some said she was the color of copper, with 

 splashes of silver in her mane and tail. 



Photo by Nancy Davis 



These lines from Marguerite Henry's Misty of 

 Chincoteague have struck a chord in many a boy or 

 girl who loved the idea of wild ponies roaming free on 

 a wind-swept seacoast island. And for generations the 

 legends of two Maryland and Virginia islands, Chin- 

 coteague and Assateague, have been the stuff of 

 youthful dreaming. 



Less celebrated, but no less wild and romantic, are 

 the "banker horses" of North Carolina's barrier 

 islands. From Corolla to Carrot Island, the feral herds 

 have made the banks their home, grazing the salty 

 marsh grass, struggling to live where only the tough 

 survive. 



Scientists call them horses, descendants of the 

 small, sure-footed steed of Spanish conquistadors. 

 And because of the horses' size, people Down East 

 have for years spoken of the herds with affection as 

 "ponies." 



Nobody knows exactly how they came to the 

 islands. Did they swim to shore from 16th century 

 Spanish shipwrecks? Did they arrive with an ill-fated 

 Spanish colony, even before the English did? 



However they first came, we know that one of the 

 first uses of the Outer Banks was for free-range graz- 

 ing, not only for horses but also for cattle, sheep and 

 goats. Islanders sometimes rode the horses, or worked 

 them, or sold them away to small farms on the 

 mainland. 



The days of the plow horse are gone, but the horses 

 remain. On Ocracoke, they grow sleek and pretty in 

 their fenced pasture, under the care of park rangers. 

 Each year, they draw thousands of tourists. But on 

 Carrot and Shackleford, they roam free, unkempt and 

 mostly unnoticed, wild as the wind. 



Grazing in Shackelford's salt marsh 



And now, after hundreds of years on these islands, 

 the future of some of these herds is in doubt, and of- 

 ficials face tough decisions about what should be done. 



This month, Coastwatch looks at the free-spirited 

 horses of North Carolina's Outer Banks. 



Photo by Neil Caudle 



