Nestled amongst the richly-woven cultural tapestry that shapes our world, the Mustang horse oozes in globe-trotting appeal. While retracing the steps would be similar to elucidating the beginning of man, there is little doubt that the Mustang has come a long way in a relatively short amount of time. Although you could argue that it was just a question of returning to lands once grazed, as horses lived in North America in prehistoric times, dying out at the end of the last ice age around 10-12,000 years ago possibly due to climate change or the impact of newly-arrived human hunters. So in what could be an uncanny twist of fate, the horse, and in this case, the Mustang, was returned by the very hands that were instrumental in its demise. Interestingly, in light of the horse’s prehistoric existence in the Americas, many Native American myths and stories about the arrival of horses claimed that “the grass remembered” them.

It was thus in 1492 that Columbus sailed the ocean carrying horses in the holds of his ship – sleek, desert-bred, hardy little horses of Andalusian, Arabian and Barb ancestry. His efforts would be supplemented by many Conquistadores, namely Cortez in 1519, which would mark the beginning of the reintroduction of the horse into North America, soon to be known as the Mustang.

The English word “mustang” comes from the Mexican Spanish word mestengo, which was derived from the Spanish mestengo, meaning “stray” or “feral animal”. Indeed, although often referred to as wild horses, the free roaming horses of North America are all descendants of domesticated animals which makes them feral rather than wild. A term which often causes debate – often implying that wild would invite greater protection whereas feral tends to connote the negative impact an introduced species may have in an environment. However, as we have seen, the horse was re-introduced, which on some level provides the Mustang with a touch of the wild and the feral. But what is in a word?

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