Album of Horses

by Marguerite Henry

  Years passed. And more years. And the Indian began to count his wealth, not in pieces of gold as did the Spaniards, but in mustangs. The more he had, the richer he was. And they were free for the taking! He had only to ride the range, round up a wild band, and cut out the particular bullet of horseflesh that struck his fancy. Sometimes this took all day, sometimes all week, but Time for the Indian was not ticks and tocks and alarm bells. He took time by the forelock, as he often did his horse; he was master of both.

  The wild bands of mustangs and the Indian tribes loved liberty. Separately and together they roved northward and westward, finally accepting the west for their homeland. They belonged to the wild open ranges, the blue mountains, and the paintbrush flowers. Piebalds and pintos were born to the solid-colored mustangs, and their coats were color camouflage against canyon wall and desert bloom.

  When settlers began to move in on the range country, they called the mustangs paint ponies or Indian ponies. Some of the settlers turned out to be as good roundup men as the Indians. They chased the wild bands on horseback, caught a few fillies and colts, and left the others unharmed. It was these mustangs that grew up to develop the west. They were the fast and enduring horses of the Pony Express, the cavalry horses, the cow ponies, the mounts of trader and trapper.

  But some were so wild and woolly they could never be tamed, and they became the bucking broncos of the Wild West shows. The moment a bronco felt the scissors grip of a cowboy’s legs it drove him mad. With catlike contortions he arched his spine, leaped twisting into the air, and pitched his rider heels over head into the dust. These wild ones often ripped through barbed wire, as if the strands were mere lace, or plunged headlong to their death from high cliffs. They craved freedom more than grass or water. More than life.

  Even a mustang broken to the plow often reverted to wildness. In the midst of cutting a furrow he might suddenly break the traces and strike out for freedom, stopping only long enough to let out a great trumpeting neigh. At that commanding ring, gentle old work mares would kick up their heels and follow in joyous obedience. But these raw-boned work mares often lacked the fine heritage of the mustang. Their blood diluted his until the colts and grandcolts were regarded with scorn. “Broomtails!” they were called.

  So it is that many ranchers have little sympathy for today’s mustang who may be a scrawny creature but who still can fight his weight in wildcats. He fights only as a last resort, however. He prefers to outsmart his enemies, especially the puma who preys on the newborn foals. The moment a stallion scents him he sounds a warning whistle. Quicker than thought the mares bunch the little ones, completely encircle them, and turn their tails on the puma. There they stand motionless, scarcely breathing. The stallion, too, stands still as a rock, but ready to lash out. Seconds go by and the puma slinks off, completely baffled.

  But there is one enemy mustangs cannot outsmart. It dives out of the sky, swooping down the mountainsides, roaring over the range, driving the horses hour after hour, giving them no time for a breather, no time to slake their thirst, no time for anything but to run and to run until they can run no more. Suddenly out of nowhere a gate swings shut behind them, and they are trapped in a corral disguised with brush. Only then does the plane fly away, leaving the animals heaving and dripping sweat.

  The captured herds serve many purposes. Some of the horses are made into meat, some are used as rodeo buckers, and some are trained to be cow ponies. But always a few escape to be free again, to start life over.

  All of these enemies—flying cowboys, wild beasts, the rifles of men—and dwindling pastures, too, are making the mustang a vanishing American. But the Indians on their reservations are harboring the last of the wild horses. The government is willing to give the Indians sheep in place of their little mustangs, but the Indians shake their heads, preferring to be blown along the plains on a wild wind and a wild steed. When the long sleep comes, time enough, they say, to look out on clouds of sheep.

  Tourists in the west agree with the Indians. They are not satisfied just to view peaceful hillsides of sheep. They look for live mementos of frontier days. Children especially set their sights high—Indians, buffalo, wild horses! They stand on the brink of canyons, peering down the long reaches. Sometimes all they see is a shimmer of mist. And sometimes they see the outline of a paintbrush pony. It may be only a vision of their imagination growing more and more vivid with their looking. But it may not be a vision at all. Look! A thin swirl of dust! The outline is free flowing, a little broom tail whisking up the rocky wall. A symbol of wildness right out of the past. A symbol of liberty. Of America itself!

  The Appaloosa

  IT IS HALF-DAWN, GRAY AND still and cold. Standing hobbled, a bunch of spotted horses wake and snort to the morning. Of a sudden all heads alert to hoofbeats sounding afar off, now close. The stillness of the dawn cracks! Indian scouts riding into camp, crying, “Awake! Buffalo! They run!”

  Out of their tepees come the Nez Percé Indians, bows and arrows held high. They leap onto their spotted horses and, with eyes fixed on the scouts, take off through a trail winding between trees and brush to a prairie lying deep in shadow.

  Buffalo smell is on the wind. And now the shadow divides, breaking up into great lumpy beasts scudding across the mountain meadow. The chase is on! Over wide plains, up and down sharp hillsides, through untracked country the horses charge, closer and closer to the mass of furry beasts. Arrows sing! The dawn is a whirlpool of fury, animals screaming and bellowing, Indians yelling, earth quaking to the thunder of buffalo feet. All along the trail brown hulks fall, thinning out the herd, and after a while the noise dulls and the chase is done.

  Full morning comes in a gold blaze, and with it peace to the Indians and the pinch of hunger ended. Buffalo meat is good. The tongue and the fat are delicacies. And the hides will warm the squaws and papooses.

  To the spotted horses, too, morning brings reward. Young tender twigs to chew, and time for browsing. Then homeward to the sheltered valley of the Winding Waters.

  Of all the Indian tribes in Northwest America the Nez Percés were the wisest horsemen. As a squaw sorts berries, they sorted and culled their horses. The poorer ones were traded off or used as pack horses, the gentle aged ones became mounts for the old people. But the swift ones, the tough and game ones—these were the buffalo runners and they had no equal. They could travel the craggy mountains at full gallop. They could charge into stampeding buffalo and single out one for the kill. They were built for rough terrain: forefeet turned in so they could toe-dance the narrowest passes; wide heels to make them sure-footed; thin tails that whisked through brush and brier without being caught.

  Other tribes painted their horses for war and for the chase. But the Nez Percé horses were painted by nature with a curious spattering of spots in clay-red or jet black. Some spots were rounded like polka dots, some irregular as leaves, and some elongated like footprints.

  What did it matter that the hostile Blackfeet tribe had guns with flint stones? The spotted horses could outmaneuver their guns and outrun their mounts.

  And so the Nez Percés lived in security—migrating and hunting by horse, and breeding only the best to the best until, in time, their horses were the most distinctive in marking and the fleetest of foot in the Pacific Northwest.

  When white men spied them, they said, “These are the swift runners that graze on the meadows made by the Palouse River.” Soon the word Palouse, which means “the stream of the green meadows,” came to apply to the horses, too. “Palouseys,” they were called. Even the Indians began speaking of their red and blue Palouseys, for most of them were red or blue roans, whitening toward the rump where the spots clustered.

  The Indians took a liking to the white-faced men. They invited them to feast on buffalo meat and wild thimbleberries. And they gave them presents of horses. The white men in turn sent missionaries to live among the Indians to teach them reading and writing. The missionaries disapproved of the fast spotted horses and of the cons
tant warfare with the Blackfeet. So they showed the Nez Percés how to make plows and cultivate the land. And they gave them Bible names, calling their elderly chieftain Joseph and changing the name of his son from “Thunder Rolling in the Mountains” to “Young Joseph.”

  Quiet years followed, in which the spotted horses worked the rich soil of the valley. Then in 1860 a nugget of gold was discovered, and seemingly from nowhere came a stampede of men—gold rushers who trampled vegetable patches and despoiled pastureland. Settlers came, too, jostling the red man, squatting on his land, eyeing his cattle and his horses.

  Meanwhile, far away in the capital city of the United States, greedy fingers pointed across the continent and voices blustered: “We must move the Nez Percés to a reservation.” Agents came to the valley, saying, “This spot is now too cold for you. You must go away to Idaho.”

  Young Joseph was now chief of his tribe. He listened, puzzled. By solemn treaty his people had been given the valley of the Winding Waters, the Wallowa Valley of Oregon. “Words, words,” he said to the agents. “With a forked tongue the white man makes promises. The words come to nothing.”

  For answer soldiers moved into the valley and drove the Indians out. Bewildered, they rounded up their horses and tried to swim them across the Snake River. It was floodtime and many animals were drowned. Those left on the banks were stolen by the white soldiers and their guards killed.

  Young Joseph had tried to keep his tribesmen from going on the warpath, but now his blood was on fire, too. He became again Chief Thunder Rolling in the Mountains, and his fighting bore fierce testimony to his name. Outnumbered ten to one, he and his small band defeated three armies within sixty days! And always the Indians had their families, and household goods, and remnants of their cattle to worry them. Their only allies were the spotted horses.

  Three times they crossed the Continental Divide only to find that the white generals had endless resources of troops. At last, after a flight of a thousand miles, Chief Thunder Rolling in the Mountains surrendered. “From where the sun now stands,” he said, “we will fight no more forever.” And they never have.

  Their surviving horses were taken away and sold until they became an almost forgotten breed. The last words of Joseph were: “We gave up all our horses, and we have not heard of them since. Somebody has got our horses.”

  • • •

  Time fell away. Days and years passed. In 1937 Francis Haines, a student in Idaho, was poking and prying into the history of the Nez Percé Indians. In the midst of his searching he suddenly became aware that the horses of the Nez Percés were running away with his thoughts. He began digging deeper into the past and discovered that twenty centuries ago the Appaloosas were known in China as the heavenly horses and in Persia as the sacred horses. Through wars and conquests he traced them from Asia to Spain to Mexico to the Pacific Northwest.

  Could he stand by and let a breed that had survived wars and centuries die out? He sat down at his typewriter and pounded out words that had a sting to them. They roused horsemen who scoured the valleys and plains and mountain hideouts. They found a few of the spotted horses, and, once again, horsemen began to sort and cull and breed only the best to the best. Today the almost lost breed is 1,400 strong. They are no longer buffalo runners; they are the range horses of the cattle country.

  And what of the gallant Nez Percés? Their descendants are now living quietly and peaceably on the Lapwai Reservation. One day a year, at the National Appaloosa Show, a young brave is sometimes asked to mount a red or blue “Palousey” decorated with the saddle pad and bridle once belonging to Chief Thunder Rolling in the Mountains. Then a strong and joyous feeling comes over the spectators, white and Indian alike. It is almost as if the Chieftain had come alive to speak for his people: “Our spotted breed is on the comeback trail. The white scholar of Idaho spoke with a straight tongue; his words came to something.”

  The Quarter Horse

  HE IS NOT A QUARTER of a horse or a quarter of anything. He is himself—the fastest piece of horseflesh in the world for a quarter of a mile. Hence his name, a name he has borne almost since the first colonists landed in Virginia.

  Long before the American Revolution, long before the creation of the Thoroughbred, the Quarter Horse was an old established strain. He was bred for two purposes, to work and to race, and he excelled at both. On work days he chased wild cattle—rounding them up, driving them into the cowpens. But on holidays he was a race horse.

  There were no smooth oval tracks in those days, only straightaways carved out of virgin forests. Occasionally the path was so rough that men used their wives’ big iron kettles, turned upside down, to scrape it smooth. Sometimes this racing strip was only ten yards long and sometimes it stretched out the full quarter of a mile but, whatever the distance, the colonists reveled in the quick flash of speed. It lifted their weariness, relaxed muscles aching from the work of settling a new land, dulled the homesickness for the land they had left.

  It took only two horses to make a race and any clearing to make a track. Owners made the best jockeys. With pantaloons bellying in the wind and kerchiefs tying down their hair they urged their chunky steeds to victory. All along the race path white men in coonskin caps, red men in feather headdress, Quakers in sober black, cavaliers in their old finery—all shouted as one man, throwing assorted headgear into the air for the winner.

  The Indians who came to watch were friendly. They rode in from the backwoods on little Spanish mustangs, bringing an extra one or two to trade for tobacco or beads. It was easy to find a trader, for the colonists liked this wiry animal. It was the mustang who had contributed speed to their Quarter Horses! The first settlers had bred their stout-bodied English horses to him and in this way had developed a short-legged running horse of great strength and swiftness.

  The Quarter Horses were the first race horses of America, and they became so famous that men referred to them by their initials alone. In early books, in letters and diaries, they wrote of their C.A.Q.R.H., meaning their Celebrated American Quarter Running Horses. They described them as being “not very tall, but hardy, strong, and fleet.”

  For nearly a hundred years the C.A.Q.R.H. were the only race horses in America. Then, on sailing ships from England, came the Thoroughbred. And, with his coming, the scene changed. Race courses were built, a whole mile long. Flyweight jockeys were hired, and they wore bright silk jackets and jockey caps, instead of pantaloons and kerchiefs.

  It was inevitable that the short-legged Quarter Horse and the long-legged Thoroughbred should be matched on the new race courses. And results, too, were inevitable. The Quarter Horse jumped away from the starting point and led to the first quarter. Then the Thoroughbred came on to win.

  The Thoroughbred was built for sustained speed. Everything about him was long and rangy—long legs, long body, long neck, even his ears grew longer than those of the Quarter Horse. He was built exactly like a greyhound and he stretched out in his going like a greyhound. Pound for pound the Thoroughbred and the Quarter Horse weighed the same. But there the resemblance ended. It was a case of greyhound versus bulldog.

  The Quarter Horse was short-legged, short-backed, short-necked—even his ears were short. Little fox ears they were called. Alongside him the Thoroughbred seemed almost gaunt, for the Quarter Horse was bunched with muscle. His chest, his shoulder, his forearm, his hind quarters bulged with layers of muscle. His jaw, too, was muscled and massive and broad, like that of a bulldog.

  It was inevitable, too, that the Thoroughbred should be crossed with the Quarter Horse to see what would come of the fusing of these two breeds. Janus, a grandson of the Godolphin Arabian, was chosen to sire a new line of Quarter Horses, and horsemen waited expectantly. Would the blood of Janus streamline the Quarter Horse? Would it create a new strain, a horse that could run an explosion race for an entire mile? No such thing happened. It was almost as if one Quarter Horse had been bred to another. The sons of Janus clung to their dams’ character with bulldog ten
acity. They were still blocky in build and faster than ever on the getaway.

  But with each year, as more and more Thoroughbreds were imported, short racing died out. A weaker breed than the Quarter Horse would have vanished from the American scene, but he widened his territory. By river boat and by pack train he moved westward. And once again his brawn and his speed stood him in good stead. The cattlemen of the southwestern plains needed a chunky horse of immense power, one that could brace himself against the shock of a thousand pounds of wild steer at the end of a rope. They needed a horse that could pound over roughed-up land, swim rivers, push through brush, one that could maneuver a prize steer out of the herd or a runaway into the herd. In short, they needed the Quarter Horse. He took root in the southwest, especially in Texas, and as long as the range country endures, Texans say they will need him.

  What of his racing career? Over and done with? It is just beginning again! Cattlemen, like the early settlers, need to work off the loneliness of their jobs. And so they get together and match the sprinting skill of their horses. Often they use any level stretch of land and have little private races with their neighbors. But sometimes they attend the big Quarter-Horse races, where the straightaways are smoothed and harrowed and there are grandstands and fence rails and all the fixings of fine tracks.