Spanish characteristics of this Shackleford stallion include depth in the body, and sloped croup. Carolyn S. Mason
Corolla Wild Horse Fund, Inc.
P.O. Box 361
1126 Old Schoolhouse Lane
Corolla, North Carolina 27927
www.corollawildhorses.com
Foundation for Shackleford Horses, Inc.
306 Gold Farm Road
Beaufort, North Carolina 28516
www.shacklefordhorses.org
Off the shores of North Carolina, there is a string of barrier islands called the Outer Banks that run along the entire coastline. On some of these sandbar islands, wild mustangs have been living for some five hundred years. They are the last remnants of once-numerous herds of Spanish stock that roamed freely on the islands. Native Outer Banks residents refer to them as Banker, or Banks, ponies, although genetically they are small horses. They are some of the last remaining Spanish mustangs—and one of the purest herds—living wild on the East Coast.
Wild Banker Horses truly represent the Outer Banks spirit—untamed and rugged. They have survived centuries of fierce nor’easter winds and hurricanes. Their wild mystique has become an integral part of what draws hundreds of thousands of visitors to these barrier island beaches every year. Nowhere else can free-roaming mustangs be seen walking along the beach.
Historical data lead to the conclusion that their ancestors were left on the islands in the early sixteenth century. It is believed that they arrived via shipwrecks, failed attempts at colonization, and purposeful seeding by Spanish explorers prior to colonization efforts. For hundreds of years, colonists and wild Spanish mustangs lived together on the islands.
As true descendents of Spanish mustangs, Banker Horses carry certain physiological and distinguishing features of ancient Spanish horses, such as the Iberian Barb. Their consistent size, even temperament, great endurance, and startling beauty all point to their dramatic history.
In 1982, members of the Spanish Mustang Registry came to the Outer Banks to observe the remaining horses. They found small bands of Banker Horses still existing in their natural state, as they had been for centuries, on the portions of the Outer Banks that are part of the North Carolina counties of Currituck, Hyde, and Carteret. One of the members is Emmett Brislawn, son of the founder of the Spanish Mustang Registry. He remarked, at the time, that it was difficult at first to picture such a western horse in such an eastern setting. Another cowboy in the group said, “People don’t know how rare this little horse is and how hard it is to come by.”
The isolated Outer Banks were ideal to find horses pure enough to qualify for registration. As a pure breed, they were registered with the Spanish Mustang Registry until founder Bob Brislawn’s death.
Home on the Outer Banks
In order to understand Banker Horses, it is important to understand the location and environment where they live. The Outer Banks range three to eight miles from North Carolina’s shoreline. They descend southward along the entire North Carolina coastline, separated from the mainland by large sounds of water. They span a length of some 175 miles from the Virginia border in the north, to Cape Lookout, and continuing southward for miles. Most of the islands are one-half to two miles wide.
The North Carolina Outer Banks are islands located in the remote eastern areas of three counties mentioned previously. Currituck County borders Dare County in the north and Hyde County in the south. The horses live at the extreme northern end of Corolla Island, part of Currituck County.
More horses live on Shackleford Banks. This island is part of Cape Lookout National Seashore, located 175 miles to the south near Beaufort and Morehead City. It is roughly nine miles long and three thousand acres and can only be reached by ferries carrying people, but not vehicles.
Ocracoke Island is the farthest distance off the mainland shore, around twenty miles from Hyde County. Only nineteen ponies remain there in a fenced enclosure, and they are no longer considered wild. The herd is managed by the Cape Hatteras National Seashore and can only be reached by ferry.
Centuries ago, the Outer Banks were known as “the sand banks.” Perhaps the islands are best described by the name a Native American tribe that lived there gave them; the tribe called the islands Hatterasil, an Algonquin word meaning “there is less vegetation.” Until recently, these were some of the most isolated and undeveloped areas in the nation, functioning mostly as protection for the North Carolina shoreline against the Atlantic Ocean. There was no electricity in Corolla until 1964, no telephone until the mid 1970s, and the only paved road stopped fifteen miles south of Corolla until 1985. When the road was paved from Duck to Corolla, the tiny fishing village suddenly exploded with the development of upscale oceanfront vacation homes.
The waters surrounding the Outer Banks are some of the most dangerous in the world; they are referred to as the Graveyard of the Atlantic. The islands’ sand banks are always shifting, which has caused numerous shipwrecks in times past. Many early Spanish ships carrying horses, as well as other livestock, were wrecked on these shores.
Weather on the islands is hot, balmy, and windy; oftentimes hurricanes strike. The islands can also get cold; there can be freezing temperatures in winter with rare instances of sleet and snow.
All of the horses on the Outer Banks are Banker Horses, of which there are the individual, isolated herds: the Corolla horses, Shackleford horses, and Ocracoke horses.
Bachelor band on Shackleford grazing on the coarse salt grasses of the marshes. Carolyn S. Mason
Banker horses wade past Cape Lookout lighthouse. Carolyn S. Mason
The horses used to roam freely from Beaufort Inlet in Carteret County, to the Virginia state line. Today, the northern Banks Horses’ range has been reduced to an area north of Corolla that is accessible only by four-wheel-drive vehicles. The horses here freely roam the beaches, marshes, maritime forests, Currituck Banks Wildlife Refuge, North Carolina Estuarine Research Reserve, and populated areas of Swan Beach, North Swan Beach, and Carova. The Corolla wild horses have numerous ponds as well as the Currituck Sound as their sources of fresh water. They graze on saltmeadow cordgrass, sea oats, dune grass, and American beach grass.
Shackleford Banks is an uninhabited barrier island where horses roam the dunes, marshes, and maritime forest. They swim in the small channels between the island and the nearby tidal flats. The tidal flats ebb out on the low tides and disappear again with the next high tide. The tide rises and falls every eight hours, and foals born on the flats must swim back to the island before the tide comes in. At high tide, some mudflats on Shackleford are under two feet of water.
The horses on Shackleford Banks feed entirely on the coarse salt grasses of the marshes and islands. When not near a spring or waterhole, they get fresh water by pawing deep enough in the sand to reach fresh water that seeps into the excavation. These reservoirs serve for their drinking use while they remain open.
The fenced in horses on Ocracoke have their needs cared for by the National Park Service.
An incredibly hardy breed, Bankers have survived on their own through centuries of hurricanes, nor’easters, droughts, heavy winds, insects, and intentional shootings by humans.
History
Accounts of Spanish explorations and colonization attempts in the early 1500s along the North Carolina coast noted that Spanish Barb and Iberian horses were imported there. One colony’s records in particular, the failed d’Allyon colony, provided a description of its circumstances that proved a combination of events occurred to help establish feral horse herds along the barrier islands.
Spanish ships also traded livestock and other supplies with English colonists. An English captain, Richard Greenville, reported in his ship’s log from 1584 to 1590 that the ship traded goods for “mares and male horses” from Spaniards in Hispaniola before coming to the North Carolina area.
Much later, proof that wild horses existed in North Carolina was recorded by English historian John Lawson, who explored and documented the southeastern part of the state from 1700 until 1711. Attesting to the horses’ superb quality and hardiness, Lawson wrote, “The horses are well shaped and swift. The best of them would sell for ten or twelve pounds in England. They prove excellent drudges, and will travel incredible journeys. They are troubled with very few distempers. . . . As for sprains, splints and ringbones, they are here never met withal, as I can learn.”
In 1856, historian Edmund Ruffin visited the Outer Banks. He was famous as an authority on agriculture and as an editor, but more often remembered and credited with firing the first shot in the American Civil War. He wrote, “Twice a year on the Banks, the stock owners hold a wild horse penning, at which time all of the wild horses on the island were corralled and the colts branded. The horse pennings are much attended, and are very interesting festivals for all the residents of the neighboring mainland. There are few adults residing within a day’s sailing of the horse pen[ning] that have not attended one or more of these exciting scenes.”
Fighting Corolla Banker stallions. Continuity of color and type is apparent. Corolla Wild Horse Fund
Ruffin noted that all of the horses in use on the reef and on many of the nearest farms on the mainland were from the wild “banks” horse herds. He described them as “all of small size with rough shaggy coats, and long manes: their hoofs in many cases grow to unusual lengths, they are capable of great endurance of labor and hardship, and live so roughly that any others from abroad seldom live a year on such food and other such great exposure. By the same token . . . when the banks horses were removed to the mainland, away from the salt marshes, many die before learning to eat grain . . .”
Conserving Banker Horses
According to National Geographic magazine, in 1926 there were an estimated five thousand to six thousand wild horses throughout the Outer Banks. Now, there are fewer than 210 of these rare horses left in the wild. With the development of areas, such as Nags Head, into resorts for the wealthy, their numbers soon became an issue for developers. In 1938 on Cape Hatteras, Dare County placed a bounty on the few remaining wild horses, effectively eliminating the horses there. Only a few privately owned horses remain today.
With increased interest in the development of the other islands, along with the decreased value of the horses to the island residents, the issue of the horses has been pushed to the forefront. Now only two herds remain wild and free-roaming on the Outer Banks: the Corolla herd, which numbers less than 90 head, and the Shackleford herd, maintained by federal law at 110 to 130 horses.
Around 2006, some Shackleford horses were relocated to Cedar Island, which is at the eastern tip of the Carteret County mainland and inside, or west of, the Outer Banks. (Cedar Island is not truly part of the Outer Banks.) With the 35 horses there and the 117 on Shackleford, about 152 Shackleford horses still exist as free-roaming wild horses.
There are only nineteen horses left on Ocracoke Island. The National Park Service manages the Ocracoke horses, but these horses are confined, are not considered wild, and recently have experienced interbreeding from outside horses.
Survival on Corolla
The Corolla Wild Horse Fund was established in 1989 to heighten awareness concerning the wild horses in the area. As the Currituck Outer Banks became more developed, twenty horses were killed or injured by vehicles on the highway. Volunteers mobilized the community to find a solution.
In 1996, the remaining horses on Corolla were relocated behind two sound-to-sea fences, one that separated them from the highly populated areas of Corolla, and another located at the Virginia state line. Access to this area is only by four-wheel-drive vehicles along the beach and sand cartways. Although there is far less development in this area when compared to the southern portions of the county, construction is occurring at an alarming rate. With each new home comes a reduction of indigenous vegetation and grasses that are not always replaced. The continued destruction of this major food source for the horses increases their dependence on the endangered and fragile vegetation left in the refuge area.
The northernmost beaches, where the horses are, cover eleven miles or twelve-thousand-plus acres. Although this land is designated as the Corolla horses’ sanctuary area, 80 percent of the land is privately owned and subject to development. There are 3,100 platted lots in the area and nearly half of those are built out. The remaining 20 percent is government owned.
The only known impact the horses have for certain is their draw to tourists—they are the number one tourist attraction. Some sixty thousand tourists come to the islands each week in the summer months.
Investors want to develop the Outer Banks, but the horses stand in their way. Though they add value by providing a cultural heritage to the area, the issue of where they are to live, or if they should live at all, has become controversial. Seven horses were shot and killed between 2001 and 2007.
Corolla Banker herd. Corolla Wild Horse Fund
One of the ways in which the Corolla Wild Horse Fund manages the Corolla herd size is by making horses available through an adoption program. Select numbers of horses are removed regularly from the Outer Banks for adoption purposes. Generally, yearlings or younger fillies and gelded colts are available, as younger animals have a much easier time transitioning to a domestic lifestyle, and the gene pool is less affected by their removal. Stallions are available on a case-by-case basis. The horse population is also controlled by non-hormonal contraception delivered by dart.
All adoption horses are tested for equine infectious anemia, vaccinated, wormed, halter broke, and qualified for registration with the Horse of the Americas Registry as Colonial Spanish Mustangs.
Survival on Shackleford
The Shackleford horses are the largest genetically viable group of North Carolina Banker Horses remaining. In 1996, Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick, director of Science and Conservation Biology, Zoo Montana, wrote, “The Shackleford wild horses are the oldest documented population in North America and they should be managed with the utmost care. . . . The wild horse is one of America’s most valuable wildlife species . . . and the Shackleford horses are one of our oldest legacies.”
At that time, people all over North Carolina supported protective legislation for the Shackleford horses. The Foundation for Shackleford Horses was founded in 1997 to protect and preserve Shackleford horses. The resulting Shackleford Banks Wild Horse Protection Act of 1998 was supported by Governor James Hunt and the entire North Carolina Delegation, and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Due to this legislation and the fact that Shackleford is not populated by people, the Shackleford horses have experienced a more protected life than those on Corolla.
The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy has moved the status of the Banker Horse from the threatened list to the critical list. The Banker strain is also on the critical breeds list of the Equus Survival Trust. Conservation of these horses is vitally important as they are a genetically ancient strain of Colonial Spanish Mustangs. There are less than five hundred breeding mares left in the world.
Characteristics
When members of the Spanish Mustang Registry came to the Outer Banks in 1982, they were satisfied that the Banker Horses, in particular the Corolla strain, were as lineally pure to sixteenth century Spanish importations as could be found in North America. Banker Horses compare closely to the selectively bred South American Spanish derivative equine stock. Around the 1980s, two Shackleford horses were registered with the Spanish Mustang Registry.
More recent historical research and genetic testing indicates that Banker Horses descended from a core group of an old type of Spanish horse. One genetic variant found in the Shackleford horses, the blood variant Q-ac, is believed to have been contributed by the Spanish horses of four hundred years ago. This genetic marker has been found only in descendents of those ancient types of Spanish horses. Easily lost through genetic drift, Q-ac has been documented in the Puerto Rican Paso Finos, the isolated mustang population of Montana’s Pryor Mountains, and the horses of Shackleford Banks.
In 2007, representatives from the Horse of the Americas, the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, and the American Indian Horse Registry inspected the wild Banker Horses. They noted, in particular, definitive evidence of the traditional balance and conformation of Colonial Spanish Horses in the Banker Horses. They were so amazed at the consistently strong Spanish traits they saw in each horse that they decided any horse from Corolla and Shackleford Islands would be registered as pure in their registries.
Colors of Banker Horses are bay, chestnut, black, and sorrel, and they can have flaxen manes and tails as well as the paint spotting pattern.
The Corollas stand about 14 hands tall. The Shacklefords average about 13 hands.
The Corolla horses have both convex and concave facial profiles with crescent-shaped nostrils, graceful Iberian necks, base-wide build, and Spanish action at the walk, trot, and canter. The Shackleford horses also have both concave and convex facial profiles with crescent-shaped nostrils. They too have smooth movement.
One striking similarity they have to the Arabian and Iberian ancestry is the number of vertebra, as Bank Horses have a five-lumbar vertebrae instead of six—one less than most breeds. Other typical Spanish Horse traits include a low tailset and no chestnuts on rear legs.
Natural selection has culled out all unhealthy characteristics. These are hardy and tough little horses, capable of surviving great deprivations.
General Observations
One of the members in the 2007 inspection group was Steve Edwards, who trained wild mustangs captured from the western ranges. Edwards was allowed to adopt a young Corolla stallion, a wild colt that was removed from the herd for emergency surgery. Later, it became the only Corolla stallion in captivity available for breeding.
Edwards was quickly taken with the colt. “He was completely halter trained in forty-five minutes. Within twenty-four hours he comfortably wore a saddle and took a child on his back.” Edwards also adopted a three-year-old mare that went from wild horse to gentled trail mount in a little over three weeks. A few weeks later, Edwards was asked to take a mature stallion that had to be removed from the herd because it had learned how to escape the sanctuary and enter the town of Corolla. A week later, the stallion was carrying a rider.
Edwards marveled at the gentle nature of the horses compared to their western cousins. “So far it appears that they are much easier to train than any domestic horses I have run into.”
Edwards was not the only member of the inspection team impressed with the wild horses of the Outer Banks. Vickie Ives, one of the top breeders of Colonial Spanish horses, adopted several Banker Horses. “We are proud to add the Corolla horses to our breeding program. . . . These little Corolla horses have a wonderful Colonial Spanish type in a compact size with tremendous trainability, real Spanish action, and a unique desire to please. They will make excellent mounts for our younger riders and for our senior clients.”
The captive horses owned by Edwards and Ives may become part of the foundation stock of Corolla horses of the future. The current management plan for the wild herd at Corolla requires the herd to be maintained at a level of only sixty horses or less. According to Edwards, sixty horses are not enough to provide the genetic diversity to keep the breed alive. “Most experts agree that at least one hundred horses is the minimum number to provide a healthy breeding program.”
Ives agrees: “They are already fairly closely related with only twenty-seven alleles found in the Corolla herd, according to genetic testing done by Dr. Gus Cothran of Texas A&M [University], one of the nation’s premier researchers in the genotype of domestic horses. Reducing the herd size to only sixty horses limits the genetic diversity tremendously. I would hate to see such a wonderful strain of Colonial Spanish horses threatened by extensive inbreeding.”
The concern is about a genetic collapse of the Corolla Bankers because of their diminishing numbers. All who know these great historic Spanish purebreds hope their herd will be allowed to increase in numbers.
“Once the Corolla wild horses are gone, they are gone forever,” states Karen McCalpin, executive director of the Corolla Wild Horse Fund. “They are the last remaining herd of wild horses on the northern Outer Banks. They are an important part of the nation’s history and the history of North Carolina.”
A majestic Banker strides on the beach, as free as the waves behind him. Corolla Wild Horse Fund
Carolyn Mason from the Foundation for Shackleford Horses says, “These fascinating animals are a source of fondness and pride to the local residents, of delight and interest among visitors . . . and a national treasure and living history of the United States.”
Credit: Corolla Wild Horse Fund, Inc. and Foundation for Shackleford Horses, Inc.