Wild Horse Country
Page 32
“There was no snarling, no growling, no sound of claws against bark to warn the horse. A body suddenly descended on his back, a great paw, struck him a fatal blow to the head, and a fierce-eyed beast stood with his paws on the dead horse and growled defiance at the men who came up the pass. The life of the horse had gone out, but he had not submitted to the thralldom of man.”
Acknowledgments
Like anyone who works on reporting in dusty and remote country, I relied on the graceful guidance of many locals who made my work easier, pointed out unmarked roads, warned of washed-out arroyos, and at one point helped me replace the bumper on a pickup. Many thanks to them. Just as important, the Ted Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado in Boulder gave me the time, companionship, and first-rate research library to start my work. Propublica, High Country News, the Gazette of Colorado Springs, and the New York Times allowed me to continue the reporting that made this book possible. A number of very gracious wild-horse lovers were willing to guide me even though I didn’t know a halter from a hat, including Ginger Kathrens, Laura Leigh, and T. J. Holmes. The scientists whose work I relied on, and who were patient and generous with their time, deserve great thanks: Gus Cothran at Texas A&M, Douglas Bamforth at the University of Colorado, and Ken Rose at Johns Hopkins University; and a special thanks to John Turner and his crew who not only showed me Montgomery Pass but also showed me that beer mixed with Gatorade can be a refreshing field ration when the thermometer in Wild Horse Country climbs above 100 degrees. Thanks also to Jay Kirkpatrick, who died during the time when I was writing but whose spirit lives in the growing number of people pursuing wildlife fertility control.
Thanks to Julie Litts Robst, who helped me track down information on her great uncle, Frank Litts, whom she described as a “rather strange man.” Thanks to the many people from the Bureau of Land Management who helped in public and private ways to get the information and access I needed, even when it often meant opening the agency to criticism. Thanks to the many reporters whose work I relied on, especially Martha Mendoza of the Associated Press, who did phenomenal work and whose footsteps I followed years later. And a special thanks to my two sons and my wife, who showered me with patience and support, even when it meant long hours away in the desert or sequestered at a keyboard. You mean more to me than I can ever fully express.
Notes
CHAPTER 1. THE DAWN HORSE
1 George Simpson, Attending Marvels (New York: Time Inc, 1962), 82.
2 Thomas and Leonard Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley (London: Macmillan, 1913), 203.
3 Melanie Pruvost et al., “Genotypes of Predomestic Horses Match Phenotypes Painted in Paleolithic Works of Cave Art,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2011).
4 David Meltzer, “The Pleistocene Colonization of the New World,” California Academy of Sciences (2003), 30.
CHAPTER 2. RETURN OF A NATIVE
1 Matthew Liebmann, Revolt: An Archaeological History of Pueblo Resistance and Revitalization in 17th Century New Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2012), 37.
2 John C. Duval, Early Times in Texas (Austin, TX: H. P. N. Gammel & Co., 1892), 12.
3 Mark Van Doren, 100 Poems (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), 38.
4 J. Frank Dobie, The Mustangs (New York: Bramhall House, 1952), 34.
5 The Memorial of Fray Alonso de Benavides, 1630 (Albuquerque, NM: Horn & Wallace, 1965).
6 E. Douglas Branch, Hunting of the Buffalo (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1929), 24.
7 William W. Dunmire, New Mexico’s Spanish Livestock Heritage: Four Centuries of Animals, Land, and People (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013), 43.
8 Ibid., 43.
9 John C. Kwelts, The Horse in Blackfoot Indian Culture (Washington, DC: Bureau of American Ethnology, 1955), 9.
10 A Song for the Horse Nation (Washington, DC: National Museum of the American Indian, 2011), xxii.
11 Richard K. Young, The Ute Indians of Colorado in the Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 23.
12 Kenneth Kidd, Blackfoot Ethnography (Peterborough, ON: Trent University, 1937).
13 George Ruxton, Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains (London: John Murray, 1847), 101–2.
14 Régis de Trobriand, The Life and Mémoirs of Comte Régis de Trobriand (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1910), 344.
15 Dobie, The Mustangs, 63.
16 George Catlin, Illustrations of the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians (London: H. G. Bohn, 1857), 66.
17 George Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 2, no. 42 (1841; reprint, New York: Dover, 1973).
18 John Ewers, Horses in Blackfoot Culture (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1980).
19 Dobie, 100.
20 The Journal of Jacob Fowler (1898; reprint, Minneapolis: Ross & Haines, 1965).
21 Stephen Harding Hart and Archer Butler Hulbert, The Southwestern Journals of Zebulon Pike (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007), 236.
22 Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (New York: Charles L. Webster & Co, 1885), 28.
23 Agricultural, Stockraising, and Industrial Association of Western Texas, A Brief Description of Western Texas (San Antonio: Herald Steam Printing House & Bindery, 1872), 44.
24 Dobie, 108–9.
CHAPTER 3. THE DOG-FOOD DECADES
1 “Round-up, Ground-up,” Time, June 17, 1929.
2 Rockford: The Pet Food Story, 1923–1987 (Rockford Pet Foods Division, Quaker Oats Company), 3.
3 Robert W. Eigell, “Rounding Up Canners for the Corned Beef and Cabbage,” Montana, vol. 36, no. 4 (Autumn, 1986).
4 Washington Irving, A Tour of the Prairies (New York: John W. Lovell Co., 1832).
5 Dobie, 219.
6 Zebulon Pike, Exploratory Travels through the Western Territories of North America (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1811), 367.
7 Dobie, 141.
8 Vernon Louis Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought, vol. 3 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1954), 23.
9 Bernard DeVoto, The Western Paradox (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).
10 Dobie, 316.
11 New York Times, May 3, 1888.
12 New York Times, January 27, 1889.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 New York Times, July 27, 1896
16 “A Recent Letter from Sargent, Kansas,” Saline County Journal, March 5, 1879.
17 Colorado Transcript, May 26, 1897.
18 “War on Horses,” New York Times, December 26, 1884.
19 San Francisco Call, December 26, 1903.
20 Wallace’s Monthly, vol. 15 (1888), p. 39.
21 “To Hunt Wild Horses in Nevada,” San Francisco Examiner, November 21, 1894.
22 Ibid.
23 Breckenridge Bulletin, Colorado, October 28, 1899.
24 Overton Johnston and William H. Winter, Route across the Rocky Mountains with a Description of Oregon and California, etc., 1843 (1846; reprint, Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, vol. 7, no. 3 (September, 1906).
25 Rocky Mountain Sun, July 7, 1894.
26 “The Horse Hunters,” New York Times, August 18, 1912.
27 Ibid.
28 San Francisco Call, March 30, 1902.
29 “Troops Refused Forestry Bureau,” Lompoc Journal, November 21, 1908.
30 “Urge War Against Herds of Wild Horses,” Los Angeles Herald, 1908.
31 Eureka Sentinel, 1927.
32 “New Game for Hunters,” New York Times, July 18, 1920.
33 “Horse-meat,” New York Times, July 25, 1895.
34 New York Times, September 23, 1928.
35 “Wild Horses of the West Are Vanishing,” New York Times, February 10, 1935.
36 “Expect to Round Up 5,000 Wild Horses,” New York Times, July 23, 1929.
37 “Buck High Old Paint,” New York Times, June 3, 1994.<
br />
38 Russell Lord, “The Mustang Returns to Europe in Tin Cans,” The Cattleman, October, 1928.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 “In Serious Condition,” Rockford Republic, December 5, 1925.
42 “World Famous Ken-L Ration Is Made Here,” Rockford Daily Republic, April 7, 1930.
43 Dobie, 329.
CHAPTER 4. PRINT THE LEGEND
1 Washington Irving, A Tour of the Prairies (London: Bell & Daldy, 1866), 96.
2 Ibid., 73.
3 “Frontier Yarns” Putnam’s Monthly Magazine of American Literature, Science, and Art, vol. 8, no. 47 (November, 1856).
4 Ibid.
5 Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1851), 181.
6 Dobie, 148.
7 James A. Henretta, Kevin J. Fernlund, and Melvin Yazawa, Documents in American History, vol. 2 (Macmillan, 2011), 161.
8 Letter quoted in display at Zane Grey Museum, Lackawaxen, PA.
9 Zane Grey, The Last of the Plainsmen (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1911), 105.
10 Dolly and Zane Grey, Letters from a Marriage (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2008), 5.
11 “The Evolution of the CowPuncher,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, vol. 91 (1895).
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Owen Wister, The Virginian, a Horseman of the Plains (Macmillan, 1902), 4.
CHAPTER 5. WILD HORSE ANNIE
1 Popular Mechanics, October, 1938.
2 “Wild West Showdown,” Sports Illustrated, May 5, 1975.
3 Dobie, 331.
4 Hope Ryden, America’s Last Wild Horses (New York: Lyons & Burford, 1990), 226.
5 David Cruise and Alison Griffiths, Wild Horse Annie and the Last of the Mustangs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 41.
6 “Wild West Showdown,” Sports Illustrated, May 5, 1975.
7 Cruise and Griffiths, 66.
8 Ibid., 75.
9 Territorial Enterprise, June 13, 1952.
10 “A Devoted Few Fight to Save Wild Horses,” New York Times, November 15, 1970.
11 Nevada State Journal, February 27, 1955.
12 “The Mustang’s Last Stand,” Reader’s Digest, July 1957.
13 Walter Barring obituary, Las Vegas Review-Journal, February 7, 1999.
14 Judiciary Committee, House of Representatives, “Treatment of Wild Horse and Burros on Land Belonging to the United States,” Congressional Record, July 15, 1959.
15 Cruise and Griffiths, 126.
16 “Treatment of Wild Horse and Burros on Land Belonging to the United States.”
17 Ryden, 227.
18 Cruise and Griffiths, 238.
19 “One Man’s Fight to Save the Mustangs,” True, April, 1967.
20 Cruise and Griffiths, 239.
21 Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949).
22 J. Brooks Flippen, Nixon and the Environment (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000), 102.
23 Richard Nixon, Special Message to Congress on Environmental Quality, February 10, 1970.
24 Nowhere to Run, J/Max Films, 1976.
25 Transcript of hearing, “Protection of wild horses and burros on public lands,” Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, April 20, 1971.
26 Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, “Hearing on the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burros Act of 1971,” Congressional Record, April 19, 1971.
27 Ibid.
28 “Wild West Showdown,” Sports Illustrated, May 5, 1975.
CHAPTER 6. LIFE UNDER THE LAW
1 Ryden, 237.
2 Kleppe v. New Mexico, 1976.
3 “Debate Continues about Future of Wild Horses,” Reno Gazette-Journal, November 3, 1981.
4 “Federal Government to Kill 6,000 Horses,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, July 5, 1981.
5 “BLM Cutting Back Adopt-a-Horse Program Subsidy,” Reno Gazette-Journal, June 25 1981.
6 Improvements Needed in Federal Wild Horse Program, Government Accountability Office, August 20, 1990.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 “Ranchers, Protectionists War over Future of Wild Horses,” Los Angeles Times, August 30, 1987.
10 “Report Acknowledges Wild Horses Are Being Slaughtered,” New York Times, January 29, 1997.
11 “Whistleblowers Claim Abuses Run Rampant in Horse Policy,” Christian Science Monitor, August 14, 1996.
12 “Report Acknowledges Wild Horses Are Being Slaughtered,” New York Times, January 29, 1997.
13 “Probe of Wild Horse Slaughter Derailed,” Associated Press, March 23, 1997.
14 Ibid.
15 Bureau of Land Management report: “Administration of the Wild Horse and Burro Program, Tenth Report to Congress, fiscal years 1992 to 1995,” draft version.
16 Bureau of Land Management: Effective Long-Term Options Needed to Manage Unadoptable Wild Horses (Washington, DC: Government Accountability Office, November 10, 2008).
CHAPTER 7. RANGE WARS
1 Richard Symanski, Wild Horses and Sacred Cows (Outing, MN: Northland Press, 1985), 136.
2 “Nevada Horses, Victims of Man, Nature,” Los Angeles Times, October 19, 1991.
3 “Nevada Justice,” Reno Gazette-Journal, December 25, 1988.
4 “Data Show Few Convictions under Horse Law,” Associated Press, August 11, 1997.
5 “BLM Program Questioned,” Reno Gazette, August 7, 1979.
6 “Agency Padded Report of Convictions under Wild-Free Roaming Horse Act,” Associated Press, November 27, 1997.
7 “George Parman on the Wild Horse Situation,” www.scottraine.com/Parman.htm, retrieved February 3, 2016.
8 “Wild Horses Ensnared in People’s Battles,” New York Times, July 2, 1989.
9 “Public Lands Ranching: Welfare State in the West,” Watershed Messenger, Spring 2002.
CHAPTER 8. ALL THE MISSING HORSES
1 “Trail’s end for horses: slaughter,” Associated Press, January 5, 1997.
2 Statement of Ken Salazar, budget hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, March 30, 2010.
CHAPTER 9. DISAPPOINTMENT VALLEY
1 Symanski, 208.
CHAPTER 10. A WILD SOLUTION
1 P. D. Greger and E. M. Romney. “High Foal Mortality Limits Growth of a Desert Feral Horse Population in Nevada,” Great Basin Naturalist, no. 59 (1999): 374–379.
2 “Scientists Tracking Mountain Lion to Find Out Impact on Wild Horses,” Reno Gazette-Journal, January 8, 2007.
3 Kelley Stewart, “Characterizing Mountain Lion Distribution, Abundance, and Prey Selection in Nevada,” University of Nevada, USDA report, 2014.
4 Rosalie Edge, “The United States Bureau of Destruction and Extermination: The Misnamed and Perverted ‘Biological Survey,’ ” pamphlet (Emergency Conservation Committee, 1934).
5 “King of the Drove” (McClure and Phillips Co., December 31, 1905). Reprinted in The Daily Times of New Philadelphia, Ohio, January 24, 1907.
6 Leopold, 149.
Illustration Credits
Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
page xxiii: © David Philipps
page 9: © David Philipps
page 18: Courtesy Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History
page 39: © David Philipps
page 61: Courtesy Doug Cohen, Rockford Reminisce
page 126: © Ford Motor Co.
page 135: Courtesy Bureau of Land Management
page 169: © David Philipps
page 171: © David Philipps
page 267: © David Philipps
Index
Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
adoption of horses, xxxi
BLM policy for, 175–76
corruption in program for, 182–87
“fee waiver” adoption program, 178–80
to keep BLM costs down, 163–64
by proxy, 181–82
shortage of adopters, xxxvii, 164, 175, 188
Allred, Max, 215–16
American Horse Protection Association, 158, 159, 176
American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, 260
America’s Last Wild Horses (Ryden), 157
AML, See Appropriate Management Level
Animal Liberation Front, 101, 186
animal rights/welfare groups, 62, 92, 151–52; See also wild horse advocates
disagreements among, 262
on euthanization, 176–77
on overpopulation of cattle, 211, 219–20
on roundups, xxi, 158, 174
slaughter conspiracy theories of, 223
at Spring Creek Basin roundup, 248
Apache, 42–45, 47, 49
Appropriate Management Level (AML), xxvi, 163–64, 175
Arapaho, 47, 49, 53, 55
Ashfall Fossil Beds State Park, 26
Aspinall, Wayne, 153
Assateague Island, 253–55
Austin, Mary, xvi–xvii
Australia, xxxvii
bald eagle, 110
Bamforth, Douglas, 30–32
bands of wild horses, 22, 168, 171, 256
barbed wire, 79
Barber, Ted, 147
Baring, Walter, 144–45, 151
Barnum, P. T., 107
Beebe, Lucius, 141
Benavides, Fray Alonso de, 42
Bighorn Basin, 1–3, 7, 11–13
Blackfoot, 47, 54
BLM, See Bureau of Land Management
Blue, Joan, 148, 167, 176
Bolstad, Dean, 192, 195, 241, 260–61
Bronn, Joseph, 137
Bureau of Biological Survey, 284–85
Bureau of Land Management (BLM), 156–96, 291–92
and animal rights threats, 101–2
control of wild horses by, xx–xxi, xxxvi–xxxvii
corruption in adoption program, 181–87
cost of storage for horses, xxiii, xxxii, 175–77, 181, 188–95, 257, 286
estimate of wild horse population, xix, 156
“fee waiver” adoption program, 178–80