Northwestern States Wild Horse Roundup Circa 1939

Wild Horse Round-Up - 1939

Monday, Feb. 20, 1939

Tens of thousands of "mustangs" and "fuzztails" - the wild descendants of horses that, have strayed from ranches - used to roam the vast sagebrush ranges of the U. S. Northwest. In wilder days, wild horse roundups were carried on periodically for the Portland, Ore. firm of Schlesser Bros., then the world's biggest packers of horsemeat.

In five years (1925-30) the Schlessers slaughtered some 300,000 head of outlaws, salted their meat in 51 -gallon barrels, shipped most of it to Holland and Scandinavia. Hooves, ears, tails were sold for glue and oil; ground bones and scraps for chickenfeed ; hides for baseballs and shoes ; blood for fertilizer; casings for German sausage. Then the day of the wild horse began to wane, and the Schlessers turned to packing beef.

As winter last week finally settled over the "horse heaven" country of central Washington, the weather-wise Yakima Indians had already finished their first wild horse round-up of the year, thus reducing by 200 the estimated 2,500 outlaws still remaining in Oregon and Washington.

Whooping like their warrior ancestors, the Indians rode their own cayuses in hot pur suit of the outlaws, chased them out of deep canyons into trap corrals, where long fences led them into bottlenecks.

Cattlemen and the U. S. Government have two principal reasons for desiring a clean-up of the remaining wild horses: it will save the range for livestock, remove the menace of the dread dourine (genital) diseases often found in wild horses.
- http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760780,00.html

Click on title above for original article and a great equine related site;
http://www.thepenzancehorse.com/2009/NEWSLETTERS/SEPT09/sept09.htm