Wild Horses in Need; a Story with an Old West Flavor
An EquestrianMag Exclusive Article

Indians, wild horses, villains and heroes. This is a story straight out of the Old West. This is the stuff of Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey. In a grab for gold, Indians are cheated out of their land. Cattle are stolen and wild horses are rounded up in a range war. An unscrupulous villain emerges to help perpetuate the swindle and a group of unlikely heroes step in at the 11 th hour to try and save the day.

The amazing thing is that this story is not set in the 1800s. It is today. This story is not fiction and the 11 th hour is right now.

The victims, with the most immediate need, in this case, are a herd of horses. These horses are a special line of Shoshone horses. The bloodline of this herd goes back to the Discovery Expedition of Lewis and Clark.

The Shoshones have been breeding these horses for strength, stamina and gentleness for the past 200 years. They are not wild mustangs. They are much larger animals. They were used as Shoshone warhorses and later as ranch horses. For the past 75 – 85 years, the horses have roamed arid ranch lands and mountain ranges in Nevada.

Villains aplenty

There are villains enough to go around in this story. They include politicians from both sides of the political aisle, including Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid (Democrat, Nevada) and Pres. George W. Bush (Republican) and a whole host of others. But the story goes back much farther.

In 1863, the U.S. government signed a treaty of “peace and friendship”, the Treaty of Ruby Valley with the Shoshone nation. This was at the height of the Civil War. The upshot of this treaty was for the Shoshone to allow the U.S. to have free passage across Shoshone territory. It also gave the government and its citizens the right to prospect for gold and other minerals on Shoshone lands. This treaty was necessary to move much needed gold from California to the U.S. to pay for the war.

This treaty led to settlers moving into the Nevada territory and encroaching on the Shoshone lands. Gold was discovered in the territory and the Shoshones suddenly had permanent neighbors. Nevada became the 36 th state in 1864.

By 1925 the Shoshones had had enough. They went to court. The government’s argument boiled down to the claim that the treaty of 1863 gave the U.S. government the land held by the Shoshone tribe. The Shoshones, of course, disputed this. The court case languished in the bowels of the U.S. legal system for nearly 50 years. Nobody much cared. The land wasn’t good for much other than a few widespread ranches, cattle and some wandering bands of Shoshone wild horses.

In the meantime, a young Shoshone rancher named Dewey Dann bought land and established his ranch in 1937. He raised cattle, horses and children on arid high desert land that had little grass and lots of rocks and dust. Wild bands of Shoshone line horses also roamed across the plains and pastures. Among his children were two sisters Mary and Carrie.

In time Dewey Dann passed on. His daughters took over the ranch and raised cattle, horses and children of their own. That same 50-year period was a time of tremendous progress. Flying became an accepted way to travel. The nuclear age dawned and space exploration began. Little of this trickled down to affect the Shoshone and white ranchers in Nevada. They continued to raise cattle and horses just as they had for the past 100 years. Shoshone line wild horses roamed the plains and mountain ranges in splendid freedom. But, slowly the bite of change could be felt in the arid winds.

More gold was discovered under the buttes and rocky ledges. The government needed dump sites for nuclear waste materials and a place to test atomic bombs. Sparsely populated Nevada was the place.

Las Vegas sprang up, bringing with it a new group of immigrants and hordes of visitors. This new crop of settlers saw opportunity and seized political power. The voices of the Shoshones and their neighboring white ranchers were all but lost as tons of nuclear waste was buried under the land and gold hauled away.

Mary and Carrie Dann are unlikely activists, but they became incensed. The Bureau of Land Management began demanding lease payments on land they had used and grazed for nearly half a century. The sisters pushed the decades old court case to the Supreme Court.

In 1979, the U.S. Court of Claims essentially ruled that even if the government’s claim that the treaty of 1863 had given the land to the U.S., the government had never paid for it. The court awarded $26 million for the land. The value of the award was 15 cents per acre, the value of the land in 1863. Eighty percent of the Shoshone tribe voted not to accept the award

The award was, instead, accepted for the Shoshone by the Department of the Interior. The money sat in an account, accumulating interest for the next 30 years.

The Dann sisters became mothers and grandmothers. They continued to operate their ranch, land their father had purchased. They raised their cattle and horses. The wild horses roamed free. Yet, the problem was far from resolved.

The Dann ranch butts up to Yucca Mountain and the ever expanding Cortez gold mine, which is perhaps the largest gold cache in North America. According to government interpretation of the court action, this is public land and is to be mined by Placer Dome, Inc. This is land the Dann’s have been using to run cattle. It is land where wild Shoshone horses ran free. It is land that Placer Dome, Inc. needs to dig out the gold.

In 2002, the BLM began confiscating Dann cattle and horses, claiming the sisters were in arrears on grazing fees. The sisters claimed they did not owe any money for grazing land that belongs to the Shoshone people, not the U.S. Government. The BLM used helicopters and trucks to round up 232 Dann cows and about 1,000 domestic and wild horses. These horses included Shoshone wild horses. Forty armed agents kept the sisters, and their supporters, at bay while the seizure took place.

The BLM sold the cattle, kept the money and sued the sisters over $3 million for willful trespass. The BLM held the wild horses for adoption under the Wild Horses and Burros Protection Act of 1971.

A new fly lands in the ointment.

The Dann sisters still owned nearly 500 horses with no place to keep them. Many of these horses were free-roaming Shoshone line horses. Wild horses owned by the sisters.

Slick Gardner, a rancher in Santa Barbara County, California, saw an opportunity. He agreed to adopt the horses for only $1 per horse, a total of $494. He was also to pay for the required Coggon’s test and for shipping. On the day the horses were to be shipped, Gardner “forgot” his checkbook. The Western Shoshone Defense Project stepped in and wrote a check for $8,593 to pay these costs.

Gardner arranged to acquire nearly 1,000 horses, in all. In addition to the Dann horses, he “bought” Virginia Range wild horses and horses from other locations. It is not clear exactly what Gardner planned to do with the horses. What is clear is that he was not prepared to care for them. He did not have enough pasture or enough hay to feed 800 horses. Checks he wrote to buy the horses and feed bounced. He was unable to reimburse the Western Shoshone Defense Project. Horses that arrived in California sleek and fat began to lose weight and take on the shaggy appearance of animals carrying a parasite burden.

An unlikely heroine

A neighbor of Slick’s, Myrt Starr, watched the truckloads of horses being unloaded on the Gardner ranch. Starr, in her 60s, operated a petting zoo. She was the daughter of an old time mustanger and horse wrangler. She had owned or had been around horses all of her life. She recognized a disaster in the making.

Starr attempted to tell Slick that he could not support a large herd of horses on his property. She was ignored. Distressed, she watched the once proud herd slowly starve and become ill. Horses that had run wild and free, surviving wind and rain, drought, hail, wolves and mountain lions were no match for the cruel neglect of man. Starr began calling county officials, animal rights groups, the news media and anyone who would listen.

The county was reluctant to act because of the size of the problem. Taking charge of 800 horses is no small task. It is also expensive. Besides, county prosecutor funds were tied up with the Michael Jackson case.

Hildy Medina, a reporter for the Santa Barbara News Press, teamed up with Starr to bring the situation to public attention. By this time, the horses were beginning to die from starvation and lack of medical attention.

Eventually a not-for-profit, 501(c) (3) Corporation was established by concerned citizens. The corporation was named Wild Horses In Need and adopted the acronym WIN. The county was forced into the largest livestock abuse seizure in the history of the United States. In several groups, the horses were seized from the Gardner property and moved to a private ranch owned by one of the WIN members.

WIN began raising money to care for the horses and to find new homes for them. Some of the horses died. Others were beyond the point of saving and had to be euthanized. Wild horse protection organizations such has Let em Run, The Wild Horse Sanctuary, Horses in Texas and the International Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Burros have stepped in to help. Some of the horses have been shipped to ranges managed by these organizations.

Myrt Starr passed away on February 11, 2005. She did not live to see the heroes and heroines she rallied win this battle.

Currently, about 300 horses remain on the Jean-Marie Webster ranch in Santa Barbara County. The cost of feeding and caring for the horses is $4,000 per week. Every dollar donated to WIN goes for feed. Ms. Webster is carrying the burden of medical care and labor costs associated with this project.

Of the 300 remaining horses, about two-thirds are mares. Many of them are now having foals. The foals will not be old enough for shipping for several weeks. In the meantime, feed and veterinarian costs continue.

What must be done now

The most immediate need now, and for the next several months, is to raise money for food and medical care. Donations may be made to WIN by going to the website at www.wildhorsesinneed.org or by mailing checks to Wild Horses In Need, P.O. Box 824, Solvang, CA 93464, or to Wild Horses In Need, P.O. Box 208, Ojai, CA 90324.

Over the next few months, new homes must be found for the horses. It is hoped that the older horses, animals than have known only the wild, will be returned to open ranges where they can live out their lives wild and free. Younger animals will be candidates for adoption where they can be trained and used as domestic animals.

For more information about donating to this worthy cause or horse adoption, please visit the Wild Horses In Need website or call Ms. Webster at (805) 649-1321.

A political battle over wild horses continues beyond this group of Shoshone animals. In January 2005, Congress passed, and the President signed an appropriations bill that included an amendment permitting the sale of wild horses for slaughter. This amendment undoes much of the language of the Wild Horses and Burros Protection Act of 1971.

In L’Amour novels the hero always wins at the end. The hero defeats the villains, usually gets the girl and fades into a happy ending.

In this story, the ending will be different. Mountain slopes where proud Shoshone stallions once looked over bands of mares and foals will be smashed away as gold is extracted and nuclear waste materials deposited.

It is a story straight out of the Old West.

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