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Deanne Stillman

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Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West First Edition, Kindle Edition

by Deanne Stillman (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.4 51 ratings

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“A fascinating narrative with all the grace and power embodied in the wild horses that once populated the Western range . . . [A] magnificently told saga.” —Albuquerque Journal

A Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of the Year

Mustang is the sweeping story of the wild horse in the culture, history, and popular imagination of the American West. It follows the wild horse across time, from its evolutionary origins on this continent to its return with the conquistadors, its bloody battles on the old frontier, its iconic status in Buffalo Bill shows and early westerns, and its plight today as it makes its last stand on the vanishing range. With the Bureau of Land Management proposing to euthanize thousands of horses and ever-encroaching development threatening the land, the mustang’s position has never been more perilous. But as Stillman reveals, the horses are still running wild despite all the obstacles, with spirit unbroken.

Hailed by critics nationwide, Mustang is “brisk, smart, thorough, and surprising” (Atlantic Monthly).

“Like the best nonfiction writers of our time (Jon Krakauer and Bruce Chatwin come to mind), Stillman’s prose is inviting, her voice authoritative and her vision imaginative and impressively broad.” —Los Angeles Times

“Powerful . . . Stillman’s talent as a writer makes this impossible [to stop reading], to the mustang’s benefit.” —Orion

“A circumspect writer passionate about her purpose can produce a significant gift for readers. Stillman’s wonderful chronicle of America’s mustangs is an excellent example.” —The Seattle Times

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this epic history of wild horses, journalist and author Stillman (Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave) traverses her longtime beat and passion, the American West, for a detailed look at 400 years of New World history. Many readers may be unaware of the mustang's precarious political situation or that, currently, "a bizarre war is underfoot" against them; Nixon's landmark 1971 legislation protecting free-roaming horses was recently undone by President Bush (who, as governor of Texas, "presided over two of the country's three remaining horse slaughterhouses"). Today, there remain fewer than 18,000 wild horses and burros in Nevada, their primary habitat, a number down by nearly 30 percent in the past ten years. Decades of roundups and slaughters can be traced to federal programs for livestock farmers, beginning with the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, which make land cheap, grazing regulations lax and wild horses an official nuisance. The story of these beautiful, symbolic animals is certain to evoke passionate reactions in many readers, especially history buffs, animal lovers, farmers and politicians.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

“[T]he horse is our great silent witness. … [H]e knows too much, and we can’t take it.” Though in the end, Stillman may not quite pierce the fog of horror that drives people to do evil deeds, she shines light on the history of the horse in America. The desert environment seems to bring a wonderful languid quality to her prose, and she manages to turn the horse into an equine Forrest Gump, present at all the major moments in the history of the American West. Some critics complained, however, that Stillman stretches the definition of mustang to include any horse west of the Mississippi. And while some reviewers preferred the sections on Custer and the cowboys, others favored her story about modern-day efforts to save the mustang. All agreed, though, that something ought to be done for these glorious animals that have done so much to move America.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From Booklist

Mustangs, an iconic element of the American West, receive their due in this history of the horses of the New World. Stillman (Twentynine Palms, 2001) was moved by a 1998 massacre of 34 wild horses near Reno, Nevada, to delve into the saga of the mustang. Starting with the arrival of the modern horse as they accompanied the conquistadors in the early 1500s, the author follows the history of the wild herds to the present day. Mustangs were with Custer at the Little Bighorn. The little wild horses were stars in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show and later went on to fame in Hollywood westerns. And then came the mustangers—cowboys in a new tradition, rounding up the wild horses and selling them for dog food. Into this breach stepped “Wild Horse Annie” Johnston, who almost single-handedly got the Wild Horses and Burros Act passed, protecting the mustangs on public lands. But the controversy over these tough little horses has not abated, and Stillman brings their story to the present and the continued political maneuvering around the mustang question. --Nancy Bent

Review

A LOS ANGELES TIMES BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR Like the best nonfiction writers of our time (Jon Krakauer and Bruce Chatwin come to mind), Stillman's prose is inviting, her voice authoritative and her vision imaginative and impressively broad.” Los Angeles Times "A fascinating narrative with all the grace and power embodied in the wild horses that once populated the Western range by the hundreds of thousands . . . [A] magnificently told saga."- - Albuquerque Journal Powerful Stillman’s talent as a writer makes this impossible [to stop reading], to the mustang’s benefit." -- Orion "A circumspect writer passionate about her purpose can produce a significant gift for readers. Stillman's wonderful chronicle of America's mustangs is an excellent example."--Seattle Times "Brisk, smart, thorough, and surprising."--Atlantic Monthly "Stillman's work is a must-read, a must-know, and a call to action for all those who hope to save the American mustang."--The Equestrian News Rich imagery is a hallmark of Mustang More important, though, is the chronicle provided, for the days of the wild mustang are fleeting as the West becomes increasingly urbanized and as some humans become less, in a word, humane.” National Parks Traveler

About the Author

DEANNE STILLMAN is the author of Twentynine Palms, which Hunter Thompson called a strange and brilliant story by an important American writer. It was a Los Angeles Times bestseller and one of its Best Books of 2001. Her work appears in various publications, including the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, and Slate. For the past twenty years she has lived in Los Angeles, close to her beloved desert, which she has explored by foot and on horseback. The idea for Mustang originated ten years ago, when she began researching the Reno horse killings.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Horses Return

They must have known they were coming home for nothing else can explain their survival, and perhaps only that knowledge deep in their cells sustained them. Horses are animals of prey and they like the wide open and to be constrained on the decks in the hot sun or between decks without light or means of escape for two or three months would have overloaded their circuits. Threats hung in the air and everything was new and strange. Where once they had smelled land and grass and legumes, they now smelled salt air mixed with the galleon stench; where once they had heard the sounds of their own hooves on the fields of Europe, they now heard the uneasy creak of wood as the giant brigantines hove through walls of water; where once they had been calmed by the nuzzling and grooming of their band and family members in one another’s manes and necks, they now were held in place with slings and hoists, touched and reassured not by their own kind but by the men who were in charge of making sure they had safe passage. These were the horses that carried Spain to victory in the New World. During the years of the conquest, thousands of them were shipped across the Atlantic. More than half died on the way. Sometimes when rations ran low, they were killed for food. Sometimes the ships sank in hurricanes, taking the horses to a howling and watery grave, along with slaves who had been kidnapped from Africa and chained to one another in the ships’ galleys. Often the ships were becalmed midway; between 30 to 35 degrees north and south of the equator, the barometric pressure often increased, and the hot dry breezes called the westerlies stopped blowing. The procession of proud, defiant galleons would come to a halt, mired in the tropics for endless days, their massive sails limp in the blistering sun, and the cargo man and animal alike slowly going mad. At that point, it was time to lighten the load. The horses were removed from their slings and taken above deck. At long last they saw light and could move freely, although they were still hobbled by their weak legs, and they probably faltered as the conquistadors urged them to the gangplank. Perhaps as they faltered they took in the sweep of the peripheries with their big satellite eyes and then gazed across the seas where an albatross was passing, following it all the way to the equator and beyond, and as their eyes swept the horizon, they may have experienced a vestigial sense memory of the wide-open space in the New World where they had once roamed before it had a name. Perhaps they felt that strange tingling of hot, dry no-wind that raises the hack on all living creatures and makes the neurons crackle and the ganglia dance, while sea monsters and dolphin pods and vast armies of seaweed growing from canyons whose rims were the ocean floor encircled the brigantines and waited. Perhaps, as they drank in the air for the last time they never felt more alive. And then they were spooked down the plank by thirsty, desperate men who cursed loudly and waved things to scare them, and they skidded down the gangway shrieking in fear, thrown to the seas so the armada could catch the wind. And as the sea was swallowing them, the ships rose in the water, lighter now, and the sails again furled with the crackling air, and the procession left the region that sailors came to call the horse latitudes. Of course, not all the horses were jettisoned on those terrible crossings. Perhaps the ones that were passed over when the men went below decks to make their grisly selection sensed in the way that all animals have a homing instinct, and generation after generation make their way back to their ancestral turf that they would soon be home, back on the continent that had spawned them, thirteen thousand years after they had dispersed and mysteriously disappeared from their birthplace. In fact, it must have been more than a sensation or a feeling; it must have been a kind of certainty that ran through their bones, down through their legs and into the ground they would soon churn up as they headed for the range. Yes, they had to know, for how else to explain the ease and speed with which they adapted to the American desert? The thing is, they just needed a little help . . . Horses have a way of entering dreams and visions, even those of people who do not know exactly what they are dreaming about. Long before the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés and his crew began crossing the sea, Montezuma, the ruler of the Aztec empire in the lush inland valley of Mexico, had dreamed of Quetzalcoatl. This was the fair-haired god who was said to have deserted his people; someday he would return, the dream said, riding a fierce animal and breathing fire. And that day would mark the beginning of the end. As the desire of the Old World was acted out on the stage of the New, Aztec artists drew pictures of the invasion, and two Spaniards wrote the whole thing down. One was the official scribe of the Cortés expedition, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who penned a detailed and evocative account of the landing and ensuing battles in his book The Conquest of New Spain. The other scribe was Cortés himself, who wrote a series of detailed letters to the man who had dispatched the conquerors, Charles V, the holy Roman emperor who was also known as the Prince of Light Cavalrymen. The letters of Cortés described the terrain, the Indians, their religion, the fighting, the gold. He was not as good a writer as Díaz del Castillo, but no matter; together, the two books are an astonishing chronicle of la conquista. But the bigger surprise is that they paint a portrait of the sixteen horses that began the chain of events that brought the Aztec empire to its knees. It is rare in historical chronicles especially those that recount battles and wars that we learn of the horses who served. Considering the millions of equine warriors who have figured in human history, there are precious few whose stories we know. Of course, there is Pegasus, the mythological winged horse who helped Bellerophon fight the Chimera and who gave Zeus thunderbolts, then returned to the sky as a constellation to live forever in the Western psyche as the ultimate symbol of freedom. There is Bucephalus, the mighty wild horse who carried Alexander the Great into ferocious battles from Macedonia to the Indian subcontinent. He was buried in a splendid tomb of gold leaf and alabaster tiles on the banks of the Hydaspes River, and in his honor Alexander built the city called Bucephala around it. And there is Incitatus, the famous white steed belonging to Caligula, the psychotic Roman emperor who raised appreciation of the horse to its most exquisite level. If there is anything good to be said for Caligula, it’s that he loved horses except when they belonged to his enemies, in which case he poisoned them. At home, Incitatus was his partner. Often the horse issued invitations for banquets at least, that’s whose name was at the bottom of requests. If guests declined, they were tortured. The many who came were greeted by Incitatus and a troop of slaves in a marble stall. Draped in a purple blanket of silk and a collar of gems, the equine host would dip into his ivory manger for a dinner of finely milled grain mixed with flakes of gold and drink wine from a golden goblet. Incitatus was also a priest, accompanying Caligula to public assemblies, then later promoted to senator. Just before he was assassinated, Caligula appointed Incitatus as his second in command. It would be a very long time before another figure of power acknowledged the role of Equus. Long after the fall of Rome and the fall of Constantinople and the rise and fall of old and new capitals and towns and kingdoms across all the lands, it was Hernando Cortés, one of the most audacious and bloodthirsty knights in human history, who finally spoke the truth: "We owe it all to God, and the horse." While 1492 is the year from which the New World is tracked, we must look to 1519 as the date that horses put hoof to soil on the mainland of their origin, pulling the chariot of Western empire behind them. After some months on Cuba, where he survived infighting and intrigue among other conquistadors who vied for prestigious expeditions, Hernando Cortés defied his nemesis the Cuban governor Diego Velázquez and headed across the Atlantic to take Mexico, departing quickly before he could be stopped. Like many of the sixteenth- century adventurers, he had come from Extremadura, Spain, a rural region about 120 miles north of Seville that became known as the cradle of the conquistadors. For the ambitious young men in the expanding empire, the call to travel was irresistible. The strange land across the sea was said to hold vast repositories of gold and human treasure. Sometimes, all the men in a particular extended family shipped out, and a few returned with tales of astonishing discoveries that would alter the faces of maps. In fact, Cortés’s second cousin was Francisco Pizarro, who was with Balboa at the first sight of the Pacific Ocean; later, after Cortés had laid waste to the Aztecs in Mexico, Pizarro wiped out the Incan empire in Peru.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003SNJYVC
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books; First edition (June 1, 2009)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 1, 2009
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 4554 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 371 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #1,023,109 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #120 in Biological Science of Horses
- #366 in History of Southwestern U.S.
- #615 in History of Western U.S.

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4.4 51 ratings

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Deanne Stillman

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Deanne Stillman's latest book is American Confidential, which was praised by Jerry Stahl, Darin Strauss, Gustavo Arellano, T. Jefferson Parker, and others. Air Mail described its prose as "dazzling and evocative," and excerpts are featured on Crime Reads and public seminar. She also wrote Blood Brothers, which received a starred review in Kirkus; was excerpted in Newsweek; won the Ohioana Award for nonfiction, and appears on several "best of the year" lists, including two at the millions and True West Magazine's. Deanne's other books include Desert Reckoning, based on a Rolling Stone piece; winner of the Spur and LA Press Club awards; a Southwest Book of the Year; an amazon editors pick, recipient of rave reviews in Newsweek, the LA Review of Books and elsewhere; Twentynine Palms, an LA Times bestseller and "best book of the year" that Hunter Thompson called “A strange and brilliant story by an important American writer,” currently under option, and Mustang, an LA Times "best book of the year," California Book Award silver medalist for nonfiction, recipient of rave reviews from Publishers Weekly (starred), the Atlantic to the Economist, now available in audio on bandcamp with Anjelica Huston, Frances Fisher, James Morrison, Richard Portnow, Wendie Malick, and John Densmore.

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Gregory Griffin

This book reviews native/iconic mustang history. It is a bittersweet account of the role mustangs.

Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2021

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This book will take you on a long perilous journey with them from the very beginning of their existence to Cortez in Mexico, Indian and US Calvary raids, the Civil War, their role in the Pony Express and Buffalo Bill's International Wild West Show's with Sitting Bull, to WWI and Cowboy Culture and Cattle/Livestock that are devastating and taking over wild horse ranges where the Buffalo Use to Roam. Will the mustangs survive humans is the question‽‽?

As I'm a wild horse advocate who opposes the Bureau of Land Management's efforts to exterminate mustangs from our public lsnds and their original prescribed land allotments to appease cattle/livestock interests. Wild Horse Gathers as BLM calls them are really cruel helicopter roundups and removals of iconic mustangs from our public lsnds to holding corrals or kill pens where many will ultimately be transported to foreign countries for meat and their hides. But mustangs at least for now continue to beat the deck our government has stacked against them. Mustangs still roam our public lands, running wild and free embodying the American Spirit of Freedom. But for how long, unless they are protected on our public lands???

As this book explains in interesting authentic detail, the history of mustangs started in North America some 15 million years as a Native Species per fossil remains and DNA dating, but they went extinct during the Ice Age. Wild horses were then reintroduced by Cortez in the 1500's and Spaniards in his conquests of the New World. And once reintroduced mustangs then served the indigenous people of America - Horse Nations, they carried immigrants/pioneers West to settle the frontier, charged with General Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. And have carried us in our Civil War and served along with humans especially in WWI, sacrificing themselves for their human riders in so many calvary charges. Wild horses definitely deserve better treatment than being sent to slaughter by the very people they so loyally have served for so long.

The book is a fascinating easy read for Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Lone Ranger fans like me.

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RyanRanch

Interesting horse history

Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2022

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This book provides a historical look at horses that were brought to the Americas and how important they still are to the future.
Mustangs are being eliminated by greedy cattle ranchers. Killed or imprisoned these glorious animals deserve life and freedom.
Mustang is heartbreaking and uplifting. Good read if you love horses or western history.

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amazon shopper

Historical view of the wild mustangs

Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2013

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As told by a very knowledgeable Ms. Stillman, the saga of man's mistreatment of the "wild ones" and greed is astounding and every bit true to known facts. I have been advocating for the wild mustangs and burros for several years and find it hard to understand how people can continue to pretend ignorance to what our tax payer dollars are used for, including managing the "wild ones" for extinction/extermination. The media is not examining facts, videos, written documentation as it glosses over what is happening and why the wild mustangs and burros are responsible for ruining the environment which even the federal agencies have finally "fessed up" to the environmental damage being done not by the horses, but by the cattle and sheep. We will lose these icons of our heritage if the public continues to allow this to happen. When they are gone, it will be too late to apologize, the tragedy is approaching faster and faster. I hope more people will read this, weep, and take action.

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Renee

Nice cover

Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2023

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I was real excited to get this but I was very disappointed that a book on mustangs included the rhetoric of white Europeans bringing all horses to American shores. We have been brain washed with that story. Horses were originated here long before the ice age. Everything did not die out in the ice age. The average temp was 40 degrees. The farther south you went the warmer it was. So I lost interest. It is a nice book but I hoped that it would have a bit better than the story of how they came. Many did come but there where horses here. The problem is our BLM is trying to rid this country of wild horses because they call them an invasive specie. They aren’t. It is a good story but it is misleading. It is the story we are led to believe. But the rest was very good. We need to keep interest and the love of mustangs going and stop them from being destroyed by our own government for the sole purpose of cheap grazing land for ranchers. .

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R Andrews

Great book. Fast shipping.

Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2021

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Great book. Very well researched and well written!

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Bill Baehr

Lots of Fun Information

Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2011

It's more about the history of the horse and the white man taking dominion of the West than about the mustangs. Entertaining reading and fun information about the horses of the West and the characters that used them. Mustangs, Feral Horses, and Horseman of the West would be a more descriptive title.

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