THE WEST WAS DISCOVERED, battled over, and won by men on horseback.
Spanish conquistadores saddled their horses in Vera Cruz and rode until
they had mapped the continents from the Horn to Montana and from the
Floridas to the harbors of the Californias. The padres with them rode on
horseback, too, and made every mission a horse ranch. The national dance
of Mexico, the Jarabe, is an interpretation of the clicking of hoofs and
the pawing and prancing of spirited horses that the Aztecs noted when
the Spaniards came. Likewise, the chief contribution made by white
men of America to the folk songs of the world--the cowboy songs--are
rhythmed to the walk of horses.
Astride horses introduced by the conquistadores to the Americas, the
Plains Indians became almost a separate race from the foot-moving tribes
of the East and the stationary Pueblos of the Rockies. The men that
later conquered and corralled these wild-riding Plains Indians were
plainsmen on horses and cavalrymen. The earliest American explorers and
trappers of both Plains and Rocky Mountains went out in the saddle. The
first industrial link between the East and the West was a mounted pack
train beating out the Santa Fe Trail. On west beyond the end of this
trail, in Spanish California, even the drivers of oxen rode horseback.
The first transcontinental express was the Pony Express.
Outlaws and bad men were called "long riders." The Texas Ranger who
followed them was, according to his own proverb, "no better than his
horse." Booted sheriffs from Brownsville on the Rio Grande to the Hole
in the Wall in the Big Horn Mountains lived in the saddle. Climactic of
all the riders rode the cowboy, who lived with horse and herd.
In the Old West the phrase "left afoot" meant nothing short of being
left flat on your back. "A man on foot is no man at all," the saying
went. If an enemy could not take a man's life, the next best thing was
to take his horse. Where cow thieves went scot free, horse thieves were
hanged, and to say that a man was "as common as a horse thief" was to
express the nadir of commonness. The pillow of the frontiersmen who
slept with a six-shooter under it was a saddle, and hitched to the horn
was the loose end of a stake rope. Just as "Colonel Colt" made all
men equal in a fight, the horse made all men equal in swiftness and
mobility.
The proudest names of civilized languages when literally translated mean
"horseman": eques, caballero, chevalier, cavalier. Until just yesterday
the Man on Horseback had been for centuries the symbol of power and
pride. The advent of the horse, from Spanish sources, so changed the
ways and psychology of the Plains Indians that they entered into what
historians call the Age of Horse Culture. Almost until the automobile
came, the whole West and Southwest were dominated by a Horse Culture.
Material on range horses is scattered through the books listed under
"Range Life," "Stagecoaches, Freighting," "Pony Express."
No thorough comprehension of the Spanish horse of the Americas is
possible without consideration of this horse's antecedents, and that
involves a good deal of the horse history of the world.
BROWN, WILLIAM ROBINSON. _The Horse of the Desert_ (no publisher or
place on title page), 1936; reprinted by Macmillan, New York. A noble,
beautiful, and informing book.
CABRERA, ANGEL. _Caballos de America_, Buenos Aires, 1945. The authority
on Argentine horses.
CARTER, WILLIAM H. _The Horses of the World_, National Geographic
Society, Washington, D. C., 1923. A concentrated survey.
_Cattleman_. Published at Fort Worth, this monthly magazine of the Texas
and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association began in 1939 to issue, for
September, a horse number. It has published a vast amount of material
both scientific and popular on range horses. Another monthly magazine
worth knowing about is the _Western Horseman_, Colorado Springs,
Colorado.
DENHARDT, ROBERT MOORMAN. _The Horse of the Americas_, University of
Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1947. This historical treatment of the Spanish
horse could be better ordered; some sections of the book are little more
than miscellanies.
DOBIE, J. FRANK. _The Mustangs_, illustrated by Charles Banks Wilson,
Little, Brown, Boston, 1952. Before this handsome book arrives at
the wild horses of North America, a third of it has been spent on the
Arabian progenitors of the Spanish horse, the acquisition of the Spanish
horse by western Indians, and the nature of Indian horses. There are
many narratives of mustangs and mustangers and of Spanish-blooded horses
under the saddle. The author has tried to compass the natural history of
the animal and to blend vividness with learning. The book incorporates
his _Tales of the Mustang_, a slight volume published in an edition of
only three hundred copies in 1936. It also incorporates a large part of
_Mustangs and Cow Horses_, edited by Dobie, Boatright, and Ransom, and
issued by the Texas Folklore Society, Austin, 1940--a volume that went
out of print not long after it was published.
DODGE, THEODORE A. _Riders of Many Lands_, New York, 1893. Illustrations
by Remington. Wide and informed views.
GRAHAM, R. B. CUNNINGHAME. _The Horses of the Conquest_, London, 1930.
Graham was both historian and horseman, as much at home on the pampas as
in his ancient Scottish home. This excellent book on the Spanish horses
introduced to the Western Hemisphere is in a pasture to itself.
Reprinted in 1949 by the University of Oklahoma Press, with introduction
and notes by Robert Moorman Denhardt.
{illust. caption = Charles Banks Wilson, in _The Mustangs_ by J. Frank
Dobie (1952)}
GREER, JAMES K. _Bois d'Arc to Barbed Wire_, Dallas, 1936. OP.
HASTINGS, FRANK. _A Ranchman's Recollections_, Chicago, 1921. "Old
Gran'pa" is close to the best American horse story I have ever read. OP.
HAYES, M. HORACE. _Points of the Horse_, London, 1904. This and
subsequent editions are superior in treatment and illustrations to
earlier editions. Hayes was a far traveler and scholar as well as
horseman. One of the less than a dozen best books on the horse.
JAMES, WILL. _Smoky_, Scribner's, New York, 1930. Perhaps the best of
several books that Will James--always with illustrations--has woven
around horse heroes.
LEIGH, WILLIAM R. _The Western Pony_, New York, 1933. One of the
most beautifully printed books on the West; beautiful illustrations;
illuminating text. OP.
MULLER, DAN. _Horses_, Reilly and Lee, Chicago, 1936. Interesting
illustrations.
PATTULLO, GEORGE. _The Untamed_, New York, 1911. A collection of short
stories, among which "Corazon" and "Neutria" are excellent on horses.
OP.
PERKINS, CHARLES ELLIOTT. _The Pinto Horse_, Santa Barbara, California,
1927. A fine narrative, illustrated by Edward Borein. OP.
RIDGEWAY, W. _The Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse_,
Cambridge, England, 1905. A standard work, though many of its
conclusions are disputed, especially by Lady Wentworth in her
_Thoroughbred Racing Stock and Its Ancestors_, London, 1938.
SANTEE, ROSS. _Men and Horses_, New York, 1926. Three chapters of this
book, "A Fool About a Horse," "The Horse Wrangler," and "The Rough
String," are especially recommended. _Cowboy_, New York, 1928, reveals
in a fine way the rapport between the cowboy and his horse. _Sleepy
Black,_ New York, 1933, is a story of a horse designed for younger
readers; being good on the subject, it is good for any reader. All OP.
SIMPSON, GEORGE GAYLOR. _Horses: The Story of the Horse Family in
the Modern World and through Sixty Million Years of History_, Oxford
University Press, New York, 1951. In the realm of paleontology this work
supplants all predecessors. Bibliography.
STEELE, RUFUS. _Mustangs of the Mesas_, Hollywood, California, 1941.
OP. Modern mustanging in Nevada; excellently written narratives of
outstanding mustangs.
STONG, PHIL. _Horses and Americans_, New York, 1939. A survey and a
miscellany combined. OP.
{illust. caption = Charles M. Russell, in _The Untamed_ by George
Pattullo (1911)}
THORP, JACK (N. Howard) as told to Neil McCullough Clark. _Pardner of
the Wind_, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1945. Two chapters in this book
make the "Spanish thunderbolts," as Jack Thorp called the mustangs and
Spanish cow horses, graze, run, pitch, and go gentle ways as free as the
wind. "Five Hundred Mile Horse Race" is a great story. No other range
man excepting Ross Santee has put down so much everyday horse lore in
such a fresh way.
TWEEDIE, MAJOR GENERAL W. _The Arabian Horse: His Country and People_,
Edinburgh and London, 1894. One of the few horse books to be classified
as literature. Wise in the blend of horse, land, and people.
WENTWORTH, LADY. _The Authentic Arabian Horse and His Descendants_,
London, 1945. Rich in knowledge and both magnificent and munificent in
illustrations. Almost immediately after publication, this noble volume
entered the rare book class.
WYMAN, WALKER D. _The Wild Horse of the West_, Caxton, Caldwell,
Idaho, 1945. A scholarly sifting of virtually all available material
on mustangs. Readable. Only thorough bibliography on subject so far
published.