WEBVTT - Ep. 11: Bringing Home All the Pretty Horses 0:00:01.800 --> 0:00:04.800 Simultaneous with the appearance of the United States in the 0:00:04.840 --> 0:00:08.799 advance of its frontier westward to the Mississippi River, and 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:13.240 intriguing trade developed around vast herds of horses that had 0:00:13.240 --> 0:00:17.360 become wild in the West, an animal economy that outlasted 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:20.880 the fur trade but collapsed in the nineteen twenties in 0:00:21.000 --> 0:00:25.200 the face of modernity. I'm Dan Flores and this is 0:00:25.200 --> 0:00:29.680 the American West, brought to you by Velvet Buck Wine, 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:33.080 where the hunt meets the harvest. A portion of each 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:37.760 bottle goes to support backcountry hunters and anglers. Limited supply 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:58.200 available at Velvetbuck Vineyards dot Com. Enjoy responsibly bringing home 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:06.520 all the pretty horses. In the summer of eighteen thirty four, 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:10.160 two years after his famous adventure painting the tribes of 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:13.880 the Missouri River and Northern Plains, artists George Catlan got 0:01:13.880 --> 0:01:18.360 his first opportunity to portray the counterpoint world the southern 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:22.520 Plains of what is now western Oklahoma. Fate and luck 0:01:22.640 --> 0:01:27.040 offered Catlan a singular chance to see firsthand the similarities 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:30.839 and differences between these two regions of the early nineteenth 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:35.800 century American West. On the Missouri, Catlan had traveled and 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:38.960 lived with fur traders from the big companies, and had 0:01:39.080 --> 0:01:43.520 duly painted and mourned the great destruction then underway there 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:47.680 on the southern prairies. However, the artists saw relatively little 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:51.120 of the American economic engines that were destroying so many 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:55.760 ecologies in the northern West. On these southern prairies, it 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:59.360 was not fur bearers, but an altogether different animal that 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:03.080 caught his atte traveling in the vicinity of the Wichita 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:06.200 Mountains that summer of eighteen thirty four. This was how 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:11.400 he described his impressions. The tract of country over which 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:15.080 we passed is stocked not only with buffaloes, but with 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:19.040 numerous bands of wild horses, many of which we saw 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:24.240 every day Catlan went on. The wild horse of these 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:28.280 regions is a small but very powerful animal, with an 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:34.160 exceedingly prominent eye, sharp nose, high nostril, small feet, and 0:02:34.280 --> 0:02:38.760 delicate leg, and undoubtedly have sprung from a stock introduced 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:42.960 by the Spaniards. No other denizen of the plains is 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:48.160 so wild and so sagacious as the horse Catlan rode. 0:02:48.800 --> 0:02:51.960 So remarkably keen is their eye that they will generally 0:02:52.080 --> 0:02:55.079 run at the site when they are a mild, distant, 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:58.440 and when in motion, will seldom stop short of three 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:02.720 or four miles. Like many others, the artists was struck 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:05.239 with the beauty of the horse in its wild state. 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:10.560 Some were milk white, some jet black, others were sorrel 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:15.079 and bay and cream color, and many were an iron gray, 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:19.240 and others were pied, containing a variety of colors on 0:03:19.280 --> 0:03:23.400 the same animal. Their manes were profuse and hanging in 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:27.280 the wildest confusion over their necks and faces, and their 0:03:27.360 --> 0:03:33.239 long tails swept the ground interestingly. At almost the same 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:36.840 point in time, back in the horse country of Kentucky, 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:41.560 John James Audubon, Catlan's fellow painter, wrote that he'd become 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:44.560 acquainted with a man who had just returned from the 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:48.800 country in the neighborhood of the headwaters of the Arkansas River, 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:52.880 where he'd obtained from the O Sages a recently captured 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:58.160 four year old wild horse named Barrow. While the little 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:02.200 horse was by no means handsome, as Ottoman said, and 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:05.920 had cost only thirty five dollars in trade goods, Ottobon 0:04:06.080 --> 0:04:09.840 was intrigued enough to try him out. He proved a delight. 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:13.600 He had a sweet gait that covered forty miles a day. 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:17.679 He leapt over woodland logs as lightly as an elk, 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:22.040 was cautious, but a quick study in new situations, and 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:25.240 strong and fearless when coach to swim the Ohio River. 0:04:26.040 --> 0:04:29.360 He was steady when birds flushed, and Audobon shot them 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:34.520 from the saddle to top. All he left a superb 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:38.679 three hundred dollars horse in the dust. Audoban quickly bought 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:42.640 barrel for fifty dollars silver, and, gloating over his discovery, 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:46.680 concluded that the importation of horses of this kind from 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:51.800 the Western prairies might improve our breeds generally. With an 0:04:51.839 --> 0:04:54.840 audition like barrows, one is tempted to say, no kidding. 0:04:55.640 --> 0:04:58.920 But what intrigues me most about Cantlon's and Audobon's wild 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:03.240 horse epiphanies is that they seemed almost clueless about a 0:05:03.279 --> 0:05:05.960 phenomenon that had been underway in the West for almost 0:05:05.960 --> 0:05:11.680 two centuries. Simultaneous with the evolution of the fur trade 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:14.440 in the northern West, the wild horse herds of the 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:18.599 Great Plains had generated an economy of capture in trade 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:22.960 that had transformed the native world. It had dominated much 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:26.719 of the Western trade. In European settlements from Louisiana to 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:31.440 California since the seventeen eighties, and wild horses from herbs 0:05:31.560 --> 0:05:34.800 like those Catlan saw had been driven up the Natchez 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:38.200 Trace to markets in Kentucky and the South at least 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:42.800 since seventeen ninety. That neither of these artists seemed aware 0:05:42.839 --> 0:05:47.120 of this speaks volumes about the underground character of the 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:50.120 early horse trade in the West, which was never a 0:05:50.160 --> 0:05:53.719 corporate venture like the fur trade, but usually carried out 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:59.800 by private, independent mustangers. That word an English garbling of 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:06.240 the Spanish mestanio. The presence of wild horses in the 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:10.640 West first drew the attention of most Americans with Louisiana purchase. 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:13.920 By then, wild horses had been running free in the 0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:18.560 California valleys, in the deserts of the Southwest, and especially 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:22.120 on the Great Plains for many decades, But as was 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:24.720 true of so many aspects of the West, it was 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:28.120 Thomas Jefferson, during the years when he was serving as 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:32.000 Vice President in the Adams administration, who was the first 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:36.520 American to understand that horses had become a part of 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:41.839 the natural history and economy of the West. In his 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:46.040 conversations about the West, with his informants. In seventeen ninety eight, 0:06:46.120 --> 0:06:51.560 Jefferson began to hear stories about an intriguing individual known 0:06:51.680 --> 0:06:56.520 as the Mexican Traveler. The Traveler's real name was Philip Nolan, 0:06:57.160 --> 0:07:01.640 and he was an American adventurer who Jefferson discovered had 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:06.680 journeyed numerous times into the unknown Southwest, returning driving herds 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:11.240 of captured and traded horses into Louisiana and then up 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:16.280 the Natchezt Trace to the horse markets of Kentucky. Jefferson 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:21.680 was fascinated. He wanted to know more. The image that 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:27.680 emerges from his queries is of a shadowy character, a literate, athletic, 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:31.000 and adventurous young man who was confident enough in his 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:35.120 abilities to attempt things no one else had tried. The 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:39.440 Mississippi scientist, Sir William Dunbar knew Nolan, and he told 0:07:39.560 --> 0:07:44.040 Jefferson he thought the young man lacked sufficient education and 0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:50.840 was flawed by eccentricities many and great, as Dunbar put it. Nevertheless, 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:55.840 he added, Nolan was not destitute of romantic principles of honor, 0:07:56.360 --> 0:08:01.600 united to the highest personal courage. Other informant, a lawyer 0:08:01.600 --> 0:08:05.480 in New Orleans, told Jefferson that, in his opinion, Nolan 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:10.240 was an extraordinary character, one whom nature seems to have 0:08:10.400 --> 0:08:14.840 formed for enterprises at which the rest of mankind are incapable. 0:08:17.520 --> 0:08:21.440 As early as seventeen ninety, Jefferson learned, when Nolan was 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:25.239 barely twenty, he had embarked on a two year journey 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:30.000 into the West, ultimately meeting and traveling with Wichitas and Comanches, 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:34.040 and giving those tough appraisers of human nature a quite 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:38.959 favorable early impression of Americans. On this trip, Nolan apparently 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:42.360 journeyed all the way to New Mexico, meanwhile learning that 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:47.080 the numerous Southern Plains tribes were dissatisfied with Spanish trade 0:08:47.360 --> 0:08:50.480 and hoped to replace their former trade partners the French, 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:54.760 with a new source of guns and European goods. The 0:08:54.840 --> 0:08:58.800 Osages from farther east were enemies of these Western groups, 0:08:59.080 --> 0:09:02.560 and making every effort to block traders from Saint Louis 0:09:02.760 --> 0:09:07.040 from contacting the tribes of the Deep Plains. Nolan had 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:12.440 in mind addressing that opening from a different direction. What 0:09:12.600 --> 0:09:15.840 really caused Jefferson's attention, though, was that Nolan had not 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:19.840 returned from the West with the usual Indian processed firs. 0:09:20.920 --> 0:09:23.760 It was horses he had brought back from these forays, 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:26.559 some of them wild ones that he and his associates 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:31.920 had captured. Nolan himself told his friends that he found 0:09:32.120 --> 0:09:37.560 the savage life less praising in practice than speculation. I 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:41.760 could not indianfy my heart, he said. But he had 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:44.360 gone on a second expedition into the Deep Plains in 0:09:44.400 --> 0:09:48.600 seventeen ninety four, and a third one in seventeen ninety six. 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:52.680 He returned with two hundred and fifty horses in seventeen 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:56.280 ninety six drove them to Frankfurt, Connecticut, and that had 0:09:56.320 --> 0:09:59.160 brought Nolan and his horses to the attention of important 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:04.160 people who now invested in him. So, in seventeen ninety seven, 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:08.079 packing seven thousand dollars worth of trade goods and with 0:10:08.200 --> 0:10:12.240 what he said were twelve good rifles and but one coward, 0:10:12.720 --> 0:10:17.360 he launched a fourth expedition. When he returned in seventeen 0:10:17.480 --> 0:10:21.640 ninety eight, he was driving a herd, some estimated at 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:25.839 twenty five hundred animals, some of which brought one hundred 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:30.760 and fifty dollars a piece in Kentucky. At this point 0:10:30.760 --> 0:10:34.800 in Nolan's career, he found a letter awaiting him, requesting 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:39.360 natural history information on Western horses at the only moment 0:10:39.400 --> 0:10:41.840 in the age of the world, it read when the 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:46.360 horse might be studied in its wild state. Those words 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:50.000 were from Vice President Thomas Jefferson, who wanted badly to 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:54.040 have a conversation with Nolan about the West. So Jefferson 0:10:54.040 --> 0:10:56.920 wrote a follow up letter, telling Nolan he very much 0:10:56.960 --> 0:11:00.360 wanted to purchase one of those Western horses, which I 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:04.120 am told are so remarkable for the singularity and beauty 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:09.840 of their colors and forms. According to several informants, young 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:13.800 Nolan and an inhabitant of the Western country, a master 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:17.840 of the fascinating language of Indian hand signs, who was 0:11:17.960 --> 0:11:21.560 probably the same Joseph Talapoon who would go west with 0:11:21.720 --> 0:11:26.440 Anthony Glass, departed for Virginia in eighteen hundred with a 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:32.079 fine paint stallion for Jefferson. Somehow, though neither Nolan nor 0:11:32.120 --> 0:11:36.520 the paint horse ever got to Monticello. I'm tempted to 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:40.920 guess that somewhere along the way Nolan lost jefferson stallion 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:44.320 on a bet or in a game of chance. So 0:11:44.480 --> 0:11:48.520 the West's Mexican traveler stood up the man about to 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:55.000 be elected the third president of the United States. Nolan 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:57.720 was now in preparation for a fifth and his fate 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:02.520 would have it final expedition to the Although he claimed 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:06.200 that I have long been tired of wild horses, the 0:12:06.240 --> 0:12:09.480 money was just too good. This time he took two 0:12:09.559 --> 0:12:12.920 dozen men and a large quantity of goods, but by 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:16.760 now Spanish officials had grown increasingly alarmed at Nolan's trips. 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:21.280 In the seventeen eighties, Spain had proclaimed wild horses and 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:25.240 her territories government property, and had placed at tax on 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:29.839 captured animals. That meant that any horses Nolan captured or 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:35.760 traded for would be illegal contraband. Yet by December of 0:12:35.800 --> 0:12:39.000 eighteen hundred, the party was far out on the southern 0:12:39.040 --> 0:12:43.160 plains and what seems to have been Nolan's favorite mustanging country, 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:47.920 the Grand Prairie, southwest of today's Fort Worth. There they 0:12:48.000 --> 0:12:52.920 built corrals and started capturing wild bands, but in March 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:56.440 of eighteen oh one, Indian scouts for a Spanish force 0:12:56.760 --> 0:13:01.520 sent out to arrest Nolan located them. When Nolan refused 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:06.480 to surrender, the Spaniards attacked, killing Nolan and capturing more 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:09.640 than a dozen of his men. At the age of 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:14.480 thirty one the Mexican travelers pre Lewis and clark adventures 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:21.840 in the West were over. Thomas Jefferson never got to 0:13:21.960 --> 0:13:26.520 understand what deep time science and history have now told 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:30.600 us about the West's wild horses. It's a story that 0:13:30.640 --> 0:13:35.520 commences with an irony. Old worlders understood that their ancestors 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:38.320 had brought the horse to the Americas, and that, after 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:41.800 initial fear of it, indigenous peoples in both North and 0:13:41.880 --> 0:13:45.720 South America had adopted the animal into their lives, where 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:49.760 it had revolutionized their cultures. Yet in the depths of 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:56.240 time lay a surprising story. Horses are actually evolutionary natives 0:13:56.280 --> 0:14:01.160 of North America. Their ancestors had begun their into the 0:14:01.160 --> 0:14:06.160 modern horse on this continent fifty seven million years earlier, 0:14:07.240 --> 0:14:10.800 after a vast presence where horses were found from Alaska 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:16.640 to Florida. The irony deepened profoundly by eight thousand years ago, 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:21.000 horses so similar to the modern version that palaeontologists have 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:28.119 difficulty telling them apart unaccountably when extinct throughout the Americas. Meanwhile, 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:31.680 the horses that had migrated from America into Africa, Asia, 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:36.280 and Europe survived to become domesticated by humans. Four to 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:40.600 six thousand years ago. So the barb horses that danced 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:45.360 and nickered beneath the Spaniards were ancient American horses, their 0:14:45.480 --> 0:14:50.640 zebra like legs and dorsal backstripes still intact. Now they 0:14:50.680 --> 0:14:54.280 had returned to their evolutionary homeland, except it was a 0:14:54.320 --> 0:15:00.080 homeland with many of their Pleistocene predators gone. This, this 0:15:00.160 --> 0:15:03.200 big history, is why horses were so successful in going 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:07.800 wild in the West. By the sixteen fifties, the Southwest 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:12.240 Native peoples were riding horses into the very landscapes that 0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:17.200 had shaped horses hoofs, teeth, and behavioral patterns for millions 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:22.119 of years. When the Pueblo Indians sixteen eighty revolt liberated 0:15:22.200 --> 0:15:26.440 Spanish livestock in and around Santa Fe, horses and horse 0:15:26.480 --> 0:15:31.000 culture famously made their way decade by decade to tribes 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:35.720 northward up the Rockies. But in the chaos, many animals 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:40.520 also ran loose into the country. Meanwhile, in Texas, the 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:45.440 Spanish Franciscans often turned surplus mission livestock out into the wild, 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:50.720 so by seventeen fifteen, from Texas to New Mexico, the 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:57.320 whole country featured wild horses. Rapidly replicating Pleistocene America. Three 0:15:57.400 --> 0:16:00.840 quarters of a century later, the same fine dominon was 0:16:00.960 --> 0:16:06.880 underway in California. By the time Americans were eyeing the West, 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:12.440 across the region's southern latitudes, wild horse herds had become enormous. 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:16.440 A Spanish bishop in Texas road in eighteen oh five 0:16:16.600 --> 0:16:20.600 that everywhere he traveled there were great herds of horses 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:23.880 and mares found close to the roads, and herds of 0:16:24.040 --> 0:16:29.880 four to six thousand by eighteen hundred. Residents of California's 0:16:29.920 --> 0:16:33.480 missions and presidios, having had virtually no horses in the 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:38.320 seventeen seventies, regarded escaped horses in the surrounding countryside as 0:16:38.360 --> 0:16:41.280 such threats to grass and water that they shot them 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:46.800 on sight. On the Great Plains, wildhorses now struck observers 0:16:47.080 --> 0:16:51.600 as an iconic experience of the region. One traveler was 0:16:51.680 --> 0:16:55.000 stunned to see that, as he put it, the prairie 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:59.240 near the horizon seemed to be moving with long undulations, 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:02.920 like the way waves of an ocean. Then realized that 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:07.480 the ocean waves were actually herds of mustangs blanketing the 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:11.960 entire prairie. Another wrote that as far as the eye 0:17:11.960 --> 0:17:15.280 could extend, nothing over the dead level prairie was visible 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:18.800 except the dense mass of horses, and the trampling of 0:17:18.840 --> 0:17:21.879 their hoofs sounded like the roar of the surf on 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:26.800 a rocky coast. Wandering herds of wild horses are so numerous. 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:31.040 Another wrote that the land is covered with paths, making 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:41.280 it appear the most populated place in the world. In Pleisscene, America, 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:44.000 horses had sometimes made up as much as twenty five 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:47.320 percent of the biomass of grazing animals, and by the 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:50.640 eighteen hundreds, the wild bands were heading in that direction. 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:54.760 Writer J. Frank Doby once guessed that by eighteen hundred 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:58.280 there were two million wild horses in the West, a 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:01.400 million of them on the prairie south of the Arkansas River. 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:05.679 On the Southern Plains, a million wild horses would have 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:10.760 been about twelve percent of bison numbers. So from seed 0:18:10.800 --> 0:18:14.800 herds not just in New Mexico and Texas, but California, 0:18:15.119 --> 0:18:20.040 the Columbia Plateau, and Wyoming's Red Desert, wild horses were 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:25.320 spreading out all over the West. The Southern Plains herds 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:33.040 drew Indian peoples from everywhere, bringing utes, Shoshonees, crows, Arapahos, Cheyennes, Lakotas, 0:18:33.280 --> 0:18:37.960 even Blackfeet, and most famously Comanches to the horse country 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:43.480 below the Arkansas River, as with bison and beavers. Useful 0:18:43.520 --> 0:18:47.000 animals and such enormous numbers filled the human mind with 0:18:47.119 --> 0:18:52.560 thoughts of acquisition, wealth and power, with thoughts, in other words, 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:57.800 of a potential economy. I've imagined this economy as a 0:18:57.840 --> 0:19:02.320 great horse funnel which took hundreds of thousands of horses 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:05.960 from its flared in on the plains and then funneled 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:10.760 them to trade markets like Saint Louis, Nakotish, Natchez, and 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:15.240 New Orleans. The demand came from Americans on the homestead 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:19.040 or frontier, who needed animal powered energy to push westward 0:19:19.080 --> 0:19:22.800 from the Appalachians to the Mississippi and beyond. As with 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:26.480 the fur trade farther north, the Native people began as 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:30.280 and remained major players in the trade, in good part 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:33.000 because the horse trade was based on a pre existing 0:19:33.160 --> 0:19:39.360 native economy involving inner tribal exchange. From the start, horses 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:42.720 were such revolutionary agents of cultural change for Native people 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:46.560 that exchange of the animals became a central feature of 0:19:46.640 --> 0:19:51.440 Western Indian life. There were annual horse fairs in places 0:19:51.480 --> 0:19:54.600 like the Black Hills, and it fixed villages like those 0:19:54.880 --> 0:19:58.320 of the Mandani Dotsas on the Missouri and the Wichitas 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:03.240 on the Red River. Even middleman groups emerged. The horse 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:07.280 trade even contributed to the breakup of the Cheyennes into 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:12.119 two geographic divisions, a northern one and a southern one 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:16.000 that became a central player in distributing horses northward up 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:23.200 the planes. The Comanches, another group drawn from the north 0:20:23.240 --> 0:20:28.240 to the southern plains because of horses, literally reconceived themselves 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:32.640 in the context of horses and trade. They raided other 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:37.560 tribes and Spanish ranches for both horses and children, training 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:41.440 the latter as herders and an economy that became more 0:20:41.560 --> 0:20:45.840 pastoral by the decade. They marketed their animals northward to 0:20:45.920 --> 0:20:49.919 horse poor Northern Plains tribes, westward to the New Mexicans 0:20:50.080 --> 0:20:54.760 via trade fairs in places like Pacos Picres and Taos, 0:20:55.200 --> 0:21:00.399 and eventually eastward to the Americans to a significant agree. 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:04.919 Then the native people created the Western horse trade, built 0:21:04.960 --> 0:21:09.399 their status systems around horse ownership, and used the horse 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:14.760 trade to manipulate Euro Americans anxious for profits and alliances 0:21:14.800 --> 0:21:18.919 with them. There were downsides. As with groups like the 0:21:18.960 --> 0:21:25.200 Comanches and Lakotas, the horse trade produced territorial expansion. Entire 0:21:25.280 --> 0:21:30.280 cottonwood groves along rivers like the Arkansas also disappeared as 0:21:30.400 --> 0:21:34.639 tribes endeavored to get their herds through snowy winters, and 0:21:34.720 --> 0:21:37.560 because winters on the northern plains could be hard on 0:21:37.680 --> 0:21:42.680 horse survival, Raids for replenishment of tribal stock rippled from 0:21:42.720 --> 0:21:47.320 north to south every spring, as happened in the fur 0:21:47.440 --> 0:21:51.000 trade with the mountain Men. A point came when the 0:21:51.040 --> 0:21:56.680 Americans attempted a similar step. With millions of horses running free, 0:21:56.880 --> 0:22:02.000 they tried their hand at capture. Catching wild horses may 0:22:02.000 --> 0:22:06.800 have begun as a North African or Iberian technique. By 0:22:06.840 --> 0:22:10.640 the time Americans entered the horse economy, many different peoples 0:22:10.760 --> 0:22:13.800 seem to have mastered it. Nolan may have learned the 0:22:13.920 --> 0:22:17.520 art from the French and Spanish settlers of Louisiana towns 0:22:18.000 --> 0:22:21.800 like Bayou Pierre and Nacotish, but the best descriptions of 0:22:21.960 --> 0:22:26.800 trade volume mustanging strategies came from a third group involved 0:22:26.840 --> 0:22:32.240 in the horse trade, the Hispanic residents of Texas. In 0:22:32.280 --> 0:22:36.320 the first six years of Spain's tax on captured wild horses. 0:22:36.920 --> 0:22:43.160 Texas horse catchers paid up on seventeen thousand captured wild horses, 0:22:43.640 --> 0:22:45.880 a great many of which appear to have ended up 0:22:46.000 --> 0:22:50.760 east of the Mississippi River, carrying American farmers and merchants, 0:22:50.800 --> 0:22:55.280 and supplying mounts for Southeastern Indians, like the Chickasaws and 0:22:55.359 --> 0:22:59.840 the Seminoles. As one San Antonio official put it, the 0:23:00.119 --> 0:23:03.800 number of mustangs and all these environs is so countless 0:23:04.200 --> 0:23:07.480 that if anyone were capable of taming them and caring 0:23:07.520 --> 0:23:10.960 for them, he could acquire a supply sufficient to furnish 0:23:11.040 --> 0:23:15.840 an army. But this multitude is causing us such grave 0:23:16.000 --> 0:23:21.159 damage that it is often necessary to shoot them. Catching 0:23:21.200 --> 0:23:25.200 wildhorses in volume became a kind of wilderness art form, 0:23:25.640 --> 0:23:31.040 with its own material culture, its own internal terminology. It 0:23:31.160 --> 0:23:36.280 differed from trapping by aiming at live animal capture, although 0:23:36.320 --> 0:23:40.280 making that happen was more difficult than you'd think. We 0:23:40.400 --> 0:23:43.960 know all this because of a French scientist named Jean 0:23:44.040 --> 0:23:48.560 Louis Brelandier, who in the eighteen twenties witnessed and described 0:23:48.840 --> 0:23:54.560 the process of volume wild horse capture. Once mustangers were 0:23:54.600 --> 0:23:58.679 among the herds and stallion bands. The first step was 0:23:58.880 --> 0:24:02.280 understanding the land escape to know how to cite what 0:24:02.400 --> 0:24:08.920 Burlandier called the corral. These are immense enclosures situated close 0:24:09.000 --> 0:24:12.720 to some pond, he wrote. They were built of planted 0:24:12.760 --> 0:24:16.640 posts with horizontals last to them with rawhide, and were 0:24:16.720 --> 0:24:19.880 large enough that, once inside, a herd could be swept 0:24:19.880 --> 0:24:26.000 into a circling milling confusion. The entrance, Berlandier wrote, is 0:24:26.119 --> 0:24:29.720 placed in such a way that it forms a long corridor, 0:24:30.200 --> 0:24:33.880 one consisting of brush wings fanning out a half mile 0:24:33.960 --> 0:24:37.800 or more from the capture pen itself, and usually oriented 0:24:37.840 --> 0:24:43.000 towards the south, so that prevailing southwesterly winds would envelop 0:24:43.080 --> 0:24:46.719 an approaching herd in its own dust cloud, blinding it. 0:24:48.119 --> 0:24:52.480 To start the action, mustangers divided themselves into three groups, 0:24:52.840 --> 0:24:57.040 each with different rolls. A group of well mounted riders, 0:24:57.480 --> 0:25:01.720 the Adventadores, had the task of startling the herd into 0:25:01.760 --> 0:25:05.400 flight and pushing it towards the funnel leading to the pin. 0:25:06.320 --> 0:25:09.119 The herd would find itself squeezed into a flight path 0:25:09.440 --> 0:25:13.159 by a second group of mustangers, the Questos, who were 0:25:13.200 --> 0:25:17.560 the most skilled riders and whose role consists of conducting 0:25:17.640 --> 0:25:21.720 that dreadful mass of living beings by riding full gallop 0:25:21.760 --> 0:25:24.879 along the flanks and gathering there in the midst of 0:25:24.960 --> 0:25:29.920 suffocating dust the partial herds, which sometimes unite at the 0:25:29.920 --> 0:25:33.840 sound of the terror of a large herd. Burlandier rode 0:25:35.000 --> 0:25:37.720 at the moment of truth as the wide eyed horses 0:25:37.760 --> 0:25:41.200 were sweeping at breakneck speed into the trap. A third 0:25:41.240 --> 0:25:46.480 group of mustangers, the inseradoris, were charged with closing the gate, 0:25:47.080 --> 0:25:50.199 sometimes dashing in to open it for an instant to 0:25:50.280 --> 0:25:55.359 allow stallions in older horses to escape. The scenes that 0:25:55.480 --> 0:25:59.399 followed had such an emotional load that Messioneiro's had a 0:25:59.440 --> 0:26:04.240 special vocabulary for them. It was a jargon rife with 0:26:04.359 --> 0:26:10.760 the language of death. Some horses died from sentimiento are 0:26:10.880 --> 0:26:18.160 broken heartedness over capture. Others from DSpace show nervous rage. 0:26:18.280 --> 0:26:24.560 Another term of art was adiando stinking. It referred to 0:26:24.640 --> 0:26:28.800 a capture corral ruined for use from the effect of 0:26:28.960 --> 0:26:32.800 having been too often jammed with panicked and dying animals. 0:26:34.080 --> 0:26:39.040 Burlandier ended his story this way. When these animals find 0:26:39.080 --> 0:26:44.200 themselves enclosed, the first to enter fruitlessly search for exits, 0:26:44.480 --> 0:26:48.800 and those in the rear trample over the first. It 0:26:48.920 --> 0:26:52.200 is rare that in one of these chases. A large 0:26:52.240 --> 0:26:55.080 part of the horses thus trapped do not kill one 0:26:55.080 --> 0:26:59.439 another in their efforts to escape. It has happened that 0:26:59.480 --> 0:27:03.000 the Messing Arrows have trapped at one swoop more than 0:27:03.119 --> 0:27:13.080 one thousand horses, of which not a fifth remained. What 0:27:13.240 --> 0:27:18.120 made these Southern planes horse trade expeditions shadowy and northern 0:27:18.160 --> 0:27:22.360 planes for activities well known, was actually a simple difference. 0:27:23.440 --> 0:27:28.240 The horse trade featured live, not dead animals, so horses 0:27:28.320 --> 0:27:32.560 became their own transportation to markets. There was no need 0:27:32.600 --> 0:27:38.159 for corporate investment in freight wagons, steamboats, or shipping. That 0:27:38.280 --> 0:27:42.960 also meant a meager historical trail in an economy for 0:27:43.000 --> 0:27:47.600 which so few day by day accounts exist. Eighteen o 0:27:47.840 --> 0:27:52.480 eight eighteen oh nine, Trader Anthony Glasses Journal, conveying a 0:27:52.560 --> 0:27:56.840 story I told in a prior podcast episode, provides one 0:27:56.840 --> 0:28:00.600 of the best looks at the otherwise little known Western 0:28:00.640 --> 0:28:05.320 horse trade. Glasses Journal allows us to recreate a history 0:28:05.320 --> 0:28:09.360 in our heads where one had barely been imaginable before. 0:28:10.880 --> 0:28:13.920 It took a full decade after Spain in the US 0:28:13.960 --> 0:28:16.960 finally agreed on the Red and Arkansas Rivers as the 0:28:17.040 --> 0:28:21.280 official boundary between the two North American powers before another 0:28:21.359 --> 0:28:25.520 American horse trader would leave us an account rivaling Glasses. 0:28:26.440 --> 0:28:30.159 In those years, scores very likely hundreds of unknown and 0:28:30.400 --> 0:28:35.680 undocumented American horse traders traversed the plains, running wild horses, 0:28:35.960 --> 0:28:40.160 trading for animals from the Indians, and probably encouraging such 0:28:40.200 --> 0:28:43.520 a general theft of horses across the West that one 0:28:43.560 --> 0:28:48.280 observer estimated that ten thousand were stolen from Spanish ranches 0:28:48.320 --> 0:28:52.800 almost every year. Murky accounts exist for a few of 0:28:52.800 --> 0:28:59.480 these traders. The Osages plundered Alexander McFarlane and John Lemons's 0:28:59.600 --> 0:29:05.920 Mustaging party in eighteen twelve. August Pierre Chateau, Jules Demon 0:29:06.440 --> 0:29:10.360 and Joseph Philibert of Saint Louis opened up a significant 0:29:10.360 --> 0:29:14.680 horse trade with the Comanches and Rappa Hose between eighteen 0:29:14.800 --> 0:29:20.160 fifteen and eighteen seventeen, and Cafias Ham and David Burnett 0:29:20.560 --> 0:29:24.840 became modestly famous horse traders in the same years, as 0:29:24.920 --> 0:29:28.360 did Jacob Fowler, who left us a journal written in 0:29:28.440 --> 0:29:34.320 phonics along with Hugh Glynn. Then came Thomas James of 0:29:34.440 --> 0:29:38.920 Saint Louis, whose book Three Years among the Indians and 0:29:39.040 --> 0:29:43.680 Mexicans left us a nicely close grained look at the 0:29:43.800 --> 0:29:48.800 Mustanger's west, James set a pattern to come. He was 0:29:48.840 --> 0:29:52.400 both a mountain man and a mustanger. He had first 0:29:52.440 --> 0:29:55.640 gone west by ascending the Missouri to the Three Forks 0:29:55.680 --> 0:29:58.960