As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
I have made mention of President Theodore Roosevelt, from the Elkhorn Ranch Days in the Dakota Badlands on the Missouri River in his horse Manitou, but have wondered how it was he happened to obtain in that 1880's period a bona fide Indian hunting pony.
One must understand livestock as I have explained here. For example, you want to get into the cattle business, so you go to auction or a private seller and ask to buy 100 head of heifers. You do not get to go into a heard of several hundred and pick out all the fancy or prime beef. What you get is a mix of about 30% fancy beef, 50% average beef, and 20% not so good beef.
This is not to say that the 20% culls are worthless, because time and again your best calves will come out of the average and culls, while the 30% fancy beef will for some reason not pass on their fine genetics or milk to grow big calves.
It is the same with horses. Yes you can go to a seller and pay top price for select picks, but if you need 20 head for your cowboys, you can not afford to pay a fortune for each horse. So you instead go out and buy a lot of horses in a pen, which will as Theodore Roosevelt explained have probably 5 good horses, 10 that buck and bite and 5 that try to kill you every day.
Cowboys like horses with some life in them, so the 15 culls are deemed acceptable mounts, until they bust you up one day.
After the Little Big Horn of June 25th, 1876, I came across a War Department protocol by then Colonel Nelson Appleton Miles in the following:
"They were told they must surrender their arms and war ponies. The latter would be sold and the proceeds returned to them in domestic stock;"
Miles, Nelson Appleton, 1839-1925. Serving the Republic
In order to end the Sioux terrorism against Crow Indians and white people, a policy appeared to take the war ponies away and replace them with plough horses and milch cows, and the firearms for stock or implements.
It was a sound policy as the thing which turned the Indians into terrorists were guns and horses. Before those two commodities they were basically sedentary and had shoulder blade hoes from buffaloes as implements to farm with.
This brings us to Manitou, in President Roosevelt's prize hunting horse or war pony, which somehow got mixed in with a lot of horses or he obtained the old horse in some trade not revealed as of yet.
When Nelson Miles mounted his infantry, they were on confiscated Indian ponies. He made mention that when the 200 were taken, it was a circus in wild horses fighting his Infantry.
"The infantry, mounted on captured Indian ponies, having galloped up close to the Indian camp, threw themselves on the ground and opened a sharp fire, their ponies standing quietly behind the line, some of them nibbling grass, undisturbed by the noise and tumult of the battle or their close presence to an Indian camp, which often terrified our Eastern horses. Several were shot in this position, to the great grief of the soldiers, who had become very fond of them."
Miles, Nelson Appleton, 1839-1925. Serving the Republic
Somewhere in this, in either a drummed out of military service pony or a war pony into plough pony sale is where Manitou had to have appeared from. I doubt that from the fine Crow herd, that Teddy Roosevelt obtained this horse, so he probably was something of the Sioux or Cheyenne hammering swords into ploughshares.
Manitou like the above ponies was a well trained horse for either combat or hunting as they all stood in place when the reins were dropped. The odds are that Manitou was part of the herd seen by George Custer at the Little Big Horn. He either was from one of the last hold outs to come in to the reservation, a reward horse as Nelson Miles allowed the Sioux to pick 5 horses each in the capture of the Nez Perce in Montana or he was a confiscated pony for military service, and in growing old or no longer needed as the Indians were pacified, he was sold to a trader for auction.
As he had no military brand, I doubt Nelson Miles was branding ponies, that would not disqualify Manitou in having made it through the Indian Wars to spend his last days once again shifting for his own living, carrying Teddy Roosevelt hunting again as he had Indians before.
I do wonder of goode olde Manitou, not in his end, as I prefer to delude myself in his not being dead in some horrid way, but in his history and if somewhere there is a photo of him, or a mention besides "good old Manitou".
At least the information is of value in how the Indian ponies were converted to civilized livings for the former terrorists. So much in history is hidden and only by glimpses in other peoples observations are they ever more fully understood.
agtG
