I thought about Amy’s random naming of her lawless, wayward horse. Similar to the biblical character, Samson the Mustang was a victim and a martyr, a fighter and a survivor. With strength, resilience, and fortitude they had each defeated their many enemies and slew their countless demons. Neither character was perfect. Both were heroic warriors and tragic figures. Each had persevered through adversity and hardship so that his story could be told.
Willful single-mindedness, stubborn determination, and a rigid resolve fueled their fight. One Samson was caught between the Hebrew and Philistine societies, the other stuck in limbo unable to live in either the world of the wild horse or the domestic horse world. Neither had a home. Though Amy’s choice of name for Samson had been arbitrary, it couldn’t have suited him any better.
It, like everything else in this story, was simply meant to be.
And like the great biblical figure, this Samson’s story had become symbolic. His pain, suffering, and sacrifices spoke volumes as to what the wild Mustang was, what it had become, and what it could be. His story represented all that was right with the Mustang horse and all that was wrong with man. Samson the epic biblical character and his namesake shared much more than just a name. Their lives, their trials and tribulations, had been the same. Perhaps Samson the Mustang horse, like the biblical Samson, would deliver his kind from their oppressors’ hand.
Condensed into fourteen tumultuous years, Samson’s long and storied journey was metaphorically the story of his kind. His struggles had been the Mustang’s struggles. His victories had been the Mustang horse’s victories. Samson’s saga was in fact the saga of the American wild Mustang. And despite years of hardship, Samson has found peace from little more than a glimmer of hope. While abuse, sadness, and despair were fixtures of the Samson story, hope was this tale’s theme.
Samson’s saga is a tale of pain, suffering, resilience, sacrifice, compromise, and understanding. It is the chronicle of a horse who had nearly given up on man, and a man who would not give up on a horse. It is the story of an allegedly hopeless, worthless Mustang whose heart and soul forever changed the lives of those tasked with changing him. It is the story of one horse, one horseman, and one last chance.
Samson’s long and arduous journey demonstrates the true power of hope, friendship, love, and redemption. And where there was hope for Samson, there is renewed hope for the Mustang horse—now homeless, displaced, forgotten, and rejected. Optimism, for the horses who still gallop across the western frontier—roaming their ancestral lands, our ancestral lands, the land of the free and spirited wild horse. There is still hope for the majestic, historical, timeless American wild Mustang.
Through years of persecution, violence, and near mass extinction, the Mustang horse, much like Samson the Mustang, has fought for its very existence. It has survived in places like Nevada’s Lincoln and Nye counties, where despite 1,357 and 3,377 acres respectively per horse, it was removed and zeroed out from its native habitat. This was the horse that lived through the 1973 Howe, Idaho, massacre only to relive the experience again in 1989 when five hundred head were shot dead in Nevada. It was an animal that outran the hail of bullets in 1998 when thirty-four horses were gunned down in Reno, only to have the process repeated in 2000 when thirty-seven Mustangs were massacred in Wyoming. And it was a horse that fought for its life in 2003 when five hundred captured Mustangs starved to death locked in BLM holding corrals awaiting relocation.
Beat-down after beat-down had only stiffened Samson’s resolve and tragedy after tragedy has only hardened the Mustang character.
With its hooves imprinted in American culture and American history, the Mustang is a uniquely American horse. It is a fighter and a survivor—a steed commanding and demanding of respect. Forever wild and craving liberty, it is a proud animal, and an animal the American people should be proud of. It is a horse that has persevered through hardship and rebounded from despair. It has made countless sacrifices, and it has paid its dues. The Mustang way is indeed the American way. It is an animal and a legacy that should be admired, revered, and preserved.
No longer an essential component of our postmodern society, the wild Mustang’s significance has faded much like the old gold rush towns of the Wild West. Once a tool of exploration that first discovered North America’s virgin soils and then constructed American culture, the wild horse has become a mere historical footnote. Formerly a symbol of the American spirit, sadly, the Mustang is now deemed by many a plague upon the land. As to what role the few and ever-decreasing wild Mustangs can play in modern American society, this is a question that only the American people can definitively answer.
* * *
My arrival at the farm mid-March brought the all-too-familiar sight of Samson standing in the north pasture’s far northwest corner, facing and gazing west. After all of this time, it was a sight that still broke my heart. It was a picture that said that this was still a homeless horse. Only on this day, something different happened. As I approached Samson from the rear, at twenty yards and closing on his position, he spun and faced me head-on. He didn’t stand transfixed by the Sirens’ westerly song and he didn’t revert his gaze back in the direction of his former home.
Instead, on this day Samson rotated around, faced me, and turned his back on the memories and longings that had fueled his survival through his darkest moments. For Samson, it was a simple act that said that he was finally at peace and ready for a new start. For me, it was a monumental act that left me surprisingly touched.
The moment was bittersweet. In his book The Mustangs, American folklorist J. Frank Dobie observed: “If a really good Mustang is captured, the only way to keep him good is to gentle him with a care and kindness seldom practiced. Then he’ll likely become a one-man horse.”36 Affirming this and recognizing that no one else would mount or ride her Mustang, Amy had sent an e-mail offering Samson to me. I was faced with the most agonizing decision of my career.
Selfishly, my heart wanted to grab Samson and trailer him off. But my head knew better. I knew better.
“I am going to leave you here,” I told Samson, “with your new herd, with your family—where you belong. But I will be back next week, and the week after that, and the month after that. I will never leave you, old boy.”
Standing twenty yards from my pupil, I looked Samson over with an admiring gaze. Like most wild Mustangs, he would never win a race, travel the show circuit, or sire a champion. But this didn’t mean that he wasn’t destined to make a name for himself. Samson didn’t just have greatness in his blood; Samson was a great horse.
I gazed upon him in much the same fashion as I had nearly two years earlier in that dark prison cell of a stall. Where seven years’ worth of hateful, derogatory, presumptive, and doubting labels had once sat atop his back, now there would only be a saddle and rider. Descriptive adjectives such as “hopeless,” “belligerent,” “crazy,” “angry,” and “antisocial” were no longer fitting for this animal. Conversely, terms such as “willful,” “proud,” “prideful,” and “dominant” still described this steed to a T and I wouldn’t have had it any other way
Now free of his burden, Samson’s gait had turned fluid and animated, his posture erect and proud. After so many years of darkness and despair, this horse was alive and free: free from the beat-downs, free of the Samson Rules, and relatively free from the ghosts and demons that had tormented his soul. And as for our contract, the covenant entered into between horse and horseman in that dark and damp stall one July afternoon, neither Samson nor I have ever tried to void, rescind, cancel, or nullify this agreement. Unlike the hundreds of broken contracts I have been hired to litigate, the agreement between Samson and me has, to this very day, remained in full force and effect. It was an understanding premised upon mutual trust, loyalty, and sacrifice.
It was a contract of friendship, an agreement in perpetuity, and a bond for life.
Dating back to our first encounter, and like the Plains tribes and their horses, Samson and I ha
d forged an unbreakable, lasting bond. He was my loyal Indian warhorse and I his dedicated warrior brave.
Gazing out across the pasture, I strained and listened intently for the sound of waves crashing against and then receding from the shore. Only on this day, all I could hear was the sound of the warm spring breeze barreling through the otherwise quiet, picturesque rural Midwest glacial valley. And as I looked at Studs, Ike, and Star off to my left and Valley Girl standing to my right, I realized that Samson now had a herd, a harem, an owner, and, last, a loyal friend. This wayward, lost, lonesome, and solitary horse had returned to the glacial lands of his ancestors and he had found a home.
In the beginning, each attempt to catch Samson played out like a chess match replete with strategy, tactics, and a great deal of patience.
Burr-removal duty did more to foster our relationship than any tried-and-true training method.
While some of Samson’s dark memories would eventually fade away, his scars never would.
Samson loves his apples, but he still chooses when to indulge and when to abstain.
No matter how strong our initial bond, like a magnetized needle facing north, Samson was always drawn to his true direction—west.
The rusted iron gate wouldn’t and couldn’t withstand Samson the conqueror.
The look in Samson’s eye spoke to his fear of, and contempt for, the despised halter.
It was as if Samson was trying to tell me, “You really aren’t getting this; me and halters just aren’t a good fit.”
Horse and horseman join up and, for a brief moment in time, Samson’s troubles seemed to fade away.
Just weeks after his first mounting, Samson was a dressage master, blue-ribbon hunter/jumper, and Grand Prix champion all in one. (Photograph courtesy of Dan Tesar, Dan Tesar Horseshoeing Company)
The smug, devious, knowing twinkle in Samson’s eye kept me coming back for more.
Once upon a time no animal would dare enter Samson’s pasture; all of that changed with Valley Girl’s arrival.
After more than two years and a great deal of direction from Valley Girl, Studs came to live with the happy couple and the trio formed their own version of Three’s Company.
Although it took many years, eventually Dan was allowed into Samson’s kill zone.
Despite his scalping, Ike continues to press his luck eyeing Samson’s pasture.
After the incident at the gate and their failed attempt at reconciliation, Samson and Asbestos established a line of demarcation which neither would come to violate.
Whether it is due to his forever wild ways, or his many months of confinement, Samson still refuses to enter any enclosed structure.
The characteristic Roman nose of the Barb horse that Samson was born with, the divot that man gave to him, and a newfound furry coat—all compliments of the harsh Midwest winter and Mother Nature.
On most days Samson resembled a mutt from the pound—a blend of breeds. But on others, he was downright regal.
ENDNOTES
1. Xenophon, Xenophon in Seven Volumes, ed. E. C. Marchant (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 7.
2. Elwyn Hartley Edwards, The Encyclopedia of the Horse (New York: DK, 2009), p. 216.
3. J. Frank Dobie, The Mustangs (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), pp. 58-59.
4. Ibid., p. 59.
5. Hope Ryden, America’s Last Wild Horses (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2005), p. 57.
6. Ibid., p. 74, quoting from Washington Irving’s Astoria.
7. Ryden, America’s Wild Horses, p. 106, quoting from John A. Hogwood, America’s Western Frontiers.
8. Ryden, America’s Last Wild Horses, p. 177.
9. Dobie, The Mustangs, p. 144.
10. Ibid., p. 219.
11. David Cruise and Alison Griffiths, Wild Horse Annie and the Last Mustang: The Life of Velma Johnston (New York: Scribner, 2013), p. 59.
12. Ibid., p. 13.
13. Ibid., p. 13.
14. Ibid., p. 43.
15. Ibid., p. 7.
16. The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, Public Law 92-195 as amended, 85 Stat. 649 (1971), codified at 16 U.S.C. §1331-1340.
17. National Academy of Sciences, Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros: Final Report p. 44 (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1982).
18. Ibid., p. 43.
19. The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, 16 U.S.C. §1331, Public Law 92-195 as amended.
20. Ibid.
21. Ryden, America’s Last Wild Horses, p. 306.
22. United States General Accountability Office Report to the Secretary of the Interior, Rangeland Management Improvements Needed in Federal Wild Horse Program, August 1990, p. 3.
23. Ibid, pp. 2–3.
24. Ibid., p. 3.
25. Ibid., p. 3.
26. Ibid., p. 4.
27. Transcript deposition testimony of Glenna Eckel, in the matter of Western Watersheds Project v. BLM (May 13, 2009) p. 810.
28. Stephen Long, U.S. Humane Society Head Quietly Meeting with BLM Officials, reprinted in Equine Welfare Alliance Email Newsletter (February 2010).
29. Cruise and Griffiths, Wild Horse Annie, p. 76, quoting Charlie Johnston.
30. Dobie, The Mustangs, p. 201.
31. Stephen Long, BLM Calls Death Stampede at Calico “Humane,” quoting BLM spokeswoman JoLynn Worley, reprinted in Equine Welfare Alliance E-mail Newsletter (March 2010).
32. BLM Press Release, June 3, 2010.
33. BLM Press Release, June 3, 2010.
34. Humane Society of the United States Press Release, July 14, 2011.
35. BLM Press Release, February 24, 2011.
36. Dobie, The Mustangs, p. 197.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
Cruise, David, and Alison Griffiths. Wild Horse Annie and the Last Mustangs: The Life of Velma Johnston. New York: Scribner, 2013.
Dobie, J. Frank. The Mustangs. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005.
Edwards, Elwyn Hartley. The Encyclopedia of the Horse. New York: DK, 2009.
Ryden, Hope. America’s Last Wild Horses. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2005.
Stillman, Deanne. Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West. New York: First Mariner Books, 2009.
Xenophon. Xenophon in Seven Volumes. Edited by E. C. Marchant. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.
Journal Articles
Hanggi, Evelyn B. “The Thinking Horse: Cognition and Perception Reviewed.” AAEP Proceedings 51, 2005.
McDonnell, Sue M., and Samantha C. Murray. “Bachelor and Harem Stallion Behavior and Endocrinology.” Biol. Reprod. Mono. 1, 570-90. University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine—Kennett Square, 1995.
Magazine Articles
Fuller, Alexandra. “Spirit of the Shrinking West Mustangs.” National Geographic, February 2009.
Reports and Studies
National Academy of Sciences. Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros: Final Report. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1982.
United States Government Accountability Office. Bureau of Land Management: Effective Long-Term Options Needed to Manage Unadoptable Wild Horses. GAO-09-77, October 2008.
United States Government Accountability Office. Rangeland Management: Improvements Needed in Federal Wild Horse Program. GAO/RCED-90-110, August 1990.
Statutes
The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, Pubic Law. 92-195 as amended, 85 Stat. 649 (1971), 16 U.S.C. §1331 et seq.
The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, Public Law. 94-579 as amended, 43 U.S.C. §1701 et seq.
The Animal Welfare Act, Public Law 89-544, 80 as amended, Stat. 350 (1966), 7 U.S.C. §2131 et seq.
Web sites
www.blm
.gov/wo/st/en/prog/whbprogram.html
www.humanesociety.org
www.saveourwildhorses.org
www.thecloudfoundation.org
www.wildhorsepreservation.org
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
At the age of seven, MITCHELL BORNSTEIN jumped atop his first horse, and in the thirty-eight years since, he has pursued his life’s dream of working with damaged, abused, and difficult horses. College, law school, and nineteen years as an attorney led him on a journey to save the horses that no one else will. Bornstein lives in Wheeling, Illinois. This is his first book. You can sign up for email updates here.
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