Tag Archive for ‘Ute Mountain Ute’ at Beside the Stream

Tag Archive for 'Ute Mountain Ute'

The not-so-nice ending to Thankful’s story

Published on April 11, 2008 in horses. 8 Comments

The winner of the “Name that Photo” contest is

Solitude

Nice title. And here’s the end of Thankful’s story… but it’s not very nice.

I called my friend Paul, who worked for the Bureau of Land Management for 18 years and managed their Wild Horse Program in Nevada. He said that when the horse was on public land, if someone puts food and labor equal to the value of the horse then they legally own the horse, and can legally take it away. He estimated that a wild yearling mustang was worth $300 to $400, so Susie already legally owned it if it lived on public land. But on Indian land it was a different story: she had to get permission from the Tribe to take it. Since the horse would’ve died and they’re liable to charges of animal abuse, he thought they’d agree the horse was hers, but that agreement had to be in place before he’d help her take the horse. And it was no problem for him to catch the little filly–he’d put up his portable corral with a one-way gate, and put his old mare inside it. Little Thankful is so lonely that she’d go into the corral for company, the door would shut, and he’d load them both into his trailer and take her over to Suzy’s. But she needed to get permission from the Tribe first. (Is that a nice guy, or what?)

Suzy had called the tribal headquarters back when she started feeding the horse late December, but no one responded. When I gave her Paul’s information she made a few calls, trying to track down permission to take the horse. Well, word gets around, and she got a call about it today. He wasn’t a bit nice. Not a speck.

He said that he heard she’d been feeding his horse. That he knew it was left behind on the mesa, and he’d tried to catch it but couldn’t. When the deep snow came, he tried to snowmobile in to take the horse out, but the snow was too soft. So he left her. And Suzy said, yes, it was starving and stuck in the snow, so she brought it food.

This is the horse when she started bringing it food,

and this is the horse last week, and the only reason this filly is so plumpy and nice is because Suzy skied in all those bales of hay.

We figure he was mean to her because he was afraid that she would file charges of animal abuse. He had an accent, and lived in Towaoc on the reservation–maybe his first language was Ute. He made out like Suzy had been overstepping to have fed his horse. And get this: he said he was coming with a portable corral to pick up the filly; would Suzy come help him get her? I thought, this guy has cojones that put the gelande jumpers to shame. No, I’m thinking, I won’t help. No. And I’m getting my chair back tomorrow.

But since Suzy is a much nicer person than I’ll ever be, she said yes, she’d help. That she brought the horse food every day last winter, skiing miles each way, because she wanted the horse to live.

And in the end he said

“Thank you”

in a very small voice. I say, Pooh pooh to you, you big poop. You shouldn’t be mean to someone who saved the filly you left to starve. You big poop.

And since I managed sludge for the Boston Harbor Clean-Up twenty years ago, that phrase has always held particular resonance for me. Ya big poop.

The Kindness of Strangers

Published on January 17, 2008 in Colorado women, Snow storm and horses. 8 Comments

Suzy lives beside a stream at 8,200 feet, and the storm last week left her with piles of snow.

About a mile and a half upriver of her house there’s a mesa on Ute Mountain Ute land; the tribe kept a herd of horses up there last summer. When the herd was moved last fall, one little yearling was left behind. She has been toughing it out alone every since, and was doing OK until the deep snow came and she got stuck. Since then, Suzy’s household has been taking the little horse hay every day. She was getting terribly dehydrated without access to water, so Suzy’s renter skied out with a five gallon bucket of water that morning.

I snowshoed and Suzy skied on a trail through deep snow–it looks reasonable except if you fall off this path you’re floundering around in three or four feet. It’s a little sketchy for my old dog, who steps on the back of my snowshoes for an assist every chance she can. We went over the river and through the woods,

across the fields, we turned left and right and I’m thinking that if this little horse depended on me to carry her hay every day she’d be a goner.

To get on top of the mesa is so steep and soft that the dog can’t make it, so Suzy keeps them down below while I snowshoe up and look who’s here:

poor little guy can’t get anywhere, doesn’t have any food. She’s totally wild, and would run away if she could (when there was no snow, there was no way to catch her, and now there’s no way to move her.)

And that strand of hay hanging from her mouth is from Suzy toting those bales by backpack. Suzy said, we named her Thankful. I think she really is.

Where the Corn came from, and gardener’s porn

Published on January 14, 2008 in gardening and what they eat. 2 Comments

I called the feed coop this morning to find out what kind of corn I had bought for the wild turkeys. I thought I would be walking into the old Vermont joke where a lady tourist asks a farmer “Could you tell me the name of this flower?” And he says, “Ma’am, in these parts we call ‘em ‘wildflowers’.”

But it wasn’t like that at all. Instead, the woman on the phone yelled: Joe, where’d that corn come from? Towaoc, he said. I asked, Is it genetically modified? She yelled, Joe, is that GM corn? Nope.

Towaoc is a tiny town on the Ute Mountain Ute reservation, 60 miles due west. According to the 2000 US Census, the population is 1,097 and it’s 94.4% Native American. And perhaps one of the reasons that corn was so cheap–$20 for 100 pounds cracked, sacked and loaded–is that family income in Towaoc averages $18,796.

If I was a turkey and could pick out which strain I’d want those Indians in Towaoc to grow, I’d go straight to the Seed Savers Exchange, a catalogue that specializes in really old varieties. Seed catalogues are like gardener’s porn, and every gardener has a pile hidden somewhere. The specimens are all impossibly perfect… is it airbrushed? So plump and bodacious, and the pictures all glisten… do you think they spray them with oil? When the snow is deep some of us succumb to temptation.

Not me. I only look at seed catalogues when I’m trying to figure out what kind of corn I’d like if I was a turkey. The Mandan Bride for sure, and I think the Black Aztec. And we can’t stop there: some Indian beans

Either the Hidatsa Red and the Painted Pony, or the Hidatsa Shield Figure and the Rattlesnake Snap… hard choice. And finally

I have to drop all pretense that I have the slightest interest in vegetables and get down to the serious business of choosing a sunflower for next year; I’m leaning towards Torch.

Beside the Stream