Americans have a love affair with horses—especially the wild horse. Mustangs are a mythic symbol of freedom, heroism, romance, limitless possibilities, and the vanishing West. Along with that fantasy, wild horses also embody some of the intractable complexities and contradictions of modern American life.
It is believed that two million wild horses roamed the largely unfenced American West in the early 1900s. During the hundred years since, a growing human population’s expanding urbanization has eaten up much of their range. Today fewer than 30,000 wild horses are squeezed onto public lands in ten western states.
Horses are prey animals with a well-developed fight or flight instinct, although their first response to a threat is to flee. Mustangs are highly social and a …
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