Article by Deanne Stillman ~ Author/Writer from the pages of TruthDig
Capturing and Harassing Mustangs was Once a Private Practice Now Its the BLM’s Business
February 1st marks the 50th anniversary of the release of “The Misfits,” the iconic and underrated film about Nevada mustangers who brutally capture wild horses so they can sell them to the slaughterhouse. Although panned by critics, the film is a powerful and enduring deconstruction of the western, although perhaps more play-like than cinematic in its formulation. Directed by John Huston and written by Arthur Miller, it starred Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Eli Wallach and Montgomery Clift, with Thelma Ritter in a supporting role. To commemorate the film’s release, a special screening of it was held Sunday at the University of Nevada at Reno, in conjunction with the university’s “Honoring the Horse” exhibit. “The Misfits” alerted many people to the then little-known war against wild horses playing out in Nevada, and, in my opinion, contributed to the early demise of three of its four stars—Gable, Clift and Monroe—all of whom died after the film was wrapped; in Gable’s case, 12 days later.
“The Misfits” was based on a short story of the same name, also written by Arthur Miller and published in Esquire in 1957. Shortly after he met Monroe and fell in love with her, Miller went to Nevada to divorce his wife. He took a cottage at Pyramid Lake outside Reno, next to novelist Saul Bellow, who had also come to the quickie-divorce haven to break up with his wife. Every day, they wrote. Bellow was working on his novel “Henderson the Rain King.” Miller had met some cowboys who eked out a living by rounding up wild horses, and decided to write their story. He had just penned a story that was a precursor, called “Please Don’t Kill Anything,” about a couple who throw commercially caught fish back into the sea. “Nevada was full of misfits,” Miller would later recall, “people who did not fit anywhere. They knew it, they made fun of it, of their inability to function in the United States.”
Men like these had been coming to Nevada for a long time, barely managing to wrest a living from the extreme terrain. They were miners, drifters, day laborers, hardscrabble ranchers; at the end of the 19th century, when the frontier closed and old ways of making a living dried up, they turned to mustangs, whose day was over in the eyes of those who saw them simply as a form of transportation or carrier into battle. Vast herds were running the Nevada range and elsewhere across the West. They were descendants of mustangs that had returned to the land of their ancestral origin, linked by DNA, as we now know, to Ice Age horses that had evolved on this continent. They came with conquistadors, lived in the region for generations, mixing with horses that had escaped from or been dumped by ranchers, settlers, the Army, forming their own bands, finally left alone, until one day someone started running them out of the mountains to the slaughterhouse, where they were processed and shipped to dinner tables in France.
The men who waged these captures were called mustangers, and they devised ever more efficient ways to capture wild horses, which now came to be branded as “outlaws” and “demons.” Some mustangers became celebrities, pictured on the covers of adventure magazines. Often they regaled reporters from publications such as The New York Times with tales of hunting down “vicious” mustangs. At first these pursuits were carried out on horseback, but with the invention of the fixed-wing airplane, airborne hunts became the preferred method, and pilots made a tidy living chasing the fleet-footed animals down from the mountains and onto the desert flats of Nevada. Mustangers were so revered in some circles that one woman extolled the virtues of the practice in an article called “My Husband Is a Mustanger,” written for Desert Magazine in 1941:
“Our roping horse, Rainy, short for Rainbow, nickered softly and followed me as I walked across the yard to the barn. He is a privileged character and has the freedom of the ranch. I found a bit of sugar in my pocket and patted his soft nose as he munched on the treat. It has been a long time since he ran on wobbly colt legs with his mother as they tried to escape the airplane that was herding them into a wild horse trap in the Owyhee desert of eastern Oregon. … We are horse lovers. My husband, Lonnie Shurtleff, is one of less than a dozen qualified mustangers in the United States. … When Lonnie first began his horse running career in 1938 there were truly thousands of horses. When we again set up camp in that area there were still great herds in 1946 and through 1951. However, by 1958, the horse herds had dwindled to only a few scattered bunches. … The government decided during the early 1940s that the range land was needed for more beef cattle. The alternative to corralling the wild horses and shipping them for slaughter was to allow hunters to shoot them for $2 per head and leave the carcasses on the desert. We felt that slaughtering them humanely as they do the beef animals was the lesser of two evils. …
Click (HERE) to read this Report in its entirety at TruthDig
Related Articles
- Interior Department Urged To Remove Official Responsible for Cruelty During Wild Horse Roundup (yubanet.com)
- BLM Called Upon To Halt Wild Horse Roundups Until “New Normal ” Policies Enacted To Ensure Humane Treatment of Mustangs (yubanet.com)
- Nevada’s wild mustangs: Officials reject philanthropist’s sanctuary (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
- Nevada town remembers Marilyn Monroe’s last movie (omg.yahoo.com)
- APNewsBreak: BLM rejects Pickens horse rescue plan (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
Categories: Horse News, Horse Slaughter, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
It took me 30 years to get the guts to watch the film in it’s entirety.
I won’t watch it again; not because it’s a bad film with a rotten cast or script…it’s a superb film with tough issues. I can’t watch it because I know it is STILL being conducted….only now there are far fewer wild equines than the 50’s AND many have been sterilized…forever.
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Great sad piece. Truthdig is a good site if you have any interest in truth. Rare commodity on this planet.
Sadly, our insatiable and unstoppable ability to lie to ourselves will have taken our species and all else that lives to this desolate place. Now can we remember the way home.
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I realize alot of “mustangers” are alive and well; ergo our dilemma with land use, public lands resource raping and species extermination currently. Change is desperately needed.
I also think their sheer existence in the 21st Century is part of the problem with regard to entitlement and the “I know better than you” syndrome…..we ain’t expanding and colonizing the WEST any longer and those days of what you do doesn’t matter to Joe Blow in NYC are GONE!
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Thanks for being there and trying Laura…..it is sooooooooo important.
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It would be of less importance if the Statue of Liberty were melted into scrap then if our American Mustangs are removed. If symbolism of the American spirit is anything it’s FREE AMERICAN MUSTANGS. The cutting of the rope holding the mustang to the trucks bumper by Clark Gable symbolizes our goal and sealed his epitaph.
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Frank, why did you change your ‘name’? mar
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Hi Mar, I generally use my email name horsedrag.
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One of the differences now is that we have an out of control official agency of the federal government hiring these so-called mustangers to the tune of millions of tax payer dollars to do the dirty work. Another fine example of the government’s magic touch when it comes to “help” us.
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With the ruling by the BLM of not even a reprimand for this inexperienced pilot, we are reverting to the old mustanger ways. The BLM is not evolving toward more humane treatment of horses, they are regressing. As the Egyptian Google manager who started an uprising said on 60 Minutes last night, he thanked the government for their stupidity–for that was their downfall. This report may well be the BLMs.
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Here’s to the future overturning of the Stupidity! Entrenched attitudes and historical prejudice can BITE ME! Let’s get on with it!
Interesting piece, thanks Deanne Stillman… mar
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I once knew someone who, although was not a “mustanger”, had helped in the round ups. In his old age he was alone and could not longer get out of bed or care for himself. He had a lot of time to think about all of those horses.
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I did not know, or perhaps I have forgotten about this film. Hollywood did or should open our eyes about many things through film. Man’s conquering (or as I consider it rape) of North America, its “never ending” resources, the Native Americans, the Bison, the horses, the wolves, coyotes, prairie dogs….
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Pirates have also been glamorized. The pillaging of our Public Lands and the brazen theft of America’s Wild Horses and Burros are an ugly, glaring act of PIRACY.
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It is the resurrection of the Robber Barons, Louis!! mar
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I just Deanne’s book. I haven’t had a chance to read much of it but it looks good. I don’t know, after the past couple of days I’m just beat.
I guess we all are. And so are the horses who just can’t understand wtf they did to deserve being treated like this. Once again I do apologize to my fellow advocates for my language.
Unfeaking believable that our government would condone what has happened.
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I’m not all that familiar with the movie, though I have heard of it, &, probably did see it at sometime. I think it’s a possibility that those actors were “gathered” & removed so they wouldn’t stir up more trouble, much the same as our wild mustangs, & the people trying so hard to save them, both then & now. We’ll never really know, but I wouldn’t put it past our government to put out a hit order on anyone they felt was a threat. Think about the BLM keeping the public at bay, not letting them see what’s really going on.
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OK…just in case the jist of this post is forgotten: Anniversary viewing of “The MIsfits” ( about losers sucking the life out of mustangs) AT UNR and a celebration/history of the horse in the head horse whack ’em state…Nevada.
The irony is not lost on me. Whack ’em is alive and well in the the Silver State. It is just more pleasant to have the likes of Gable, Clift, etc to show us the scum that is wild equine murder in a 90+ minute celluloid drama.
Highly ironic though.
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and deja’ vu… mar
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Life Imitates Art “The Fists” a 2011 horse whack ’em movie written by Salazar and directed by Abbey, funded by Obama: starring the helicopters of Cattoor and SunJ, with additional fist pounding by Duquette and Wallis. Unfortunately we can not add the usual disclaimer to this film ” No horses were injured or killed in the production of this movie.” Be prepared for graphic images. rating: not fit for human viewing
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I like the misfits. Great blog!
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What. Can. We. Do?
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