Alyssa Siebert
May 31, 2011
Period 6
Beauty with the Beast
They are a strength that cannot be tamed, a beauty inside a wild beast; they are wild
horses, mustangs. Over 100 years ago about 2 million wild mustangs use to roam the plains of
the west. History of the west was written by the horse, but now it is shrinking all around them,
less than 50,000 are around today. Who to blame for this is none other than the white man who
came in the late 1800’s. White men came west to claim the land. The settlers saw the wild horses
as parasites, striping the land and starving their own herds. Moving west settlers left their foot
print in the land and beside every foot print was a hoof print.
The settlers couldn’t domesticate the horses so they got rid of them. Mustangs are now
after images of the west, like ghosts hardly there at all. No one wanted them, not ranchers nor
city people and the few that survived hid away high up in the mountains. They are living
memories of what America use to be.
The American mustangs originally came from the Spanish stock of horses brought to
America in the beginning of the 16th century. The word mustang comes from the Spanish word
mustengo, which means “ownerless beast” or “stray.” They were not meant to be captured and
broke. They were meant to roam freely, run where their spirit take them.
Wild horses have been loathed ever since white men came west blaming them for
everything that can and does go wrong on these grasslands. In the mid 1800s, when stockmen
released up to 40 million cattle on the plains, where horses had lived for centuries without
destroying the grazing, at most two million mustangs were held responsible for the suddenly
depleted range.
The sight of wild horses galloping like thunder across open country in full flight is one of
those magical moments we are sometimes blessed with in life. They look like the ultimate in
freedom; perhaps that’s why many are so awed by the sight. Why take something like that away
that is so breathtaking?
At the same time, the range-tough wild horses, a fast-breeding renewable resource, were
essential to early settlers. Occasionally hunted to keep their numbers in check, they were also
rounded up periodically for ranch work and transport or were used to conquer and define the
growing nation. Lt. Ulysses S. Grant invaded Mexico with Gen. Zachary Taylor’s army in March
1846 on a freshly caught mustang, told in a contemporary account: “As far as the eye could reach
to our right, the herd extended. To the left, it extended equally. There was no estimating the
number of animals in it.”
Then came railroads and roads, cars and tractors, tanks and combine harvesters, and you
can’t fix a dead horse with a monkey wrench, so the mustang lost its value as transport and
instead became, literally, dog-meat. Millions of pounds of wild horsemeat were processed into
food for dogs, cats, and chickens during the 1930s alone. “Man,” as Pat O’Toole said, “was the
wild horses’ natural predator.” Up until the 1970’s, wild horses were frequently slaughtered for
pet food. The capture and slaughter processes were particularly cruel (The Marilyn Monroe flick
"The Misfits" has some fairly accurate depictions of the process of "mustanging.") and numbers
were diminishing toward a second extinction.
Wild horses were not just rounded up for dog food. Back in the 1920’s the Schlesser
Bros., then the world's biggest packers of horsemeat. In five years (1925-30) the Schlessers
slaughtered some 300,000 head of outlaws, salted their meat in 51 -gallon barrels, shipped most
of it to Holland and Scandinavia. Hooves, ears, tails were sold for glue and oil; ground bones and
scraps for chickenfeed; hides for baseballs and shoes; blood for fertilizer; casings for German
sausage. Then the day of the wild horse began to diminish, and the Schlessers turned to packing
beef.
The cattlemen and the U. S. Government have two primary reasons for desiring a cleanup of the remaining wild horses: it will save the range for livestock, remove the menace of the
dread dourine (genital) diseases often found in wild horses.
If a rancher had pure bread horses such as Quarter Horses or Arabians and a mustang got
in with the heard it would ruin the heard and the rancher’s pure breads wouldn’t be pure breads
anymore and they would loose their values and worth. That would be money lost to the ranchers.
In 1971 Congress passed the Wild and Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act, designed to preserve
a living symbol of America's frontier past. Thirty years later, there are fewer wild horses than
ever.
According to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the government has plans to
reduce the herds of wild horses even further—to just 27,000 by 2005. Despite the statistics,
America's wild horses are survivors. They've grown tough, living in harsh climates and
unforgiving landscapes. With a high birth rate and few natural predators (hunting has thinned the
ranks of mountain lions and bears) their numbers can climb fast. Too fast for the land to support
them, says the BLM.
The BLM controls millions of acres of wilderness where most of America's wild horses
are found. The agency, however, is responsible for maintaining the health of the land and it must
strike a balance between the needs of ranching, recreation, and wildlife. In order to keep the
mustang population in check, they hold periodic "gathers," rounding up "surplus" animals for
adoption.
The Pryor horses, descendents of Spanish horses brought to the New World by the
conquistadors in the 16th century, are among the most intensely studied in the world. They found
their way into North America from Mexico. And for the past 200 years, they have thrived in
splendid isolation, surrounded on three sides by mountains and canyons.
The Pryor horses are lucky. Protected by geography and a team of dedicated researchers,
they will be part of the landscape for decades to come. The glory days of the wild West may be a
memory. But as long as there are wild horses kicking up their hoofs in freedom, the spirit of the
frontier will never be completely lost to history.
The wild horses use to run free, seamlessly floating across the plains, now locked up in
pens not big enough to run in. Trapped in pastures running until they reach the end, stopping to
look at the land before them not being able to any further. We have taken everything from the
mustang. Their land, their freedom, and no one is willing to be their voice. What will happen
when the wild horses are gone forever? Our great grand-children will not be able to enjoy their
beauty. The history of the west was written by the mustang.
Works Cited
“Animals: Wild Horse Round-Up.” Time Magazine 20 Feb. 1939: n. pag. Time Magazine . Web.
6 June 2011. <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760780,00.html>.
Anonymous. "The Beauty of the Beast." USA Today; New York. 01 Nov. 2008: 46. eLibrary.
Web. 06 Jun. 2011.
Flicka . Michael Mayer. 20th Century Fox, 2006. Film.
Fuller, Alexandra. “Spirit of the Shrinking West.” National Geographic Feb. 2009: 10. National
Georaphic. Web. 6 June 2011. <http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/02/wild-horses/
fuller-text/1>.
Ginsburg, Janet. “U.S. Wild Horses: Too Many Survivors on Too Little Land?” National
Geographic 26 Oct. 2001: 2. National Geographic . Web. 7 June 2011.
<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/10/1024_TVmustangs.html>.
Kerson, Nancy. “THE WILD HORSE AS AN ECONOMIC RESOURCE TO EXPLOIT: Mid800’s through mid-1900’s:.” Editorial. Mustangs 4 Us . N.p., n.d. Web. 6 June 2011.
<http://www.mustangs4us.com/history_4-expoitation.htm>.
McMiken, Donald. "A trek on the wild side." Practical Horseman. 01 Sep. 2000: 50. eLibrary.
Web. 06 Jun. 2011.
“Wild Horses.” Editorial. Tide-Mark. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 June 2011. <http://www.tide-mark.com/
horses_facts.html>.