conversations] >> ladies and gentlemen, we will begin shortly. >> now, book tv on c-span2. every weekend we bring you 48 hours of nonfiction books. ..

>> mustang, the saga of the wild horse and the american west, is authored deann stillman's comprehensive look at the history of the american icon. the "l.a. times" named the book one of the best books of 2008. the autrey national center of the american west in los angeles hosted the event. it's about an hour. >> today we are very excited to welcome back for a special talk and book signing, deann stillman, who spent time here at the institute doing research. deann is a widely published,

critically acclaimed writer. her latest book "mustang, the saga of the wild horse in the american west" was named a best book in 2008 by the los angeles times. won a california book award silver medal for nonfiction and has received excellent reviews in the atlantic monthly, the economist, orion and p.r.'s on point, the seattle times, albuquerque journal and elsewhere. her previous books, "29 palms," a story of murder, marines and the mojave, was recently published in a new updated edition. it was a los angeles times best book if 2001, and hunter thompson calls it a strange and brilliant story by an important american writer. deann also writes for the rolling stone, slate, the huffington post and many other publications and her work is widely produced.

♪ ♪ >> for a long time, the american desert has been my deed and my passion. the reasons are many, but really, there is only one. in the desert, the chatter of city life fades away and my own thoughts vanish, i get quiet and

i hear things -- the beating of wings, the scratching of lizard, the crack of tortoise eggs, the whisper of stories that want to be told. >> the wild horses are our greatest partner. preserving mustangs is not about being on their backs, but about letting them run wild. seeing them out there is our birth right and theirs. why are we destroying the horse we rode in on? as will james once wrote, they really wrong not to man, but to that country of junipers and sage, of deep aroyos.

>> thank you everybody for coming. isn't that footage fantastic? so great to see wild horses in the wild where they belong. first i'd like to say, a big thank you to the autry national center for having me speak here today. it's really an honor for me, because i did some very important research here for my book, in particular, about the great frontier war horse comanche, who was once wild and i will tell you his story in a few minutes, and thank you to lisa wound for helping to organize this event and the rest

of the staff and also to the staff at the southwest museum. and a shoutout to peter at c-span, happy norwegian day, i know that norway is home of the amazing breeds of fjord horse. here we are and thank you all for coming today. i'd like to talk about first how and why i wrote "mustang." about 10 years ago, a little over 10 years ago, in 1998, at christmastime, i was out in a desert bar in 29 palms california, waiting to meet with a source. i was finishing up my previous book, "29 palms," the true story of murder, marines and the mojave, about two girls who had been killed after the gulf war and i picked up a local paper and saw an item that said six wild horses had been gunned down

outside reno and i was of course, extremely shocked and horrified. it was a terrible story on its face. and it started to person late. a couple of days later, there was another item that said, 12 horse carcasses had been found in the virginia range outside reno. and i was even more horrified by then. then by the end of that year, christmas eve, 1998, as the ball was dropping at times square and crowds were gathering to ring in the new year, across the ticker tape blasted the headlines 34 wild horses gunned down in the virginia range outside reno. now, by then, i was just completely mortified. not just because the story was awful on its face, as i mentioned, but i grew up around horses. i have a lifelong affinity and

involvement with them. my mother was one of the first women in the country to ride professionally on the race track as anser sighs boy. she had -- as an exercise boy. we had wild horses while my parents were married and when they got divorced, her most immediately marketable skill was horseback riding and we moved from an upper middle class suburb to a working class suburb in cleveland, ohio, and she got this job on the track, and she was at the time one of the first women in the country to ride professionally on the race track. so for the next five or six years or so, she worked there, and my sister and i would spend a lot of time to the track with her and in the barns and around the horses. and i was always struck by their incredible service and their beauty and i just remember watching them day in and day out, and seeing how they ran

their hearts out for little or no reward, and as i got older, i came to the understanding that horses were providing us with a living, they were literally saving my family's life. and at some point, i wanted to repay the favor. didn't really know how or when i might do that, but it was something that was on my mind then as i was growing up and you know, a seed that grew over time. then when i was finishing up "29 palms" and i heard this terrible tale, everything started to come together for me and i knew that the story of the wild horse on this continent would be my next book. then there was one more thing that kicked the whole thing into overdrive for me. a few days after learning that the 34 wild horses had been killed, there had been a an arrt and two of the men arrested were

marines and one was stationed at 29 palms. so again, here was one more thing that just showed me that this was the story i was -- i had to write next, and here i am, 10 years later with my book "mustang." along this journey, i found out so many incredible things. let me start first of all with the fact that horses are america's gift to the world. as i said, agree up around horses and it's something that i did not learn as a kid, and pain some of you have heard that when you were growing up, but i didn't, and it's -- it was one of many things that proved to me, as i was doing my research, that the story of the wild horse on this continent is just one of our big suppressed stories. oddly because the horses are our greatest partner. you know, without the horse, we have no america.

the horse evolved here in the west 55 million -- originated here 55 million years ago. at the time it was the size of a fox terrier and it was -- it's known as the don horse. hard to picture a horse being that small, but it was, and over time, of course, it got bigger and faster, and by the time the ice age rolled in, it was -- it had become the big hearted fleet athlete of the plains that we foe and admire today, very similar to the wild horse of today. it was heading north across the bearing land bridge then, 12 to 14,000 years ago, and it had populated the rest of the world. and mean wile, it went extinct here. and it wasn't until the 16t 16th century that it returned to its ancestral homeland and

its return came about because the con keys tores decided to come here and find gold. my first chapter is called "the horses return" and it's about their amazing and treacherous journey back to the land of its origin, and to research this chapter, i went back into some of the old conquistador chronicles, and i found out that hernando cortez had a scribe on board who loved horses and wrote down -- there were 16 horses, on board with hernando cortez and his first voyage to mexico, that's all it took, 16 horses to launch the conquest, and this scribe of cortez wrote down each of their names and talked about their personalities, and really provided a lot of information and that was kind of one of the

foundations for my research in this chapter. before i get into that part of their journey, i just want to tell you a little bit about these crossings of theirs. they must have known they were coming home for nothing else can explain their survival and perhaps only that knowledge deep in their selfs sustained them. horses are animals of prey and they like the wide open and to be con strained on the decks and the hot sun or between decks without light or means of escape for two or three months would have overloaded their circuits. everything was new and strange. where once they had smelled land and grass and legume, they now smelled salt air mixed with a gal i don't know stench. where once they had heard the sounds of their own hoofs on the fields of europe, they now heard the uneasy creek of wood, as they went through walls of

water. where once they had been calmed by the nuzzling and grooming of their manes by family members, they were touched by men who were in charge of making sure they had safe passage. these were the horses that carried spain to victory in the new world. during the years of the conquest, thousands of them were shipped across the atlantic. more than of half died on the way. sometimes when rations ran low, they were killed for food. sometimes the ship sank in hurricanes taking the horses to a howing and watery grave, along with slaves who had been kidnapped to africa and kind to one another in the ship' galleys. often the ships were the calm midway between 30 to 35 degrees north and south of the equator, the barometric pressure often increased and the hot dry breezes called the westerlies

stopped blowing the procession of proud owe defiant galleons would come to a halt. their massive sails limp in the blistering sun and the cargo, man an animal alike, slowly going mad. at that point, it was time to lighten the load. the horses were removed from their slings and taken above deck. at long last, they saw light and could move freely. although they were still hobbled by their weak legs, and they probably faltered as the conquistadors urged them to the gangplank. perhaps as they faltered, they took in the periphery and gazed across the sea where an albatross was passing, following it all the way to the equator and beyond and as their eyes swept the horizon, they must have experienced a sense memory of the wide open space in the new world where they would once roamed before it had a name. perhaps, they felt that strange

tingling of hot, drying, no wind that raises its hack on all living creatures and makes the neurons crackle wheel sea monsters and vast armies of sea seaweed growing from the canyon floors. perhaps as they drank in the air for the last time, they never felt more alive. then they were spooked down the plank by thirsty, desperate men who cursed loudly and waved things to scare them and they skidded down the gangway shrieking in fear, thrown to the seas, so the ar mad did a could watch the wind. during these crossings, about half of the horses coming from the old world to the new were jetsoned along the equator in order to lighten the loads of these ships. sailors began referring to that part of the ocean as the horse latitudes.

and this for me, as i was doing my research, became another astonishing thing. i always thought the horse latitudes was just a charming name on a map. i had no idea what it meant. and then i found this out and i thought, my god, what the horses went through, just to get back here, it's just quite amazing. now, of course, the other half survived, including the 16 horses of cortez. so in my first chapter, i reconstruct the arrival of these 16 horses on the beach, with hernando cortez and his crew in 1519, and their march into the jungle, and as some of you may know, montezuma had been expecting cortez, fair haired god, as a vision had told him, aboard a fire breathing stead and he kind of saw himself as a player in something in this

historical moment that he really could not change. yet, he played his role and the aztecs tried to fend off wave of after wave of conquistadors. the tribes were so in fear of this strange monster from another land, you know, the -- they regarded the man atop the horse as a unit, they didn't know quite what to make of it. they were just so in awe of it that it took them some time to be able to fend off each of these 16 horses. so i describe the march through the jungle and talk about what happened to each of the 18 as they encountered jaguars and swamps and poison tipped arrows and so on. over the course of that initial entrata into mexico, the record tells us that all of those

horses perished, but i like to think that the brown mare en route from spain survived, escaped at some unknown time and ran toward its ancestors, over mountains and across valleys and canyons and rivers through cloud storms and dust storms and days of no water, left to carry on by jaguars and wolves and stakes, perhaps aided by animal spirits, particularly chattering birds that urged onward as it grew older and eventually finding its own kind. six horses that are said of to escaped the desoto campaign and move westward. this small band too had traveled great distances across westlands and then into the parched flats just beyond the rio grande like the full getting a reproach from predators or perhaps not appealing to them for reasons we

do not know, drawing ever closer to the american west, possibly sensing in their bones and marrow that one of their own was waiting for them. needed their kinship and it was in the senor ran desert possibly or the mojave that one day the six happened upon the one drinking at a depression in a canyon rock or grazing on some rabbitbrush and then they exchanged some information and headed for freedom el norte, their home. so here they were in the 16t 16th century, back if their native turf and what i do next in my book is i follow the horses into america. and they set up shop quite quickly, and began passing into the tribes. they went from the apache to the comanche to the navajo and then up on to the plains, and a ro at

of settlers at the time and miners observed that the native horse partnership was the -- one of the most beautiful things they had ever seen and just quite breathtaking. it was really as if the horse had not disappeared from the continent and of course, some of you have heard stories about crazy horse and his mighty steads and sitting bull and i recount some of these in my book and i also talk about the great vision that black elk had, he was a lacota elder, and with he was a teenager, in about 1866, he had a dream about -- a dream of horses, and in this dream, he saw a stallion, who snorted and the snort was a flash of lightning and his eyes were like the sunset star, he dashed to the forward directions and the whites and buck skins answered

his call, rejoicing in their fleetness and strength. then silence prevailed and the great plaque stallion sang a song, my horse is prancing, they are coming. my horse is naying, they are coming. all over the universe, they come. they will dance. may you behold them. a horse nation, they will dance. may you behold them. the stallion's voice was not loud, but it filled the universe. it was so beautiful that nothing anywhere could keep from dancing. the leaves on the trees, the grasses on the hills and in the valleys, the water in the creek and the rivers and the lakes, the four legged and the two legged and the wings of the air all dance together to the music of the stallion song. when black elk awoke, the fever was gone. later, he danced a vision for his tribe in a grand reenactment of the knowledge he was given calling on horses and riders to assemble in the formation he had

witnessed during his fever dream. as the horse nation had danced in the spirit world, so too did it dance ons earth. in harmony and connection and might and about 10 years later, it would dance again, as hoofs thundered across the greasy grass where all visions white and red were converging. what comes next in our american tale of the wild horse is the battle of the little big horn. the indian wars by then, by 1876, had reached their peak and the tribes were fully mounted and ready to take on the cavalry, which of course had been moving west to accompany settlers and make these -- the new -- move the indians off of their territory and make the land ready for, you know, all of the new arrivals. by the time -- well, at the time

that black elk was having his vision about horses, the civil war had concluded. 1.5 million horses and mules died in the civil war. the country's horse populations was severely depleted and so to finish the -- finish up the indians wars, the cavalry turned to the wild horse populations of the west for remounts. at that time there were vast rivers of horse moving across the plains of the west, and texas. that's how a native american described the countless four-leggeds that were living here at the time. this is part of the big suppressed story. we've all heard about the buffalo and countless buffalo that were running the plains then and all of the other wild

things, but here, our great icon of freedom has anybody here ever heard that there were vast rivers of horse running across the plains then? it was something i didn't know and i was just thrilled to find out, but at the same time kind of saddened, because it -- you know, i kept thinking as i was writing my book that this lost history, what's happened, what are we doing. the battle of the little big more than, which of course is known as custer's last stand, was really a great victory for native americans. and in fact, the horse that became known as the lone survivor of that bale, and there were others, but the horse that became known as the lone survivor, was named comanche. it was a cavalry horse. taken by the cavalry off what was once called the great horse desert of texas.

there were so many horses down there that the -- there was an area on the map known only as the great horse desert, and if you told somebody, hey, i'm going to the great horse desert, they would know exactly where you meant. that's all you had to say. many, many wild horses were taken from that area, and pressed into service by the cavalry. comanche was taken probably about 1868, and immediately pressed into cavalry service for the indian wars like a lot of other wild horses that entered the cavalry, he was given a number, not a name. and he was wounded in about seven or eight battles before he found himself on the field at the little big horn. he was -- had acquired something of a reputation by then, because he had survived so many of these treacherous engagements. in one of them, he had been hit

in the flanks with an arrowhead and his handlers went to remove the shaft and he exhibited such great stoic courage wile they were taking it out that they decided to name him comanche after the tribe they were fighting. so that's how he got his name. and at the battle of the little big horn, there were really more horses than men who perished on the field that day. that's another -- again, another part of the suppressed story, the equeen service of those battles and in particular, this great frontier battle of the little big horn in which horses figured so prominently, and i want to tell you a little bit about some of those horses. as i had gone back into the conquistador chronicles, to learn about the horses of the

conquest, i did that with cavalry and native american accounts to find out about the horses who served in battle that day. and here -- here's a little bit about what i found out. buried in the muster list are the names of some of the horses who were shot in the jaw, the shoulder, the flank, the knee, the legs, the tail, the head, with arrows, with bullets, sometimes two or three times, in service at the little big horn. there was dandy jim, a large gray named bill clinton, silver heel, -- badger, silver heel, unnamed bay, a black pinto, one that was big, black an unruly, a gray that was one of the best buffalo horses. blue streak, tip, stumbling there, old dutch,up custer, phil sheridan, as they named some of the horses after themselves.

an iron gray mare named molly, wild bill, vick, and all the horses with to names, burdened with ammunition, supplies and hard tack, who were lashed to wagons, unable to move as bullets and arrows hissed over and around them and through their flesh. the horse cavalry had become a horse cavalry, the fate of the e question uinn -- of the equines told long ago, but along the banks of the little big horn river, underred shade of a cottonwood tree, there came a valiant war veteran, a horse with a big heart and a will to live, it was comanche, blood oozing from his seven bullet wounds, or perhaps it was even 12. the record varies. and his saddle now upside down and hanging from his belly.