Double S Mustangs

I remember the first time I saw a band of mustangs running in the wild. I was around 14 years old, doing something or another out west of town near a place called Frisco, and I caught a glimpse from a distance. Seen through scattered juniper trees and sagebrush, I was surprised. A flash of color, a swishing tail, they moved so fast and quietly that if it hadn’t have been for the paint in the group, I might have thought they were cows. I did not realize then the impact that these horses would have on my life and how they would change me.

At the time I was not aware that we had them so close to my hometown. Sure, I knew that mustangs were “around”, in the general WEST that people always refer to and I technically lived in. My aunt owned a BLM branded mustang by the name of Cherokee, she was my first personal experience with the breed. A little sorrel mare with a Roman nose and a goose rump, she was always standoffish and pinned her ears at children, or maybe it was just me. Not the most stunning example of her breed’s character or conformation, and what most people would call a Plain Jane. I am sad to say that I judged the mustang breed entirely on my experience with Cherokee. I did not think much of them and never considered adopting one for myself. Truth is, the general population around southern Utah and the surrounding areas view them as pests, a waste of resources. If you have ever wandered aimlessly through the Utah desert, you would know that forage is not of plentiful means for any species. Sagebrush, tumbleweeds and cheatgrass are usually the only source of feed out there, and water is even more scarce. These factors keep individuals in the herd thin and malnourished, and winters are especially harsh. With unkempt hooves, scars, matted hair and lack of body condition, mustangs are not pleasing to the eye, and it is hard to see the potential hidden under their wild bodies.

The mustangs are literal feral horses and because of this many cattle ranchers believe that the horses should not take precedence over cattle grazing land. The land the horses run on is public range, and if they eat all the feed, ranchers cannot range their cattle in that area. If it’s been a bad year for the horses, they destroy the land, and it may take years for it to recover. To understand their opinions and why they feel this way, I will share a brief history of the mustang breed for those who do not know. Not all my post are going to be this textbook. Bare with me, it’s a bit technical and full of numbers, but well worth knowing.

The end of the Pleistocene epoch; the period spanning roughly 12,000 to 2.5 million years ago, coincided with a global cooling event and the extinction of many large mammals in North America including the horse. The continent did not see horses again until late 1493 when Christopher Columbus set foot ashore for a second time. Accompanying him this trip were 25 horses; 15 stallions and 10 mares, they were of the finest Spanish heritage. By 1850, around 350 years later, it was estimated that the North American mainland had more than 2 million horses roam, all descendants of Columbus’s original 25.

The American Mustang (Equus ferus caballus) is a diluted descendant of the escaped, stolen, or released Spanish horses that survived the voyage to the New World. The word Mustang comes from the Spanish-Mexican word mestengo or “strayed livestock animal”.

Shorty after the conquistadors had pushed north into Mexico and the Texas region, the Native American tribes living in the areas, specifically the Apaches became the finest horsemen in the Southwest. They were nomadic and that remained the same once they became mounted, horses took the place of dogs in moving camps and were regarded as wealth. Being more mobile, buffalo hunts were more successful and tribes could raid further and began stealing cows and horses from settlements. It was at this point that mustangs became synonymous with Native Americans, in ways representing their spirit. During the American Indian war, when the army captured mustangs, not having the resources to move herds of up to thousands and not willing to let the be round up by Native Americans again, they usually killed them on the spot; Hundreds of thousands of horses perished this way.  The end of the Indian Wars coincided with several events that firmly cemented the negative views of mustangs, they were; increased western settlement, development of automobiles and mechanized farm equipment making horses obsolete. Europe’s need for animals to satisfy the war demands and the emergence of the new canned pet food industry.

All these factors contributed to the loss of half the remaining herds in less than 2 decades. Those that survived were pushed into remote areas where they were too difficult to catch and were many herd remain to this day. Another surge in the pet food canning industry began after WWII, Nevada’s Bureau of Land Management allowed approximately a hundred thousands wild mustangs to be removed for canning.

Enter Velma Johnston, an insurance agency secretary from Reno, noticed blood dripping from a trailer being pulled through town. She followed it to a stockyard several miles out of town and discovered it packed full of horses, several horses had been trampled to death. She began a decades long fight with the Federal government, states and special interest groups to save America’s wild horses.

Part 2!