Comanche award

[elisabeth]

Nice piece of news here: the Santa Fe endurance horse race organisers have instituted a "Spirit of Comanche" award for the overall winner.

www.sfthorserace.com/news/2008_02_01_archive.shtml#2817470762063668221

The old horse just keeps on mesmerising people, all these years later ...

[BrokenSword]

It truely is fascinating that so many still find Comanche to be so... fascinating.

By the way. Isn't there a story among the Crow that a horse beloning to one of the Crow scouts killed at the Little Bighorn Fight, made its way way back to the Crow Reservation? On its own and arriving a short few weeks after the fight?

M

[elisabeth]

That's right, there was ... either a Crow's or an Arikara's. I have a vague memory that he was Bob-Tailed Bull's horse, that his name was Little Soldier, that he was an Apaloosa or a pinto, and that it was the Arikara reservation he found his way back to -- but any or all of those could well be wrong. I'll commit to him having four legs; beyond that, nothing.

Wonder if he was feted to the same degree as Comanche. He must surely have been regarded as pretty special after that trek ...

[AZ Ranger]

Thanks Elisabeth

I found that song about F. X. Aubrey interesting and it mentions a Dun. I think the primitive markings of the Dun was indicative of a horse with endurance.

www.sfthorserace.com/ride_history.shtml

2007 was the first year of the event with the proceeds to go the Imus Ranch for kids with cancer. RFD-TV was a sponsor and that is how I became aware of the event. Now Imus is on RFD-TV.


AZ Ranger

[BrokenSword]

'LITTLE SOLDIER'! Yes that was it, and you may be right about the tribe too.

Thank you, Elisabeth. You're better than an encyclopedia.

M

[elisabeth]

No wonder this thing takes on such mythic qualities. The soldier survivor horse named after Indians, the Indian survivor horse named after soldiers: you couldn't make it up.


P.S. AZ, thanks for mentioning the song. I hadn't picked up on that. (Got the story only through a Google alert for "Myles Keogh", which took me just to the award page.) Yes, it's interesting, that. I remember, many years ago, reading Andy Adams' Log of a Cowboy, in which he says that cowboys would have a string of horses in the remuda from which they selected for different tasks: dun for endurance, black for speed ... and I forget the rest. Can look it up if need be. Some of it may be superstition -- I think we had a quote somewhere not long ago from somebody (Nye?) in about the 1890s talking loftily about the myth that colour meant anything -- but with duns, it surely does make sense. The most primitive, therefore the least diluted, therefore the toughest.

[clw]

You have no idea how many kids want to name their horse Commanche -- they all know his story. He may be our best ambassador of frontier history.

[elisabeth]

I've noticed that. Every time I Google him, a million new horses come up. Most looking like improbable inheritors of the mantle, but one or two who look like real characters. There was one site in particular that I found the other day -- can't remember the name, alas -- to do with horse-whispering-type training, where the horse they'd named Comanche looked all wrong (a dapple grey) but was just bursting with intelligence and personality ... He may be the best ambassador for appreciation of horse character, as well as of frontier history.

It's a pity, really, that he's not more widely known outside the U.S. In Europe, I think he's scarcely been heard of. I was horse-mad as a girl -- read everything I could lay hands on -- but the Comanche story never turned up. Bizarre.


Hah! Found the link. I think you'll like this:

dreamhorseranch.com/Comanche.html

[AZ Ranger]

And to think I have one named Custer. He is a hard charger but doesn't pay attention to what he is getting into.