Miscellaneous Legends
The White Steed of the Prairies
The wild horses of the plains were descendants of the Spanish horses that escaped from the conquistadores of the sixteenth century. Under the favorable conditions these horses multiplied and spread from Mexico and Texas up the great plains corridor to Canada. They went in large herds, each led by a stallion. Now, this stallion was leader because he was the best horse in the herd. He led by fleetness of foot, by courage to fight, and by strength sufficient to kill or drive out every horse that disputed his supremacy. Not only did he lead the horses, but he actually herded them, controlled them, dominated them. By the very law of survival he had to be unusual. Not only did he have to be strong and fleet, but he had to be wise and wary as well, full of good horse sense.
When settlers began to push on to the plains of the West, and to capture and domesticate wild horses, it was quite natural for the leaders of these herds to captivate the imagination of the vaqueros and cowboys. The stallion leader of the herd was the object of desire of every man of the West. Where a man was little better than the horse he rode, he naturally desired a good horse above all else, save a saddle to house him under. Now, the leader of the herd was not only a good horse; he was the best horse, with all the endurance, speed and intelligence that were so dear to the riders of the plains. These qualities made him the object of desire of every plainsman, and the hero among them was the man who could take the stallion leader. But to take the leader today was not to destroy leadership. Tomorrow another stallion would lead the herd. There was always a leader. The individual horse might be captured, but the quality of leadership could never be caught—it resided in the herd because it was a part of it. Now, it was this quality of leadership that became the object of desire. But since this quality of leadership could never be captured, the desire for it was a desire for the unattainable, the impossible.
Out of these conditions and facts grew the legend of the White Steed of the Prairies, that superb horse, a super-horse that had all the desirable and unusual qualities, all the speed, all the endurance, all the beauty that imagination could give him. Since he had all these attributes, everybody wanted him, but nobody could take him. He was ubiquitous, ethereal, a mere ideal, a phantom of the plainsman’s mind, and he ranged from Canada to Mexico.
One of the best accounts of the White Steed of the Prairies, or the Pacing White Stallion, as he was sometimes called, was given by Kendall,1 when writing of his experiences in Texas in 1841.
“Many were the stories,” he says, “told that night in camp, by some of the old hunters, of a large white horse that had often been seen in the vicinity of the Cross Timbers and near Red River. That many of these stories, like a majority of those told by gossiping campaigners, were either apocryphal or marvelously garnished, I have little doubt; but that such a horse has been seen, and that he possesses wonderful speed and great powers of endurance, there is no reason to disbelieve. As the camp stories ran, he has never been known to gallop or trot, but paces faster than any horse that has been sent out after him can run; and so game and untiring is the ‘White Steed of the Prairies,’ for he is well known to trappers and hunters by that name, that he has tired down no less than three race-nags, sent expressly to catch him, with a Mexican rider well trained to the business of taking wild horses. * * *
“The Mexican who was sent out to take the wild steed, although he mounted a fresh horse as the one he was riding became tired, was never near enough the noble animal to throw a slip-noose over his head, or even to drive him into a regular gallop. Some of the hunters go so far as to say that the white steed has been known to pace his mile in less than two minutes, and that he can keep up this rate of speed until he has tired down everything in pursuit. Large sums of money have been offered for his capture, and the attempt has been frequently made; but he still roams his native prairies in freedom, solitary and alone. The fact of his being always found with no other horse in company is accounted for, by an old hunter, on the ground that he is too proud to be seen with those of his class, being an animal far superior in form and action to any of his brothers. This I put down as a rank embellishment, although it is a fact that the more beautiful and highly formed mustangs are frequently seen alone.”2
Kendall’s account in the New Orleans Picayune inspired the poet to sing of this wonderful horse. The following, by J. Barber, appeared in The Democratic Review for April, 1843:3
The White Steed of the Prairies
Mount, mount for the chase! let your lassos be strong,
And forget not sharp spur and tough buffalo thong;
For the quarry ye seek hath oft baffled, I ween,
Steeds swift as your own, backed by hunters as keen.
Fleet barb of the prairie, in vain they prepare
For thy neck, arched in beauty, the treacherous snare;
Thou wilt toss thy proud head, and with nostrils stretched wide,
Defy them again, as thou still hast defied.
Trained nags of the course, urged by rowel and rein,
Have cracked their strong thews in the pursuit in vain;
While a bow-shot in front, without straining a limb,
The wild courser careered as ’twere pastime to him.
Ye may know him at once, though a herd be in sight,
As he moves o’er the plain like a creature of light—
His mane streaming forth from his beautiful form
Like the drift from a wave that has burst in the storm.
Not the team of the Sun, as in fable portrayed,
Through the firmament rushing in glory arrayed,
Could match, in wild majesty, beauty and speed,
That tireless, magnificent, snowy-white steed.
Much gold for his guerdon, promotion and fame,
Wait the hunter who captures that fleet-footed game;
Let them bid for his freedom, unbridled, unshod,
He will roam till he dies through these pastures of God.
And ye think on his head your base halters to fling!
So ye shall—when yon Eagle has lent you his wing;
But no slave of the lash that your stables contain
Can e’er force to a gallop the steed of the Plain!
His fields have no fence save the mountain and sky;
His drink the snow-capped Cordilleras supply;
’Mid the grandeur of nature sole monarch is he,
And his gallant heart swells with the pride of the free.
The legend of the White Steed of the Prairies has almost died out. One can pick it up now only from the older generation, from those who have recollections of the open country when Texas was held together by rawhide and dominated by horsemen. When one of these early Texans was asked if he had heard of the Pacing White Stallion, he replied: “Yes, I have heard of him from the Canadian to the Llano.” But one finds little variation in these stories. There is no room for the White Steed of the Prairies in a country where horses are no longer wild and free. He is now all but a forgotten memory of a past unreality.4
Notes
1 George Wilkins Kendall gave this account in his Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition, New York, 1844, pp. 89–90. Prior to this Kendall had written some sketches for the New Orleans Picayune, one of which was about the Pacing White Stallion. It was this account that he incorporated in the book. Doubtless many of the later written accounts are based upon Kendall’s.
2 The reason some of the mustangs were alone was due to the fact that the stallion leader had driven the younger and weaker horses from the herd. Since these horses were young, they would naturally often have good form. The color is hard to account for. Many of the mustangs were vari-colored, but it is doubtful if there was ever a solid white horse.
3 The poem appeared in The Democratic Review, XII, 367f., accompanied by a condensation of Kendall’s story taken from the Picayune.
4 Destined to be preserved for generations yet in his offspring in Emerson Hough’s North of 36. Zane Grey has also introduced him into fiction, in The Last of the Plainsmen.—Editor.