12-07-2021, 06:50 AM
On the Wind River Indian Reservation, two animals slip between the cracks of what is wild and what isn’t.
Across Indian Country, tribes are working to restore one species and sustainably manage the other. Both buffalo and horses have troubled places in the American West, mirror images of wildness, colonialism and Indigeneity. Two ungulates occupy the same physical territory — but on seemingly different maps. Each testifies to the unresolved questions of what, and who, the West is for.
WHEN ASKED HOW MANY WILD HORSES are on the Wind River Reservation, Art Lawson, the Shoshone and Arapaho Fish and Game director, couldn’t say. “We really don’t have a clue,” said Lawson. “We have 2.2 million acres that we cover, and I only have three wardens and two U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologists.” But he thinks 10,000 might be a reasonable estimate: “We’ve got to be close to that.”
Whatever the population is, Lawson says that it’s growing fast, doubling every four years. Now, because of the added grazing pressure, mule deer no longer migrate through the reservation, and bighorn sheep are growing scarce. “There’s no feed — there’s nothing but horse trails,” Lawson said.
To the untrained eye, wild horses are indistinguishable from captive ones. They’re lively, well-fed, and colorful enough to fill out a glossary of horse terms: palominos, roans, sorrels, pintos. They look more comfortable on the open range than the skittish pronghorn antelope loping through the same sagebrush. They gather in small herds of about 10, with a single male orbiting the rest, as if to maintain order. When humans approach, the horses form a neat line, like mismatched dominoes staggered behind the stallion.
They range over vast stretches of unirrigated sagebrush steppe, up to the dense groves of aspen that begin above 7,000 feet. Their watering areas and crisscrossing trails are worn to powder. In places, 4-foot-wide heaps of manure known as “stud piles” mark the stallions’ territorial claims. They’re so numerous now that they rival cattle for the distinction of being the dominant animal in the landscape.
The reservation was established in the 1860s and overseen by the Bureau of Indian Affairs with the goal of assimilating the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho into farmers and ranchers. This left wildlife to fill out the margins, usually in mountainous terrain or areas with poor access to water. Back then, there was constant pressure from hunters. Now, horses are competing with both wildlife and cattle for the landscape’s limited forage.
With limited rangeland already under pressure, some ranchers worry that setting aside acreage for buffalo implies taking land away from cattle and sheep. Across the West, many have protested buffalo reintroduction on those very grounds. But that’s just one part of the story.
“It’s not too hard to see racism around here,” Jason Baldes told me on the first day we met. He wore his long hair in a thick braid and two rings in each ear. “The last racist slur I got was opening the gate to the buffalo.” Two men drove by, “calling me ‘prairie n****r’ — that kind of crap.” He steered the conversation along, almost dismissively. “This is way bigger than any of those knuckleheads that want to yell at me.”
https://www.hcn.org/issues/53.12/indigen...-belonging
![[Image: dances-with-wolves.gif]](https://c.tenor.com/t8MJA0xxDV8AAAAC/dances-with-wolves.gif)
Across Indian Country, tribes are working to restore one species and sustainably manage the other. Both buffalo and horses have troubled places in the American West, mirror images of wildness, colonialism and Indigeneity. Two ungulates occupy the same physical territory — but on seemingly different maps. Each testifies to the unresolved questions of what, and who, the West is for.
WHEN ASKED HOW MANY WILD HORSES are on the Wind River Reservation, Art Lawson, the Shoshone and Arapaho Fish and Game director, couldn’t say. “We really don’t have a clue,” said Lawson. “We have 2.2 million acres that we cover, and I only have three wardens and two U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologists.” But he thinks 10,000 might be a reasonable estimate: “We’ve got to be close to that.”
Whatever the population is, Lawson says that it’s growing fast, doubling every four years. Now, because of the added grazing pressure, mule deer no longer migrate through the reservation, and bighorn sheep are growing scarce. “There’s no feed — there’s nothing but horse trails,” Lawson said.
To the untrained eye, wild horses are indistinguishable from captive ones. They’re lively, well-fed, and colorful enough to fill out a glossary of horse terms: palominos, roans, sorrels, pintos. They look more comfortable on the open range than the skittish pronghorn antelope loping through the same sagebrush. They gather in small herds of about 10, with a single male orbiting the rest, as if to maintain order. When humans approach, the horses form a neat line, like mismatched dominoes staggered behind the stallion.
They range over vast stretches of unirrigated sagebrush steppe, up to the dense groves of aspen that begin above 7,000 feet. Their watering areas and crisscrossing trails are worn to powder. In places, 4-foot-wide heaps of manure known as “stud piles” mark the stallions’ territorial claims. They’re so numerous now that they rival cattle for the distinction of being the dominant animal in the landscape.
The reservation was established in the 1860s and overseen by the Bureau of Indian Affairs with the goal of assimilating the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho into farmers and ranchers. This left wildlife to fill out the margins, usually in mountainous terrain or areas with poor access to water. Back then, there was constant pressure from hunters. Now, horses are competing with both wildlife and cattle for the landscape’s limited forage.
With limited rangeland already under pressure, some ranchers worry that setting aside acreage for buffalo implies taking land away from cattle and sheep. Across the West, many have protested buffalo reintroduction on those very grounds. But that’s just one part of the story.
“It’s not too hard to see racism around here,” Jason Baldes told me on the first day we met. He wore his long hair in a thick braid and two rings in each ear. “The last racist slur I got was opening the gate to the buffalo.” Two men drove by, “calling me ‘prairie n****r’ — that kind of crap.” He steered the conversation along, almost dismissively. “This is way bigger than any of those knuckleheads that want to yell at me.”
https://www.hcn.org/issues/53.12/indigen...-belonging
