Stampede of Wild Horses

Some of the most evanescent and exotic wildlife forms seen by Miller on his trips to and from the Wind River Mountains were the wild horses in their fleeting glory. Josiah Gregg, the noted western travel writer, claimed in 1844 that, on the Prairies, no other “feature of their natural history” was more “noble” than the “mustang or wild horse.” (Gregg, II, 206) Catlin praised them for their sagacity (Catlin, II, 57), and Miller admired them for their sheer aesthetic splendor. Nothing along their journeys, wrote Miller, gave the group “so much pleasure or caused such excitement, as the bands of wild horses that at intervals came under our view. The beauty and symmetry of their forms, their wild and spirited action, — long full sweeping manes and tails – variety of color, and fleetness of motion, — all combined to call forth admiration from the most stoical.” (Ross, 92)

Peter H. Hassrick