America’s Last Wild Horses, by Ryden, Hope
Inventory #: 00729
Price: $15.00

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America’s Last Wild Horses, by Ryden, Hope. E.P. Dutton: New York, 1970. Edition: First Edition stated. ISBN: 0525054774. Hardcover, 311 pages. Quarter bound in brown cloth over orange, paper-covered boards; gilt lettering on spine. Pictorial end papers showing a herd of wild horses running. Illustrated with over 50 black and white photographs, drawings and maps. Includes Notes and Sources for each chapter, and an Index.

Condition: Good in a Good jacket. Spine ends and upper corners bumped; front hinge starting; page edges darkened. Jacket creased and chipped at margins, and upper spine end has been reinforced with clear tape. All pages clean, unmarked, and secure in binding.

Contents: From the jacket

The story of the wild horse in America from the proud time when it escaped from the Conquistadors to its hunted and persecuted life today. For two centuries the wild horse bands shared the freedom of the plains with the buffalo and the Indian, until the West was opened to white settlement. From their ranks came the tough and intelligent Western cow pony that Indians, and later explorers and cowboys learned to rely on (when they could catch them). Pure Spanish mustangs are still found among the few wild bands which remain on barren mountain pastures and remote desert ranges. But in ten years even these will be gone, for they are unprotected by any law, and are mercilessly and most cruelly hunted by agents for canning factories.

Her pictures of the wild horse in action are both rare and remarkable. She has also impeccably researched the history of the horse in America, its Barb-Arab ancestry (acclimated to desert life, it enabled the Spanish explorers to penetrate the American continent), the profound change it wrought in the culture of the Plains Indians (and how that partnership led to its persecution, for only by attacking the Indians' horses could the Plains Indians be defeated), its contribution to such Western expeditions as Lewis and Clark's, and its essential role in the romantic era of the cowboy.

The hot-blooded horse who found freedom in America in the sixteenth century and had the stamina to survive and thrive and take part in the most dramatic turns of history in the West belongs to our heritage as a free creature.