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An article written by Kathryn Jenson White and printed in the newspaper.
Wild horses could drag Gilbert Jones, and just about anywhere.
Actually, the horses that have such power over Gilbert aren’t wild; they are the descendants of domesticated horses that have reverted to the ways of the wild. They are mustangs.
These animals have occupied the greater part of the last 60 years of Gilbert’s life as he has studied the history of the breed; created the Southwest Spanish Mustang Association to register the purest bloodlines still around; and done everything in his power to promote them as a living fragment of American history and preserve them for future generations.
About 17 miles northeast of Antlers in the southeastern part of Oklahoma, on top of tree-tangles Blackjack Mountain, in a place called Medicine Spring, Gilbert lives in a simple home with little furniture and no electricity, telephone, piped-in water or source of heat other than a fireplace.
Photos are the property of the SSMA or the Rickman Library
Sitting at a makeshift desk with a kerosene lamp at his elbow, this 81-year-old man who left school after the ninth grade, spends a great chunk of each day answering the hundreds of letters he gets from all over the worldl each year, getting information together for the SSMA’s quarterly newsletter and reading every book and magazine article about western history and horses he can get his hands on.
The decor in Gilbert’s home may be less than designer, but the wealth of information to be found in his extensive library and archive of correspondence and materials, not to mention the experience stored in his mind, make Medicine Spring a showplace. The owner and his residence are state treasures, even though wild horses couldn’t drag him into admitting it.
“I collected articles on history and horses since I was a kid, but I’ve acquired most of my books within the last 30 years, most in the last 10 through antiqued dealers and rare book catalogues,” he says. “It took me 25 years to get connections; if I’d had an eduacation and known how to find things, I’d have done more. They had to burn down the schoolhouse to get me out of the third reader.”
“I’ve got boxes and boxes of articles and things on them. I’ve got enough for 10 scrapbooks the size of the one I got put together here.” The scrapbook Gilbert lungs out of a back room at great risk to his spinal alignment is crammed full of documents to over a foot thick and held together with a man’s leather belt. “I guess I need sideboards for this one,” he says, laughing.
As Gilbert turns the pages, he doesn’t mention the most interesting aspect of his megabook: in the margins of every article and letter, usually in red ink, are responses, comments, references to other sources of information and questions Gilbert has penned in. The same is true of the great number of bound volumes that fill his bookshelf-lined walls. Gilbert is not a passive reader.
Of his marginal notations Gilbert says: “I just mark in all my books so my kids can’t sell ’em when I die. Really, though, I am going to leave it all to the association. I get articles all the time from people all over the place and I’ve got some here I think may be the only copies available. I’ve tried to track some down through the Smithsonian and at the library at Texas A&M, but haven’t had any luck.”
Gilbert’s collection of books also grows frequently. He receives catalogues each week listing the availability of rare, out-of-print volumes.
“You can buy any kind of book if you’ve got money enough and can wait long enough,” he says, reaching up to a shelf and removing a faded blue volume, “I’ve been 10 years getting this one; it just came a couple months ago. As soon as I hear about one form a dealer I’ll order it, but I guarantee 98 percent of them will be sold before you can get a check there. One book I have been trying to get for awhile is 35 or 40 years old; that’s a $65 book. I paid $22 for this one, but there’s others just as good I’m trying’ to get. You don’t see ’em advertised but once in five years.”
The book in Gilbert’s hands has no overly critical comments burned into the margins in his rough but easily readable printing; in fact, in The Travels of William Bartram, first published in Philadelphia in 1791 and reprinted in the 1928 edition he has left his mark all over. Gilbert finds supporting evidence for his theory that mustangs in North America developed along two different lines. One line, Spanish mustangs, came from horses left in Florida by Spanish explorers, and the other, Western mustangs, came form those left in Mexico.
Photos are the property of the SSMA or the Rickman Library
Gilbert’s fascination with all mustangs began when he was 17 and his uncle gave him a mare called Susie. Some of the 120 head he and his son-in-law now run on 40 square miles of unfenced pasture around Medicine Spring have Susie’s blood in them still. “After Susie, I went to gatherin’ a few here and there,” he recalls. “We lived around in Texas for awhile and you could be adrivin’ down the road and see all kinds of little mustangs grazin’. When I moved to New Mexico in 1934, I carried a pretty good little bunch in a bobtail truck.”
Over the next 24 years, Gilbert’s mustang holding went the way of all who work in the animal stock market: up and down. Loco weed, freak storms and poor grass years all took their toll. Through it all Gilbert always held on to enough horses to preserve his best bloodlines.
To make ends meet, Gilbert took up preserving in another fashion; he becmae a taxidermist. “I mounted just about everything,” he says. “Biggest animal was a buffalo. did about 25 or 30 of these. You know those bucking horses and steers you used to see along the highway to have your picture took on? I did most of ’em. I had seven styles of bucking horses and four styles of mounted buffalo. I mounted hundreds of deer and antelope heads a year. When I cam out of the army after two years serving during World War II, I was 1,200 orders behind.”
Gilbert must have caught up by 1958, because that’s when he loaded up his family and his mustangs and came home to Oklahoma. He settled at Medicine Spring Ranch in 1962 and began his real life’s work in earnest; reclaiming the reputation of the much maligned mustang, often referred to scornfully as “squaw ponies” or “broom tails.”
“There was a time when I was gathering them that half the ranchers thought the mustang had more cow sense than any horse. then the old-timers started dying off and the word mustang got a bad ring to it. A lot of people just naturally had it in for mustangs. They thought they was mean, hard to break, hard to handle. Now they’re stagin’ a comeback, maybe because so many people want to be what I call old-timey.”
“But during the time they weren’t thought much of, they got scarcer and scarcer. Finally, nothing was actually purebred. I got as pure as I could when I was collecting, but not 100 percent. Now there’s probably no more than 2,000 head.” Gilbert’s bands produce 50 colts a year.
In 1957 a man named Brislwan began the Spanish Mustang Registry in New Mexico to preserve the remaining purity of the bloodlines. Gilbert joined, but left in 1976 when infighting became a problem. In 1978, he began his own organization, the Southwest Spanish Mustang Association. It now has over 600 members and 1,000 horses registered. A move is afoot to merge the two organization.
Photos are the property of the SSMA or the Rickman Library
The SSMA offers bi-annual trail rides at Medicine Spring ranch last fall’s gathering drew 400 participants. The rides are endurance races that range from 25 to 100 miles long. “Mustangs are not speed horses like the quarter horse or th0roughbred,” Gilbert explains. “They’re good for distance, and I don’t think any other horse can stay with them. You can take history and read how the cavalry knew that if they didn’t catch the Indians in 75 miles, they were done gone. The mustangs could outrun all the other horses.”
Gilbert’s fierce pride in the breed’s abilities to endure t=and his equally fierce desire to earn them the recognition they deserve keep him working long hours and lead him to supply horses to many people for many reasons.
A team of French journalists writing about American horses interviewed Gilbert last year. That initial two-day visit to Medicine Spring led to two more visits of two months each during which the journalists created several articles for French magazines that have made Gilbert something of a legend there and put together what they call a Mustang Remuda. with a covered wagon and some of Gilbert’s mustangs the team is traveling 4,200 miles of historic trails and western cattle trails in 11 states. They left Gilbert’s place in April and plan to end up back there in a a year.
Gilbert has plenty to keep him busy until they return. He says he is 400 letters behind in his correspondence and four issues behind in the SSMA newsletter. He’ll catch up; he possesses the very power he admires so in his beloved mustangs: endurance.
Writer’s Notes: Gilbert does not work alone; many mustang lovers help him with everything from the SSMA business to gathering his horses when necessary. Two of his biggest aides are Bryant and Darlene Rickman, who put their pickup into four-wheel drive and take writers and photographers up Gunsmoke Trail to the top of Blackjack Mountain whenever asked.
Below is the original article as printed.
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