes some will die , but you can't have nature own your terms, just hers.
Posted by donal barr on February 26,2010 | 03:42 PM
Horses are native to this continent and actually evolved from here millions of years ago. We lost them during the late Pleistocene and the Spanish merely re-introduced a genetically identical species to their native homeland (Kirkpatrick and Fazio, Natural History Magazine, 2008). If we are not careful we are going to lose them again.
Posted by Angela Sellitto on February 25,2010 | 12:49 PM
Wow, what a huge disappointment in the vaunted Smithsonian magazine. This article is so full of one-sided half truths, PR right out of the BLM and Rancher handooks, it's frightening to think Smithsonian journalists care so little to offer nothing even close to a balanced comprehensive article. It really isn't that difficult to access the data for this. Here, I'll do a little research for you:
Wild horses comprise 0.5% of grazing animals on public lands. That's accounting for approximately 30,000 BLM says are out there (experts say 15,000 is more accurate).
There are 4-6 million cattle, 950K elk, 780K pronghorn antelope, 70K bighorn sheep, tens or hundreds of thousands of deer, ALSO on public lands, competing for the same forage.
So it's 30,000 (or 15,000) wild horses VERSUS millions of cattle, almost a million each of elk & pronghorn, 2 to 4 times as many bighorn (as horses) and who knows how many deer (we do KNOW they are many times overpopulated, hunting notwithstanding). Which population is smallest? Which is the only one under pressure to be made even smaller by BLM's hand? Clear as a bell, just look at the numbers. No matter who tries to spin them, they do not lie when their reality of relativity is shown. Imagine a pie chart, it's astounding to compare population sizes to each other. Horses are by far the very least burden and cattle reign supreme in number and impact on the range. Sources: BLM's range forage allotment reports, State Game & Fish stats
In one year, livestock consumed 70% of grazing resources on public lands, while wild horses and burros consumed less than 5%. Source: National Academy of Sciences, study mandated by Congress
Privately owned cattle grazed on public lands comprise about 2-3% of the total beef produced in the US. EXCELLENT FACT SHEET w/govt sources cited here: http://www.sagebrushsea.org/pdf/factsheet_Grazing_Economic_Contributions.pdf
Posted by Kathleen on February 25,2010 | 03:34 AM
I too am saddened to see the Smithsonian run such a superficial and poorly researched article. But, then I see people here making comments about a subject about which they obviously know nothing.
The most egregious error - besides the screamingly funny idea that one can count the horses with Google Earth! Give me strength... - is that the horse was originally brought here by the Spaniards. The entire genus Equus originated in North America and lived here for millions of years, spreading to other continents over the land bridge that came and went in the Bering Strait. The remaining horses in North America evolved into E caballus - the same species as our modern horse - before becoming extinct, or very nearly so, in an unknown extinction event. They were returned to their home by the Spaniards.
Studies of mitochondrial DNA have determined the the horses reintroduced by the Spaniards were the same species - E caballus - that had gone extinct. Even more recent discoveries of ancient DNA prove that the horse and the mastodon had survived thousands of years later than had previously been accepted. E caballus was living here no longer ago than about 7,500 years. This is less than a blink of an eye in geological terms. There really is no excuse for refusing to acknowledge that these horses are native wildlife - unless you have reasons other than scientific ones that is. Strange that the BLM adamantly refuses to even consider the evidence, while the US Forestry Service has accepted the horses as native even before these most recent DNA studies.
I guess the BLM has more to lose if the horses are granted the protection they deserve as a native species - and an endangered one at that.
Posted by Suzanne Moore on February 24,2010 | 08:37 PM
And this is exactly how the uninformed become misinformed, by articles such as this. I expected something well researched and factual from Smithsonian. Instead it appears the editor simply regurgitated information given to her from a BLM employee and obviously spent no time researching this issue. Shame on you Smithsonian for printing a biased, misleading article. Consider my subscription CANCELLED.
Posted by Catherine Jackson on February 24,2010 | 02:32 PM
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