"It was the only place I knew where the people were 

 fenced in and the horses allowed to run free." 



— Jim Henning 



"It was nature's way of keeping the 

 horses from inbreeding," Jeannetta 

 says. 



Many of the Ocracoke villagers once 

 owned one or more of this Spanish 

 herd. Some of the horses were broken 

 and trained for riding, plowing and 

 pulling the carts that delivered grocery 

 orders every Saturday, says Jeannetta. 

 The Life Saving Service rode them to 

 patrol the beach and haul wood 

 washed up from shipwrecks. 



Each July Fourth, islanders herded 

 the horses together, branding colts and 

 picking out some of the older horses for 

 sale or training. 



Lawton Howard, who grew up on 

 Ocracoke and retired there 16 years 

 ago, remembers the pennings that took 

 place next to the island's only school. 

 About 15 men would leave the village 

 late on the night before the Fourth and 

 ride to the north end of the island, 

 Howard says. At daybreak the men 

 would begin herding the horses 

 southward. Some of the horses escaped 

 roundup by swimming into the sound, 



Photo by Cassie Griffin 



Howard says. By around noon on the 

 Fourth the men would herd the horses 

 into the village and the pen that 

 awaited them by the school. 



"There were a coupla fellas here that 

 caught the horses with their bare 

 hands," Howard says. "No one 

 believes me when I tell them that. But 

 it's true. My father, Homer Howard, 

 was one of 'em. They would grab the 

 horses by their mane, then throw one 

 leg in front of the horse's legs so they 

 wouldn't get trampled. They'd grab 

 their nostrils and hold on until the 

 horse was out of wind and could be 

 roped." 



To break the horses, villagers would 

 fill an old pair of pants with sand and 

 place it on the horse's back, Howard 

 says. Sometimes the islanders 

 blindfolded the horses to keep them 

 from kicking and rearing as they broke 

 them. Or they stood the horses in 

 water, where it was impossible for 

 them to kick, he says. 



Once broken the horses are a gentle 

 lot, says Jeannetta. "They're very 



Jim Henning chatting with a neighbor 



human oriented," she says. "They're 

 highly tuned, sweet-tempered and not 

 nervous. They'll nuzzle right up to 

 you. A lot of the people here on 

 Ocracoke grew up with at least one of 

 the horses in their backyard." 



The horses took on a new 

 prominence in the 1950s when Boys 

 Life magazine discovered the 

 Ocracoke Boy Scout troop was the 

 only mounted troop in the country. 

 Each scout trained and cared for his 

 own mount. "The national publicity 

 stirred a great deal of feeling for the 

 horses here on the island," Jeannetta 

 says. 



In 1957, when the highway was built 

 that ran the length of the island, the 

 horses were corralled for the first time. 

 Until then, villagers had surrounded 

 their yards and homes with wooden 

 fences to keep the horses out. 



"It was the only place I knew where 

 the people were fenced in and the 

 horses allowed to run free," Jim says. 



After the highway was completed, 

 the Boy Scout troop took over care of 

 the small herd. The scouts looked after 

 the horses until the late 1960s when 

 the U.S. Park Service took over the 

 care because the troop had dwindled 

 and the expenses had become a bur- 

 den. 



When the Park Service took over 

 the horses, the herd was on the decline. 

 At one time the herd was as low as nine 

 horses, Jim says. Jeannetta raised 

 three foals by bottle to keep them 

 alive, he says. A breeding problem had 

 developed. 



The remaining stallion and three of 

 the mares were not compatible mates. 

 The result was foals born with a condi- 

 tion called hemolytic anemia. The 

 mare's milk contained antibodies that 

 destroyed the red blood cells in the 

 foals, which died soon after birth. 



Dr. Thomas Bruce, director of the 

 state's Animal Disease Diagnositic 

 Laboratory in Edenton, says the dis- 

 ease is not uncommon. Bruce says in- 

 breeding contributes to the disease's 

 occurence, but is not the cause. To 

 solve the problem, an Andalusian 

 stallion was brought in for breeding 

 purposes. Since the stallion's arrival 

 three healthy foals have been born, 

 Jim says. 



While Bruce studied the horses 

 health problems, Dr. William Stabler, 

 a Houston, Miss., veterinarian and an 

 examiner for the Spanish Mustang 

 Registry, has been studying the horses' 



