Shoshone Horses
by Joe Greig


In the late forties there were numerous feral horses on the Wind River Indian Reservation. Most of them ran in herds north of Fort Washakie, and they were most numerous on the Big Horn Flats, and in Big Horn Draw. These horses had owners, but left to themselves they ran wild like their mustang ancestors, tangled Rastafarian manes hanging shoulder length and scraggly tails infused with weeds and dried gumbo mud. The wild horses in the Red Desert were no more untamed or unmanaged. Horses owned by Bob Harris, an affluent Shoshone rancher, ran with the rest, but had a different look, sleeker and better kept than the wild ones.

With the exception of land along the North Fork of the Little Wind and Sage Creek, most of the area between Fort Washakie and the Big Wind River was open range. Horses and cattle standing on the highway were frequently hit by automobiles going too fast to stop, especially after topping a hill and finding a herd standing along and on the road.

Lightening also took its toll on the herds, especially those that grazed on the Big Horn Flats and around Winkleman Dome. As a child, I was amazed that after lightening killed one of those horses the wood ticks stuck on it were left alive, loosed themselves from the dead horse and crawled away.

On some summer nights, one of the herds, when venturing close to the Winkleman Dome oil field where I lived, would smell the green grass on our lawn and break though the fence to graze. The dogs would wake us up with their barking, and we would get out of bed to chase the horses back into the sage brush, whooping and hollering. When by some bad roll of the dice two herds met, the stallions would fight to keep their mares from being purloined by the rival. But sometimes, a stallion made off with mares that were not his.

Near the end of that decade, it was clear the range was over grazed and the number of horses would have to be reduced. A roundup was proposed, and while mounted horsemen played a part, an airplane did most of the wrangling, sweeping out of the sky to buzz the herds into a stampeding fury, a crazed lot thundering across the prairie oblivious to anything in their way.

One herd approached the steep slope near our house where the Big Horn Flat drops off into the draw, and a fleet sorrel mare, well out front of the rest, ran right off into space. Unable to retain her footing, she fell and cascaded end over end, then rolled an additional hundred feet to the bottom of the hill. Those of us who watched were amazed that after that long tumble she was able to pick herself up and rejoin the race to distant catch pens and waiting trucks in the draw where the horses would be confined and later shipped to sale barns and slaughter houses.

Things were never the same after that roundup, although Bob Harris continued to run his horses on the flats and in the draw. But the wild ones were gone for good except, occasionally, through these many years, they thunder out of the sky, that lead mare running down the low flying wrangler’s airplane, leaving propeller bent, and trampled wings torn and scattered, as it tumbles into Big Horn Draw.

Though I’m the only one who sees it, I’m amazed that after those horrendous crashes, the pilot always walks away, that sorrel mare pausing just long enough for him swing up on her back, and then she thunders off in a fiery arch up into the sun, the pilot clinging to her tangled mane.

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