Before the Spaniards came there were no horses in the West. Those explorers
left or lost horses all over the southwest. Many of them were Arabian horses
of purest blood. American explorers and travelers, at the outset of the
nineteenth century, encountered countless droves of wild horses all over the
plains. Across the Grand Canyon, however, wild horses were comparatively few
in number in the early days; and these had probably come in by way of
California.
The Stewarts and Slone had no established mode of catching wild horses. The
game had not developed fast enough for that. Every chase of horse or drove was
different; and once in many attempts they met with success.
A favorite method originated by the Stewarts was to find a water-hole
frequented by the band of horses or the stallion wanted, and to build round
this hole a corral with an opening for the horses to get in. Then the hunters
would watch the trap at night, and if the horses went in to drink, a gate was
closed across the opening. Another method of the Stewarts was to trail a
coveted horse up on a mesa or highland, places which seldom had more than one
trail of ascent and descent, and there block the escape, and cut lines of
cedars, into which the quarry was ran till captured.
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