A10
OREGON
East Oregonian
Saturday, June 29, 2019
OPB Photo/Emily Cureton
A band of free-roaming horses moments after they’ve been corralled by cowboys on the Warm Springs Reservation.
Chasing horses on the open range
By EMILY CURETON
Oregon Public Broadcasting
WARM SPRINGS — A
boy and his horse prepare
for the 50th annual Pi-Ume-
Sha Treaty Days in Warm
Springs. But even with years
of training, everything can
change in a single stride.
As cowboys from the
Warm Springs Reservation
set out early one morning
to capture wild horses, the
youngest among them fid-
dled with a fresh red cast on
his arm.
Avan Garcia is a 14-year-
old horseman with a budding
reputation for roping skills
— and for fearlessness.
“You can’t be scared
being around horses,” he
said. “Because that will just
make them scared.”
But as evidenced by the
cast, his boldness has a price.
Avan recently fractured two
wrist bones trying to ride a
bull, and the injury nixed
his entry in the 50th annual
Pi-Ume-Sha rodeo, which
runs this weekend.
The rodeo is part of
a weekend of commu-
nity activities commemo-
rating the Treaty of 1855,
which still protects cer-
tain rights for members of
the Confederated Tribes of
Warm Springs. The celebra-
tion includes a powwow, a
parade, and one more event
of intense interest to Avan:
the Saturday morning endur-
ance horse race.
After finishing second
three years in a row, he wants
to win this time, and the
wrist injury did not keep him
off his race horse, Blackhat.
Avan spent months train-
ing the paint gelding with
one blue eye to run the har-
rowing 7.5 miles of steep
terrain.
“I told the doctor to take
the cast off during the race.
She said she could,” Avan
said with a smile.
First though, he had wild
horses to chase.
His uncle Dustin Sup-
pah led the operation down a
web of rutted dirt roads with
no written signage, about 30
miles from the central cam-
pus of Warm Springs. It’s
open range, which means
livestock move around much
of the roughly half-million-
acre reservation freely.
“Where we’re riding
at, the majority of time the
horses out there they have
never seen a person, never
been in a corral,” Suppah
said.
On the way there, a large
herd spotted the truck and
trailer, then tore off in the
other direction. The sad-
dle horses in tow stared
after them, ears rigid, and
stamped antsily. Once they
got to the backcountry cor-
ral site, Blackhat pranced out
of the trailer, sunlight catch-
ing in his one blue eye. Avan
swung a leg over the saddle
OPB Photo/Emily Cureton
Avan Garcia and Blackhat get ready to chase wild horses on
June 22.
and the two galloped away to
get in position for the chase.
The goal was to keep the
horses within a V-shaped
perimeter, then drive them
along a fence line and into
a trap corral. That’s where
Avan’s father, Aldo Garcia,
waited quietly on foot, hid-
den among the pine trees.
Garcia doesn’t ride and
didn’t grow up ranching, but
he said he’s grateful family
members are teaching Avan.
For his part, Garcia wants to
warn his son to escape the
traps he didn’t.
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“I tell my kids: ‘You guys
lived that life of addiction,
you’ve seen us sell meth on
the reservation, you’ve seen
us do bad stuff, and you guys
are more likely than a nor-
mal kid to continue where
we left off,’” he said.
That cycle worries him
more than Avan’s bull rid-
ing, bucking horses or bro-
ken bones: “This changes it
for him,” Garcia said, “this
sober nourishment he gets
out of chasing horses.”
A distant sound hushed
him. A volley of yells grew
louder and closer, then a rush
of hooves. He jumped behind
a tree just as the horses
swirled into a corral about
50 yards away. Garcia didn’t
want to spook them into run-
ning the wrong direction.
As Avan and the other
cowboys approached, the
horses rammed against the
pipe metal panels. A cloud
of dust and confusion swal-
lowed them. The men let it
settle, and eventually, they
were able to drive about a
dozen horses onto a trailer.
A few, however, eluded
capture, and Avan and
Blackhat rode off again to
chase those down. They
were in a full-throttled pur-
suit of a pair when the chase
went wrong. Instead of turn-
ing in front of a fence, the
horses tumbled through
its barbed wire. Avan was
thrown, and Blackhat fol-
lowed the wild ones. The
gelding disappeared into the
trees, fully saddled.
Avan was taken to the
emergency room. Mean-
while, the crew used radios
to coordinate their search for
his runaway horse.
Avan’s great uncle Lin-
coln “Jay” Suppah calmly
rode through the woods
to look for tracks. He’s an
elder and what you call a
“ride boss,” which means
he calls the shots about how
unbranded animals are gath-
ered on this part of the reser-
vation’s open range.
“This happens some-
times, and that’s part of gath-
ering stock,” Jay Suppah
said.
But, he added, some
things have changed: “When
I was growing up there
would be 30 or 40 cowboys
out here doing this together.
Now, we’re down to seven or
eight of us at a time.”
Eventually, the crew
moved on without Black-
hat. It had a lot of stock to
wrangle before the rodeo.
Avan came home from
the hospital that after-
noon — bruised, but noth-
ing new broken. And early
the next day, things started
to look up again. Black-
hat was found: alone, qui-
etly grazing a field near the
home ranch.
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