Home on the Range

[CDE Driver]

Wonderful photos, thank you for sharing them. You must be in Warm Springs. I live in Sisters and am very familiar with the area.

If you ever want to come here for a visit let me know!

[Pat9]

Thank you for the invitation. We've lived in the area many years and grew up here, so we know much of it by heart. I do envy you the number of nice driving roads you have ready access to. The last time we had a driving horse, we were in Bend, and we hauled out to Fox Butte and some of the other areas out there for fun trips, doing China Hat area for short days.

[Sdhaurmsmom]

Pat9,
What are all the dead snag trees on the ground in these photos? Why so many trees of a particular size and age, down and dead? Were they felled on purpose because they were an invasive species, or did disease single them out?

So many silver snags on the ground among the green grass.

[Seven]

Amazing photos! Thanks for posting them!

[Pat9]

Most of them are firekill. Some were probably taken down because Juniper is invasive and a nuisance as well as a terrible water hog, but some tribal members consider it an important cultural element and will not manage it.

Brush fires go through quickly, and if there is a lot of fuel, the trees burn into little ashen circles. If there isn't much fuel, most of the trees survive, and a few are burned enough to die and topple later. Since it's so dry, it takes a very long time for the trees to rot away - decades at the least, and probably close to a hundred years for a total breakdown (just guessing).

I also thought it was interesting that those dead trees kept blocking my views!

The seeming consistency in size and age comes from the periodic fires. Fire goes through, everything is toast, everything grows back, and another fire comes. That's a normal cycle for that country, and if it is not interfered with, that keeps the juniper under control. There are many pictures of areas from early in the 20th century and late in the 19th which show open sagelands, and today those sage savannas are a juniper forest.

Juniper can be made into furniture, but so many of the trees are small, that it is hard to find good logs to use. It does make good fence posts - a good post has been known to wear out several holes - but the labor to cut and prepare the fence post is too expensive when you can go get steel fence posts or pre-made wooden posts with less work.

[Pat9]

New photos up, including some behavioral activity and lots of birds sitting on horses.

Yes, I am aware that birds enjoy picking ticks, etc., but it is not a common sight around here, so I was surprised to see one band of horses that had a number of members wearing birds. One Appy has three birds. I presume they wanted ticks, or hair for nesting...except these horses were all pretty slick. Maybe they just wanted a ride.

Got one picture of your classic "geld him or shoot him immediately" stallion. The other stallions were far better looking, and I hope this sorry beast was a bachelor.

One stallion didn't like my stopping to take pictures, so he alerted his mares, sending them downslope behind the alpha mare, and he hung back to keep an eye on me. Suddenly he put his head down, checked his dung pile (stallions mark their territory this way), gave it a good sniff, then added another layer before giving me another look and catching up with the family.
Perhaps it was someone else's dung pile and he was just crowning it.

These newer additions are all Paiute horses, which seem to be much better bred than the horses on the north end of the res. These horses are sturdier and taller, and with the exception of old "Nuts", are darn fine looking. This side of the res does have more water and better feed in some areas, but I think a large part of the better quality is the addition of a few TB -type stallions.

I have now had two people offer me a couple trailer loads of horses, and I think they were only half-joking.

If someone out there likes a horse and catches it, he then contacts the other area ranchers to see if any of them lay claim to it (unless it's branded, and then it must be bought or turned loose). If nobody has a prior claim to the horse, you now have a free horse to brand and break. I don't know what the exact sale policy for non-res people might be, or if there is one. These horses are tremendously overpopulated, and most of these will be suffering by winter.

These would make terrific lower-level eventers, field hunters, Pony Club horses, or endurance horses after you get the bugs out of their brains. Their dressage may not be stylish, but they're going to be great cross country packers.

http://pets.webshots.com/album/57760...qlm?vhost=pets

[HOOF123]

I'll be really interested to see those photos...if the thread dies, I hope you'll at least PM me a link! I'm in NM and all the horses I've worked with have been from the Navajo Nations according to the brands, so I'm curious to see what the ones you're seeing look like. I'm kind of curious, because I do some shoeing on the various reservations, and it seems that there is a certain "type" of Rez horse that looks different from most other crossbreds I've seen--although most that I've seen off the Rez have had a somewhat traceable heritage. I've actually only rarely seen feral horses on the reservations, although I've been told there are quite a few running around with the NN brand but no apparent owner.

HOOF123, I just want to address your comment because it's been kind of grating on me...Native Americans aren't some kind of tourist attraction. To be sure, some of the tribes put on demonstrations and displays for tourists, but the people themselves are just people. Sometimes I think the reservations are like a different country--as Pat9 said, the poverty is incredible to most of us on this board, who tend to be very privileged--but they're still just people.

I see Native Americans on a daily basis--heck, my mother-in-law is Cherokee. It's cool to see the rituals and dances that they put on for show, don't get me wrong. But getting to "see" Native American people? Usually when I see them they're wearing blue jeans and tee shirts and going about their business like anyone else.

i mean i wish we were like them

[jeano]

If you've never been to Pendleton, go for the roundup. You'll see some amazing Native American horsemanship. In a lot of the West, the Cowboys ARE Indians.

We used to live up in the Tri-cities in eastern WA and spent many, many weekends down in Oregon, just rockhounding and finding hot springs. I never got to ride there, but a thousand years ago I rode with the Navajo on the Big Rez, only place on this continent where you'll find a stallion and a band of mares with foals at their sides packing dudes around. Those fellows can really ride. There was one teenage boy showing off, riding with just a saddle pad (no girth, no stirrups) cantering through the canyon in deep sand and water, flying lead changes every other stride. Just because he could. I had a sweatshirt I had tied around my waist by the sleeves that kept coming undone--this kid would do a flying dismount, pick it up for me, leap back on his pony, back to the flying lead changes, laughing the whole time. I was riding the herd stallion and the wranglers were proud of me for having enough sense not to hang on his mouth and piss him off. He was some horse.

I worked and lived on the Big Rez for six months when I was in college. There were still many folks living in traditional hogans. The Navajo are some of the kindest, smartest, funniest people I've ever met. Very courteous, very spiritual, too.