Nokota - Legend of the Badlands

The Last Wild Horses in North Dakota
Gradually, these Native horses were discarded. Trucks and tractors eventually replaced the Native horse as the tool of choice. Once invaluable, they were now considered vermin. Many were cut loose – to find forage as they could.

The brutal onslaught of America’s Great Depression gripped the land. Competition for grazing became a do-or-die issue for the ranchers of the Northern Plains. There was no room for compassion to people struggling to feed their children. Wild horses were a pest comparable to a plague of locusts. The ranchers hunted them down with the same relentless spirit they hunted the Sioux of the past. The number of horses put into the “can” in this era – sold to slaughter - is unknowable, but often a too likely fate.

The smartest of these Indian and Indian-cross horses fled into the Badlands. The Badlands were an inhospitable land at best and a nightmare at worst. Even the hard-pressed ranching community gave it wide berth – it offered them little sustenance. In the Badlands, these horses joined the wild herds that existed from the time of the Marquis’ precipitous departure in the late 1800’s.

With such severe pressure on their survival – the Native horses were honed further – into a supremely competent and amazingly smart type. The heavier draft lines were the first to disappear. They represented too much value in terms of weight for the canneries and their bulk made them helpless when pursued. Through Nature’s – and Man’s – selection process, the survivors in the Badlands shed many of the attributes of their domestic lineage and increasing resembled the Indian ponies of the Sioux’s past glory.

The Park Horses – Trapped within the Theodore Roosevelt Park
In the 1950’s, the Badlands were fenced in and enclosed to form the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The Native horses were trapped within. By the 1960’s, these Park horses were the last wild horses remaining in the vast and desolate state of North Dakota.

Holed up in the Badlands, these Native horses lived a tenuous existence. Though their survival skills were unparalleled, they had no peace from their greatest predator-Man. In the 1970s, the Park campaigned and succeeded in being excluded from the federal “Wild Horse Annie” law that offered some rights and protection to the remaining wild horses throughout the United States. The management of the Park’s feral herds fluctuated under the whims of the various Park Administrators.

A common thread in the management’s policies was the periodic roundups of the wild horses. Using helicopters, banned under the Wild Horse Annie law, and teams of outriders, the Park made sure the feral horses were culled to prevent overpopulation and/or inbreeding – depending upon the various Administrator’s mandate. The roundups were much-anticipated events for the local residents. The thrill of the chase and the spectacle of the running herds never failed to attract an eager crowd.

The horses were driven up to 80 miles a day – through the treacherous Badlands terrain. The stallions screamed their fury, while the mares - exhausted and drenched with sweat - were frantic to keep their foals close. It was a given that several horses would be lost in the roundups – with legs broken or hearts literally bursting. And at the conclusion, these terrorized horses were driven onto stock trucks with electric cattle prods with the adrenaline-pumped crowds looking on. Then taken to the local auction, most of the Park horses were sold to the killers.

Finally in the late 1970s, the Park Administration decided to completely change the bloodlines of the Park horses. The predominance of certain color types – the blue roans and the greys in particular – led them to conclude that the Park herds were dangerously inbred. To achieve their objective, it was decided to remove and/or kill the dominant herd stallions within the Park and introduce new lines, including Quarter Horses, Arabians, some BLM stallions, and even a Half-Shire bucking horse.

The argument of inbreeding seemed weak in the face of the incredible durability of these horses. The very decision to eliminate the herd stallions was made because, clearly, there was no way for an introduced stallion to successfully compete against any of the Park stallions. These were hardly indications of a weakened, inbred type of horse.

While there had never been any question that the Park horses were of mixed heritage – they still represented a unique type no longer seen in the Dakotas – the Native horse of both traditional Indian type and the early era ranch cross. Removing the dominant stallions would forever alter the phenotype of these hardy survivors in the Badlands.