Golden Sun

by Whitney Sanderson

  The next morning, Little Turtle and Pale Moon awoke before sunrise to take us for a ride. A robin trilled as we walked through the milky half-light of dawn. Soon the world would be green and alive again. Beside me, Dancing Feather pranced lightly and arched her neck, proud to carry Pale Moon once more.

  I felt a glow of pride, too, as I remembered the snake’s message on the mountain. I liked to think that my guidance and friendship had helped Dancing Feather, much like Little Turtle’s remedies helped sick members of the tribe.

  Little Turtle and Pale Moon drew us to a halt by a stream and dismounted to wash their faces and hands. Droplets glittered on their cheeks as the sun rose above the mountains in the distance.

  Dancing Feather and I stepped forward and drank gratefully from the rushing stream. We stood contentedly, water streaming from our muzzles, as Little Turtle and Pale Moon turned their faces to the sky to give thanks for the new day.

  APPENDIX

  MORE ABOUT THE APPALOOSA

  History of the Appaloosa

  Appaloosas are a breed of horses with distinctive spotted coats. Although the Nez Perce tribe first developed the Appaloosa, brightly patterned horses have existed long before they were brought to the New World. Leopard-spotted horses appear in cave drawings from France dating to 18,000 BCE. A Chinese statue from around 800 BCE portrays a horse that looks a lot like a modern snowflake Appaloosa. Indeed, it could nearly be Golden Sun! Paintings and sculptures of brightly patterned horses have appeared all across Europe since at least the tenth century CE.

  Spanish settlers brought horses to the Americas in the 1500s. Some of them were traded to Native American tribes. The Nimi’ipuu, or Nez Perce, as they were called by white settlers, probably first got horses in the early 1700s from their allies, the Cayuse. The arrival of the horse changed the Nez Perce way of life. In earlier years, the tribe had traveled on foot, using dogs as pack animals. Horses allowed the Nez Perce to expand their territory and track buffalo across the plains.

  Within a few generations, the Nez Perce gained a reputation as excellent horse breeders. In 1806 Meriwether Lewis, the famous American explorer, wrote of “lofty, elegantly formed horses,” some with “large spots of white irregularly scattered with … some other dark colour,” among the tribe’s herds. European settlers called them Palouse horses, after the nearby Palouse River. This term eventually became Appaloosa. The Nez Perce word for Appaloosa is Maamin. Unfortunately, many of the original Maamin were killed in the 1877 Nez Perce War.

  The Appaloosa Today

  The Appaloosa Horse Club is a registration society that was started in 1938 in an effort to preserve the breed. Registered Appaloosas can compete in breed shows and earn national points. The ApHC is a color registry, so any horse with Appaloosa coloring can be registered, even if its parents are unknown.

  The ApHC recognizes five Appaloosa coat patterns: blanket, snowflake, leopard, varnish roan, and frost. Solid-colored Appaloosas can still be registered as breeding stock, but must have the breed’s other characteristics: mottled skin, striped hooves, and white sclera, which is a protective membrane surrounding the eye.

  Did you know you can feel an Appaloosa’s spots? The skin under the white or dark patches on an Appaloosa’s coat is often raised, like a Braille tracing of the pattern.

  An Appaloosa’s conformation, or build, is ideally hardy and compact, with tough hooves and sturdy legs capable of holding up to strenuous ranch work. They are usually medium-sized horses of fourteen to sixteen hands. Today there are more than thirty-two thousand registered Appaloosas. You can visit the Appaloosa Horse Club’s official Web site at www.appaloosa.com to learn more about this remarkable breed.

  More About the Nez Perce

  The Nez Perce word for their tribe is Nimi’ipuu, which simply means “the people.” Their native lands covered large areas of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington at the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805. The Nimi’ipuu’s travels took them across mountain ranges, rivers, and vast stretches of open prairie. The tribe split off into smaller groups during most of the year, often holding a large reunion on the plains in the summer.

  The phrase Nez Perce means “pierced nose” in French. This name is actually the result of a mistranslation during the expedition of Lewis and Clark. Some northwestern tribes wore decorative shells or other jewelry through their noses, but the Nimi’ipuu did not.

  The Nez Perce lived in harmony with nature, never taking more than they needed. They traveled with the seasons. They fished for salmon in the spring and fall. Hunting parties journeyed long distances to follow the migrating buffalo, sometimes not returning for a year or more. In the winter, Nez Perce families moved to lodges in the mountains. In the summer, they dug camas and kouse roots on the plains and gathered berries and other edible plants in season.

  The Nez Perce also used plants as medicine. The tribe had healers who knew what herbs should be used for certain illnesses. Nez Perce medicine men and women were also shamans, spiritual healers who learned chants and rituals to help cure a sick or injured person.

  Vision Quests

  When Nez Perce children were around nine to fifteen years old, they would be instructed by an elder to go on a vision quest. Both boys and girls went on vision quests. They would fast, pray, and cleanse themselves in a sweat lodge to prepare for this journey. They would smear their bodies with white paint to symbolize purity of spirit. Their journey was often to some high place, like a mountaintop. They would remain there for days to fast and pray while waiting for their wyakin, or spirit guide, to come to them in the form of an animal.

  If the vision seeker was lucky enough to receive a wyakin, this animal would give the Nez Perce child some special power to use throughout his or her whole life. The snake was a powerful wyakin for healers and shamans.

  A New Beginning

  Horses have been an important part of Nez Perce culture since the 1700s. Unfortunately, many of the Appaloosas that survived the 1877 war were bred with draft horses, diminishing the refinement of the breed. In more recent years, Appaloosas were often bred with quarter horses. This cross restored quality to the breed, but created horses with different conformation than those originally bred by the Nimi’ipuu.

  The Nez Perce Horse Project is an effort to re-create the original Nez Perce Maamin. Modern Appaloosas are being bred with a Central European breed called the Akhal-Teke, known for its agility and stamina. This cross has already produced a number of beautiful spotted horses with the elegance and endurance that the first Maamin must have possessed. You can find out more at www.nezpercehorseregistry.com.

  Arabian Desert, Ninth Century

  Yatimah is a black Arabian filly whose name means “orphan.” She enjoys her life at the oasis, with sheep to tease, other foals to race, and the daughter of her Bedouin owner to take care of her. But when the colt who is her foster brother is stolen in a raid, Yatimah realizes her true birthright. Here is Yatimah’s story … in her own words.

  About the Author

  Whitney Sanderson was born and home-schooled in Ware, Massachusetts. Her family has owned horses since she was a child, and her bookshelves were always filled with horse stories. When she isn’t writing, she volunteers at a horse rescue and therapeutic riding center. Whitney and her mother, who illustrated this story, have an Appaloosa named Thor, who posed as the model for Golden Sun.

  About the Illustrator

  Ruth Sanderson grew up with a love for horses. She drew them constantly, and her first oil painting, at age fourteen, was a horse portrait.

  Ruth has illustrated and retold many fairy tales and likes to feature horses in them whenever possible. Her book about a magical horse, The Golden Mare, the Firebird, and the Magic Ring, won the Texas Bluebonnet Award in 2003. She illustrated the first Black Stallion paperback covers and a number of chapter books about horses, most recently Summer Pony and Winter Pony by Jean Slaughter Doty.

  Ruth and her daughter have two horses, an Appaloosa named Thor and a quarter
horse named Gabriel. She lives with her family in Massachusetts.

  To find out more about her adventures with horses and the research she did to create the illustrations in this book, visit her Web site, www.ruthsanderson.com.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2010 by Whitney Robinson

  Illustrations copyright © 2010 by Ruth Sanderson

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Sanderson, Whitney.

  Golden Sun / by Whitney Sanderson ; illustrated by Ruth Sanderson. — 1st ed.

  p. cm. — (Horse diaries)

  Summary: Follows Golden Sun, an Appaloosa horse, through several seasons as Little Turtle, a Nez Perce boy, raises and trains him then takes him along on a vision quest in hopes of saving his friend Pale Moon from serious illness.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89348-3

  1. Appaloosa horse—Juvenile fiction. 2. Nez Percé Indians—Juvenile fiction. [1. Appaloosa horse—Fiction. 2. Horses—Fiction. 3. Nez Percé Indians—Fiction. 4. Shamans—Fiction. 5. Indians of North America—Northwest, Pacific—Fiction. 6. Northwest, Pacific—History—Fiction.] I. Sanderson, Ruth, ill. II. Title.

  PZ10.3.R5913Gol 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2009026562

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