Breakfast With Mama - part 4

By Kathy Johnson, Executive Director, MHP

The Secret of Sugar

I couldn't just feed Mama all the sweet feed she wanted. It was too high energy. She might explode. I tried apples, carrots and mints, but she spit them out. Knowing she had a sweet tooth, I brought in the sugar cubes. Mama watched me eat one, then I tucked one in a handful of grain. When she crunched own on the sugar cube, her eyes widened in delight. She nickered for more and I complied.

With the help of the sugar, and by watering her sweet feed until it was soup, I went after the wind knots with my typical target fixation. It took hours. I finger combed her mane. Mama loved sweet feed and sugar more than she hated being touched. We spent so much time doing her hair that eventually she stood to be touched while eating her hay. I pocketed many sugar cubes and optimistically approached her with a bottle of Show Sheen. I sprayed it on her mane without really touching her body. I broke through every wind knot.

I got a call back from a range specialist with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He told me these were feral horses. The open range on the Navajo Nation was so big, the horses wandered on and off the reservation. Like the mustangs, they caused problems for the sheep and cattle ranchers, during drought even breaking into the hay sheds and eating hay meant for the cattle. The ranger said the BIA and the Department of Natural Resources were trying to control the herds. By tribal law, each person was entitled to only so many horses. Mama's brand owner was permitted only two, so he was probably overstocked and let her go. Many of the horses wandered away. When the ranger went out to help a family round up a herd of 15, they found only 4. The others had wandered off, perhaps to live or die in the wild, or perhaps to be caught and sold for the auction. Tribal law dictated all horses be branded when they were sold. This was often done at the auction, where the feral horses were then sent either to Mexico or to the rodeo.

The Navajo Nation assumed trust responsibility for the land and for the livestock, but they were often helpless in area so big, rugged and desolate that horses couldn't be found. The tried to geld all the stallions, but mares came home either pregnant or with foals from who knew where. Some were mustangs of unknown breeding, while others had lines that had been in the family for generations. In an area where 40% of the population lived below the poverty line, many Navajos struggled to feed their own horses, but threw extra hay out for the wild ones who passed through when snow or drought destroyed their grazing. Mama and Sasha came from the badlands of Denneshoto, a vast desert flanked by outcroppings of red rock, where Hoodoos like Witch Rock stood guard over veins of uranium.

Armed with this information, I filled my pockets with sugar and went down for an early morning breakfast with Mama. She nickered when she saw me, a habit becoming more and more common. As she ate her sweet feed, I opened her stall door and stood beside her for the first time. The fences were coming down. She allowed me to pet her head. I stroked her neck. I moved down to pat her shoulder, running my hand over the rough knot of scar tissue from her brand. Even when she picked her head out of the bucket, she did not back away. She stood unmoving, shining like polished carnelian. I stroked the hills of muscles, hardened from years of running free. I reached up to scratch her withers, and red sand, the sand of her desert home, fell from her, glittering in the golden light of dawn.

 

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Breakfast With Mama copyright 2011, 2012, Kathy Johnson
Photos copyright 2011, 2012, Tony Johnson