Wild About Horses

by Lawrence Scanlan

The Navajo decorated long sticks and painted them to represent the different colors of horses; they stuck crude horse heads on one end and then “rode” these sticks in their ceremony as the children of pioneers rode hobby horses.

  The Navajo rode their stick horses, they said, so that one day when they were free — for surely the Creator would not make them live so wretchedly for long — their children would once more have horses.

  Like the Piegan, pioneers would also engage in myth making. Across the prairie and decades apart, settlers in covered wagons, drovers and trappers, all claimed to have seen a wild white stallion of heroic dimensions. In Moby Dick, Herman Melville mentions the horse — “a magnificent milk-white charger, large-eyed, small-headed, bluff-chested” — and countless other writers of the day did the same.

  J. Frank Dobie, in his book On the Open Range, describes an event said to have occurred in Texas around 1848. German colonists had tied a little girl called Gretchen onto the back of an old mare, who then wandered off in search of grass. The mythic white mustang appeared and led the errant mare back to his herd; he cut the ropes that held Gretchen in place and lifted her up by the collar, in the way that mother cats transport their kittens.

  Later, after the girl had rested, the white stallion put her on the mare again (the story ducks the detail of retying Gretchen’s saddle knots) and instructed the mare to return her to her family camp. The little girl, eloquent for one so young, described the horse as “pacing with all the fire of a mustang emperor” and noted that “something about him” kept her calm.

  Several accounts describe how mustangers — or wild horse traders — tried in every way to catch the white stallion. One story has a hundred men on their best mounts trapping him in a circular gully and chasing him by turns, until each mounted horse is exhausted. Toying with his enemy, the white mustang scales a cliff and disappears over the rise.

  By the late nineteenth century, a small fortune was being offered for his capture. Near the Rio Grande, he was finally caught by three vaqueros, who all roped him simultaneously. They staked the noble gray to a spot by water and grass, but he refused any of it and after ten days lay down and died.

  Similar accounts describe newly broken mustangs appearing to make a choice between liberty and death. In one case, a stallion immersed his head in water up to his eyes and steadfastly refused to come up for air despite desperate hauling on the reins by three men.

  For centuries, the most important horses in civilization were mythic horses, horses who were imagined into existence and given a place among the gods. The ancient Greeks, for example, created an immensely complex cosmology in which horses — both mortal and divine — played a part.

  Poseidon, god of the sea, created the horse as part of a contest: whoever contrived the most useful object for humankind would win the honor of naming a new city. Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and a splendid white stallion sprang forth. The gods assembled were indeed impressed with this new creature, and more so as Poseidon explained its various uses, and especially in war.

  Athena, goddess of war but also skilled in the arts of peace and diplomacy, struck the ground with her bronze spear and offered what at first seemed a laughable creation — the olive tree.

  “You have both done well,” said Zeus, god of the sky. “Both are great gifts, but in days to come mortals will use one well and the other badly. They will use the horse for war and make it into an instrument of destruction. But the olive tree will give them food, oil, wood, comfort and prosperity.” Athena named the new city after herself.

  The pairing of human and horse, according to Aesop, the Greek writer of fables, came about when humankind went to the aid of the equine kind. Aesop tells of a horse and a stag living harmoniously in a lush valley. But one day the stag announced that he wanted all the grass for himself and drove the horse away with his sharp antlers. When asked, a man who chanced by said he would help win back the grazing ground — if the horse in turn helped him. The man returned with a bridle, mounted the horse and drove the stag off with a spear.

  The horse was delirious with joy and asked the man, kindly, to remove the bit so he could get on with his grazing. The man would have none of it, for he realized with sudden clarity what the strong, sleek horse had to offer. The horse had struck a contract with the human, and their fates would be forever entwined.

  In a league of his own among mythic horses was Pegasus, the winged one. A constellation would be named after him and Shakespeare would describe him as “pure air and fire.” Pegasus is with us yet. A Hollywood studio has adopted as its symbol the winged horse.

  Pegasus’s father was Poseidon; his mother, the Gorgon Medusa. When drops of blood from her severed head fell into the sea foam, Poseidon used them to create a winged steed. Snowy white and immortal, Pegasus was born with unimaginable speed. Apollo and the nine Muses (the goddesses of music, poetry and the arts) rode him often. But no mortal had ever ridden Pegasus. The first to do so was Bellerophon, whom the gods had asked to slay the Chimera, a grotesque fire-breathing monster that was a lion fore and a goat aft.

  Bellerophon accomplished that task; emboldened, he then sought to ride Pegasus to Olympus and join the gods. Like Icarus, who flew too close to the sun, proud Bellerophon was brought back to earth. The enraged Zeus sent a gadfly to sting Pegasus and the great horse bucked off his rider. Blinded by his injuries, Bellerophon never rode him again.

  1.3 Mortal on immortal: Bellerophon on Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology. (photo credit 1.3)

  From Greek history, we remember another horse — the famous wooden horse of the Trojan War who never moved a muscle yet succeeded in destroying a city. After a ten-year-long siege, Ulysses despaired of ever taking Troy. But before departing, he consulted a soothsayer who advised him to construct an effigy of a mare — big enough to conceal soldiers inside. Ulysses did so, then told the Trojans that the great wooden horse he put before their city gates was a gift to placate Athena and help him get safely home. In fact, Ulysses sailed only as far as the nearby island of Tenedos. There, he waited for a signal from spies planted near Troy.

  1.4 Greeks hauling their wooden offering: a gift horse the Trojans should have looked in the mouth. (photo credit 1.4)

  The siege-weary Trojans cheered the apparent departure of the Greeks. One elder suggested that the horse be brought into the city, but the priest Laocoon warned his fellow citizens against it in Virgil’s Aeneid.

  Somewhat is sure designed by fraud or force —

  Trust not their presents, nor admit the horse.

  The Trojans did just that. During the night, Greek soldiers inside poured out, opened the city gates and set Troy on fire. The Trojan horse fell into legend and became an enduring lesson in human folly.

  Another refrain in mythology links horses and healing. Greek mythology, for example, features Chiron the Centaur, a wise creature half human and half horse who educated the heroes of Greek legends and taught medicine. The prescription for those suffering from wounds and disease? Ride a horse to cheer your spirits.

  Similarly, a tradition in Scandinavian folk lore links healing with an incantation about riding a horse. The legend refers to Odin, the Norse god of war who also taught horse handling, and his invincible son Baldur the Beautiful. One day Baldur’s horse slipped and broke a leg but was miraculously cured when Odin did two things. He tied a black thread with seven knots and then recited this verse (later slightly altered by Christians, who retained its essence):

  Baldur rode. The foal slade [slipped]

  He lighted, and he righted,

  Set joint to joint, bone to bone,

  Sinew to sinew,

  Heal in Odin’s name.

  Many folk tales ascribe magical powers to old, lame, sick and misshapen horses. Such stories were told in eastern Europe for centuries, and archeologists recently discovered why. They excavated a thousand-year-old cemetery in the Hungarian town of Keszthely and discovered the remains of crippled and malformed horses burie
d in elaborate graves. Most of these horses had an extra tooth or bones that showed evidence of lameness.

  In Ireland, some folk believed (perhaps some do yet) that a pure white horse confers upon its rider the gift of wisdom in curing physical ills. Thus, a family with a sick child might in days gone by have stationed one member out on the road to wait for a rider on a white horse. The rider would be asked to stop and prescribe a cure — chicken soup, porridge, black beer.

  Parts of the horse’s anatomy were thought by various cultures to possess power, sometimes healing power. “Fortune,” an Arab adage goes, “is attached to the horse’s mane.” Horse skulls, or so eleventh-century Hungarians believed, brought health, wealth and happiness, and when affixed to the interior walls of their houses, protection against evil spirits. Ancient Chinese doctors gave powdered horse heart to patients inclined to forgetfulness. The Spanish fashioned amulets made from stag horn and black mare’s tail to ward off evil. Huns drank horse blood to seal an oath; Mongols used horse shoulder blades to tell fortunes. And in many cultures through time, it was widely thought that dreaming of horses brought the dreamer good luck.

  Dreams defy interpretation, but many books on symbols and images — along with so-called “dream encyclopedias” — associate dreams of horses with sexual desire. We still speak of “unbridled” passions; Carl Jung linked dreams of horses to lust and fecundity. The ride is still about letting go.

  The late Paul Shepard, an American ecologist and the author of The Others: How Animals Made Us Human, argued in that book that our ancestors “had ‘horse’ in their stomachs and in their heads in every sense … of all the animals the horse may well have been the most elusive and the most intelligent, the one deepest in human dreams and imagination …”

  “It is no wonder,” he wrote, “that we love them.”

  Mythological roots go deep, but it is also true that many of the religions that followed these so-called pagan systems similarly embraced the horse. Job in the Old Testament was fulsome in his praise of the horse: “The glory of his nostrils is terrible. He paweth in the valley and rejoiceth in his strength: he goeth on to meet the armed men. He mocketh at fear and is not affrighted; neither turneth he back from the sword.”

  Muslims, if anything, felt an even greater affection for the horse than did the Hebrews. The desert Arab was known to bring his horse, who was considered part of the family, into his tent. “The greatest of all blessings,” the prophet Muhammad once said, “is an intelligent woman or a prolific mare.”

  Berbers saw the horse as the holiest of all animals, with the greatest concentration of baraka or grace — the black horse most of all. It was believed that by throwing yourself between the legs of a horse who had been to Mecca you could command the protection of the owner. In desert lands, a horse stable was seen as a sanctuary, much as a church or monastery would later be in Europe.

  In Haitian and African voodoo, the possessed human — who snorts and paws the ground — becomes a horse to be mounted and ridden by the spirit.

  Christianity adopted the horse in its own way. The horse may be the only animal whose consumption by Christians was prohibited by papal decree. Pope Gregory II wrote to Boniface: “Thou hast allowed a few to eat the flesh of wild horses, and many to eat the flesh of tame ones. From now on, holy brother, permit this on no account.”

  The edict likely reflected love and respect for the horse but also turf wars between Christianity and pagan religions. If the horse was central to pagan rites, what better Christian strategy than to declare horseflesh verboten? Besides, war was almost a constant and so was the need for cavalry horses.

  Christians, too, had stories to celebrate the horse, and the saints to go with them. St. Dunstan, a bishop in early England, who must also have worked as a farrier, once saw the devil in a horse he was shoeing. He made Satan promise never to enter or disturb a building in which a horseshoe had been hung — hung U-shaped, of course, lest the good luck all run out. Even Admiral Nelson nailed a horseshoe to the mast of his ship Victory in the belief that it offered protection.

  St. Anthony, a saint often associated with horses, was apparently being assailed by a mounted Egyptian king when the normally placid horse turned on his master, bucked him off and delivered a fatal bite. Even a pagan horse knew a saint when he saw one.

  The people of the Russian steppes, likely the first horse people, saw the next world as a mirror world to this one — with everything backward. This may explain why even today, state and military funerals often feature an ornate riderless horse with boots fixed in the stirrups and the toes pointing backward. In 1963, the funeral cortege of President John F. Kennedy featured a black “caparisoned” horse (called, ironically, Black Jack), his stirrups holding empty black boots.

  For the funeral in 1997 of Diana, princess of Wales, six black horses of the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery, pulled her coffin on a gun carriage the two miles from Kensington Palace to Westminster Abbey. It looked stately, but the ride was terrifying for the three troopers, each on the left horse of paired Irish draft horses.

  In such processions each ornately uniformed rider carries a white-corded whip, which he will lay against his forehead as a silent signal to the horse to slow, stop or turn. The horses are noted for both their discipline and their spirit, and only the most gifted, confident riders dare mount horses used to pulling one-and-a-half-ton gun carriages in bold crisscrossing maneuvers where speeds may exceed thirty miles an hour.

  On the day of Diana’s funeral the risk of spooked horses was huge because of all those flashing cameras, the great rain of mourners’ flowers tumbling onto the coffin, and the fact that the lead mounted officer suffered from an acute allergy: even one sting from the many wasps buzzing around the flowers might have cost him his life and induced untold calamity. The troopers (who all sighed with relief at the end) were participating in an age-old tradition — using horses to honor the dead. The plumed black horses who pulled funeral coaches over cobbled streets in Dickens’s time also have a place in a worn tapestry full of corpses and horses.

  1.5 Albrecht Dürer’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: biblical symbols of death, war, famine and conquest. (photo credit 1.5)

  If the horse mattered near the beginning of human existence (as the cave paintings at Lascaux in France suggest), so may he matter at the end.

  The Hindu deity Vishnu, apparently, has descended into the world nine times in various animal forms. The tenth visit, at the nadir of our depravity, will mark the end of the world. Prophecies paint Vishnu in the sky, seated on yet another white and winged horse, a kind of Pegasus of doom. The horse is poised with one hoof in the air: the moment it descends, the earth will cease to exist.

  There is ample time yet, one hopes, before the hoof comes down — or before the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (death on the pale horse, war on the red, famine on the black and conquest on the white) ride into final view. In the meantime, the horse will likely remain a powerful force in our collective unconscious.

  R. B. Cunninghame Graham, a noted horseman who died in 1936, had his own ideas of paradise. “God forbid,” he once wrote in a letter to Theodore Roosevelt, “that I should go to any heaven in which there are no horses.”

  CHAPTER 2

  WILD ABOUT WILD HORSES

  Halted in animated expectancy or running in abandoned freedom, the mustang was the most beautiful, the most spirited and the most inspiriting creature ever to print foot on the grasses of America.

  J. FRANK DOBIE, The Mustangs

  IN THE SUMMER of 1997 I went to the Great Divide in search of wild horses. In a way not much happened that week of riding in Wyoming, and my bare-bones report could read as follows.

  The skies every day were blue and vast; the silence and sense of wilderness near absolute. It was June in the high desert and the wildflowers were stunningly in bloom. I felt saddle-sore much of the time: our guide, a lean, copper-skinned man of Cherokee ancestry, pushed us as hard as he dared. The fourteen
riders — from the U.S., Britain, Holland and Germany, with me the lone Canadian — camped in chalk-colored canvas tepees in the desert two nights, in the mountains for three. All week long I rode a sixteen-hand roan (horse height is measured in hands, a hand being four inches, so a sixteen-three horse is 16 hands three inches). The horse’s name was Radish, as in horseradish. Only later did I discover that the state flower of Wyoming, a ubiquitous red cone flower called the Indian paintbrush, tastes like radish. That detail seemed, finally, to form a tidy circle around one of the better weeks in my life. And yes, we saw wild horses.

  This was no expedition where perfect strangers bond for survival’s sake. I have been on whitewater canoe trips near James Bay in July when eleven consecutive days of cold rain, the odd three-mile portage and the threat of hypothermia forced paddlers together. In Wyoming, we dined surprisingly regally, stayed warm and dry, had the sun and the stars for company.

  I took a photograph that speaks to the mood of the trip. Our horses are behind the photographer, grazing with loose reins, as we often let them, but no horse is in my lens sight. We have stopped for a break on a windswept height of land. Their backs to the camera, ten mostly hatted riders have found perches on boulders. They sit alone or in groups of two or three, but the striking thing is how all face the same direction. None appears to be in conversation. All are looking out to an immense expanse of sky and rock and treeless plain, as if paying homage to the land. We sit as we might in a cathedral, or as if we had all read the Irish poet Seamus Heaney’s line about landscape as sacrament, that it was to be read and pondered as text.

  In truth, something did happen out there. Two riders from Vermont, Fran F. and Nancy O., fell off their horses. Fran did so in a calamitous Jane sort of way while galloping. The horse shied at something on a narrow trail, instantly converting all that forward momentum into lateral momentum in the way that horses do, leaving the rider suspended in the air. Somehow Fran drifted down and landed on her feet, even kept her cowboy hat on, as if she had practiced this feat for the amusement of onlookers. She escaped unhurt. But I was right behind her and the what-ifs perhaps gave me more pause than they did her, for the calm never left her face. What if her foot had caught in the stirrup when that Quarter Horse bolted as he did? What if Radish had run her over? What if she had landed on her head, and not with feet-first elegance?