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The Mustang |
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The Mustang |
The Mustang would be correctly termed a "feral" horse, which is one descended from domesticated stock that are no longer under human control, living and breeding in the wild. Most people prefer to use the term wild to described the Mustang, perhaps due to the romance which is stirred up by legends. The romantic history of this horse dates back 500 years to when Columbus brought the first stock to the West Indies.
From the word "mesteņa" we get the word Mustang, an Americanized slang for the original Spanish word. "Mesteņa" is said to mean any of these: 1) a group or herd of horses, 2) stray, and 3) stranger. This wild western American horse is not native to the New World, but a transplant - a stranger.
No ordinary horse could have made the transition from total dependency on humans to the perils of living in the wilderness with as much ease as these mounts of the Spanish Conquistadors. Originally bred in Andalusia and Seville, during the 16th Century they were without peers in Europe. They were unmatched for intelligence, endurance, speed, recovery power and horse sense. These horses had superior stamina and survived the distressing voyages across the ocean to the New World, which took several months. They were forced to hang in slings, and they were given stale hay and little water to drink on the miserable trip. And still, upon landfall, they were able to walk off the ship, and be mounted to break trail carrying burdens 1/4 their own weight.
A number of crown-owned breeding farms were set up by the king to furnish stallion services and brood mares for settlers. These farms grew in number along with the successful settlement of the islands, and they had a reputation for their fine horses. Thousands of these horses were supplied for the conquest of Mexico, Central America, and Peru, as well as the exploration of the southern United States.
When Hernando Cortez sailed from Havana for the conquest of Mexico in 1519, he was supplied with 11 stallions and 5 mares, but by the time they landed one of the mares had foaled. There is unverified information that Cortez rode on "a golden horse." These were the first horses to set foot on the continent since the Ice Age. The Indians were greatly impressed by the sight of the horses, which they believe fed on human flesh due to the fact that Cortez burned hard-to-handle Aztecs at stake as he spread his civilization. When the Indian no longer stood in awe of the horse, he was enabled to develop his own horse culture.
Though Cortez's expedition contributed largely to establishing the horse in America, Hernando de Soto brought horses into Florida and along the Mississippi River, and Francisco Vasquez de Coronado took 245 horsemen into New Mexico. In his hunt for the Seven Cities of Cibola, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado took 1250 horses and mules with him in 1540. Several hundred of these he lost in a big hail storm.
Through the Franciscan mission farms established in Georgia, the Indians learned how to handle and use horses. In time these farms were the source of horses for the Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws and Seminoles. When the Shawnee Indians were driven north from Tennessee into Kentucky and Ohio, they rode on Chickasaw stock. Many of these Indians traded and bought these horses for their use.
From the missions and ranches established throughout the Plains and Southwest, Indians learned to break and train horses. Though the Plains Indians were quite adaptable and intelligent, most of their horses were obtained through thievery. These Indians were adept horsemen long before the Mustang roamed in the West.
A Mexican-born explorer, Juan de Onate, led a party of soldier-settlers, their families, and many Negro and Indian slaves to an area near present day Santa Fe, New Mexico. When they came in 1598, there were no wild horse herds, but they brought with them 25 stallions, 250 mares, 150 colts, and 25 mules. Onate and his troops explored the area from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, seeing no horses or evidence of the presence of horses throughout the Southwest. When he was unseated as governor of New Spain in 1607, he and his followers sponsored a new settlement called Santa Fe. This became a seat of government and over a long period of time instituted and maintained a policy of cruelty to the Indians which resulted in their uprising and the massacre of 400 Spaniards at Albuquerque in 1680. Now the Indians possessed the progeny of his horses, and though they were not students of animal husbandry, they had learned enough about the horse in order to put it to use. This massacre was the beginning of the spread of the horse over the plains.
The Indian pony was essentially Spanish in origin, implying a Barb element from North Africa, brought by the Berber conquerors when they invaded Spain. These were rather small horses of intense stamina, alertness, and intelligence, and under the influence of the Indians they grew smaller, yet they maintained the essential spirit. The Indian was not an efficient horse breeder, but his culture was based on the horse. Those who were better horsemen and breeders would last the longest in a struggle against the white man. The first horses a tribe obtained were at once useful as pack animals to move the camp and carry game, and could carry 5 or 6 times the load of the typical Indian dog. More importantly the horse ate forage, while the dog ate meat - when the people had good hunting, they could give scraps to the dogs, but when hunting was poor, they ate all the scraps, left the dogs to starve, and sometimes ate the dogs as well.
The Plains Indians had breeding stock well suitable to the environment by 1770, and each year hundreds of animals were traded across the Mississippi River. In times of famine, a number of horses were killed for food, some died on buffalo hunts, some were killed in battle. The most severe losses came from abusing the mares: pregnant mares run to exhaustion in buffalo hunts, or worked too hard in pack strings while foals were very young. Other tribes, as the Cayuse and Nez Perce, cared for their brood mares and were rewarded with better and more foals. Each year the Nez Perce disposed of about 500 of their poorer horses to keep their breeding stock at a high level, and poorer stallions were gelded. These horses were typically larger than those of other tribes, much larger than those raised on the Plains, and they raised a higher proportion of good running horses. When Lewis and Clark crossed America, Meriwether Lewis noted the beauty of the Nez Perce horses in his log, and three troublesome stallions were determined to be castrated. Two of these stallions were gelded in the usual European manner, while a native, in the Indian way, gelded the third. All three horses recovered, but the stallion which the Indian had done recovered sooner, persuading Lewis that the Indian method was preferable.
Now that the Indian had mastered ownership and use of horses, the westward movement of the white man was about to unhorse them forever. This brought the beginning of the end for the Spanish Mustang. Like the buffalo, the Spanish Mustang roamed the prairies. The pure Spanish blood of their forebears flowed in their veins, then the increasing westward movement began to dilute this pure blood. Stock imported from England and other parts of Europe was brought with these settlers from the East. They set up ranches, and also cross-bred Mustangs with their original stock, the resulting offspring without the natural breeding instinct or cow-sense of the pure Mustang. Some European horses were turned loose or escaped, and eventually joined the wild herds, thus crossing European blood with Spanish breeding.
Cattlemen moved into the West, forcing the wild horses to share range land with the cattle. These cattlemen shot or trapped the Mustangs to protect their own range horses and conserve pasture. Herds of these Mustangs flourished in the mountains and on the desert plateaus of Nevada, Arizona and Oregon after about 1885. Originally they were from the ranch stock that was neglected for years when horse prices were low. They were a headache to the stockmen by cropping the grass closely so as to destroy its roots. Many were trapped in the good market years of 1900-1901 for use in the Boer War, which when over made these horses worthless. Their quality had deteriorated badly because the best were trapped and sold, and soon the ranchers began shooting the wild scrub animals, and no one wanted one even as a gift.
When many people turned to fox farming to provide fur in the depression of the 1930s, an expanding market for food for foxes, and also for dogs. This caused many Mustangs to be hunted down and sold to canneries, bringing only a few dollars. Then the zealous work of Mrs. Velma Johnston of Nevada began to expose the cruelty of the hunters of these horses. She soon became known as "Wild Horse Annie," and she was instrumental in getting a Federal law passed in 1959 to protect the feral horses form hunting by aircraft or motorized vehicles on public domain. Without adapting the policy of management and control, the hunting resumed until 1971 when Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act declaring the Mustangs "living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West."
Often called Indian pony, cow pony, buffalo horse, Cayuse, Spanish pony or Mustang, they are basically all the same. They come in a spectrum of colors, from the basic colors of bay, chestnut and black, to the more rare colors as well as appaloosa and paint patterns, including the mystical Medicine Hat. There are duns, buckskins, grullas, claybanks, isabellas, palominos, white, albino, roans and greys. There is no other breed with as many colors!
They range in height from 13.2 to 15 hands, and weight from 700 to 1000 pounds. Balance and never heavily muscled, they posses outstanding feet and legs and their short backs enhance their weight carrying ability. These horses are remarkably free of hood and leg problems. The facial profile reflects the Spanish ancestry with most showing a somewhat convex profile, and a straight profile is occasionally found. Necks of both stallions and mares tends to be well arched, and the chest is of medium width with a definite "V" between the forelegs. The heart girth is deep, the croup rounded, and tail set medium to low. Manes and tails are usually full with many individuals possessing double manes. Many Mustangs are inherently gaited and besides the normal gaits, do a lateral pace or "paso."
Mustangs have even dispositions and exceptional learning capacity. They are excellent candidates for competitive events as racing, endurance rides, cutting, roping, and reining. These horse exhibit natural herding instincts and tremendous stamina, and they are agile and strong. They fend for themselves on the open range during bitterly cold winters and hot dry summers. An outstanding breed produced from these Mustangs is the Quarter Horse, and color breeds as the Appaloosa, Palomino, Pinto and Paint have Mustang ancestors.
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© 1997-2007
NW Breyer Horse Club & Refiner of Gold Creations Equinealities in place since 1997, Section in place 2001, Updated 3/13/2007 |
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