in search of true Appaloose ~ Scott Engstrom's trail

To look at her, Scott Engstrom at 71, would appear to be just a white-haired elderly woman, a grandmother to nine - and the last person in the world you’d expect to cross the world chasing a dream. That was until the day two years ago when a chance glimpse at a TV programme made her jump out of her chair.  

Centuries ago, the Nez Perce War was an armed conflict between several bands of the Nez Perce tribe of Native Americans and their allies, a small band of the Palouse tribe against the United States Army. The conflict, fought in 1877, stemmed from the refusal of several bands of the Nez Perce, dubbed "non-treaty Indians", to give up their ancestral lands in the Pacific Northwest and move to an Indian reservation in Idaho.

David Tepper's hedge fund ‘Appaloosa Management’ disclosed that the value of its equity holdings were reduced by 40% late last year, according to recent regulatory filings, as many individual stock holdings were closed or sharply reduced. The market value of Appaloosa's holdings were $4.05 billion as of Dec. 31, down from $6.79 billion at the end of September, according to a 13F filing.

~~  The connection is “Appaloosa” - an American horse breed best known for its colourful spotted coat pattern. There is a wide range of body types within the breed, stemming from the influence of multiple breeds of horses throughout its history.  Each horse's colour pattern is genetically the result of various spotting patterns overlaid on top of one of several recognized base coat colours.   Artwork depicting prehistoric horses with leopard spotting exists in prehistoric cave paintings in Europe. Images of domesticated horses with leopard spotting patterns appeared in artwork from Ancient Greece and Han Dynasty China through the early modern period; the Nez Perce people of what today is the United States Pacific Northwest developed the original American breed. Appaloosas were once referred to by settlers as the "Palouse horse", possibly after the Palouse River, which ran through the heart of Nez Perce country.

Read this interesting post in MailOnline about Scott Engstrom 71, travelling  to Kyrgyzstan in search of rare horse breed. Scott, 71, is horse-mad, and has been fascinated with one particular breed since she was a little girl: the Appaloosa, descendants of the horses ridden by the Nez Perce tribe of American Indians. Appaloosas are beautiful, famed for their myriad coat patterns, mottled skin, striped hooves, eerily human-looking eyes, and a graceful one-foot-on-the-ground gait, known as the Indian shuffle.

It was thought that there were fewer than 200 true Appaloosas left in the world as cross-breeding has threatened their integrity.  On her ranch in New Zealand, Scott has been breeding the real McCoy since 1996. But on one fateful Sunday in 2012, Scott settled down to watch what she thought was going to be an old movie, Around The World In 80 Days. Instead it was a repeat of Channel 4 series, Around The World In 80 Trades, in which former City analyst Conor Woodman travelled the globe buying and selling local commodities. The series, which first aired six years ago, showed him horse-trading in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan.

Conor Woodman joined Scott on her quest after she saw him horse-trading in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan on the Channel 4 program Around the World in 80 Trades  ~ she screamed stating that the horse that Conor had bought and called Martin was surely an Appaloosa.  Most breeders would say that Appaloosas arrived in Mexico with the Spanish conquistadors and made their way north. But American-born Scott always believed they came from Asia across the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia, and that’s why there were so many in the Pacific North West, the home of the Nez Perce tribe.

She was keen to follow the trail, travel to Kyrgyzstan and find that horse. A  flurry of emails followed as the oldie was keen to keep the wonderful breed alive.  If they succeeded, she argued, then DNA tests might prove her theory about the breed’s origins.  So that was how Scott came to be flying to Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, before setting off across Central Asia to make a film, Secret Horse: Quest For The True Appaloosa, shown on BBC4 tonight. Scott is looking into importing horses from Kyrgyzstan to New Zealand where she lives.

Though her family did not agree, Scott is fiercely individual. Five-times married (her first marriage lasted only a day, number four lasted three months) refuses to stand any nonsense from husbands. ‘I wish I’d married a cowboy,’ she said. ‘I’m so horsey and none of my husbands were.’ Nor was this her first big adventure. Scott was in her 50s when she moved from her remote home in Idaho to New Zealand.  She was accompanied by two daughters, three horses including an Appaloosa mare, two old English sheepdogs, a boat, a pick-up truck and a horse trailer.  

Filmmaker Conor hadn’t a clue that Martin was special when, as one of his 80 Trades, he bought him for the equivalent of £610 from local breeder Munarbek Kuldanbaev. After an unsuccessful day trying to hack it as a horse dealer, he sold him on to a farmer for £500. But when Conor and Scott tracked down that farmer, with Munarbek’s help, it turned out Martin had been sold a month later to a man in the same village. Then he’d been sold again, this time at market to an unknown buyer. They’d reached a dead end. ‘I was so upset, I cried for three days,’ Scott said. Appaloosas in the US cost up to $100,000 (£64,000).  Scott has refused an offer of $150,000 (£99,000) for her stallion Eagleheart. But this wasn’t about money. Her dream was that by breeding from the purest Appaloosas in the world, she could strengthen the bloodline.

So someone amazingly is trying to resurrect a bloodline that was lost by Nez Perce  in 1877 wars when they lost  most of their horses.  Like polo, highly skilled riders compete to drag a goat carcass into goal. There they learned about a remote valley where there were horses that sounded like Appaloosas. They spent three days driving, then onwards on horseback, sleeping rough in wolf country. At 4,200m Scott was clearly suffering from altitude sickness, though she insists it was just the flu. But then came the moment that made it all worthwhile: the first sighting of a herd of what were clearly Appaloosas. ‘It was so wonderful. I was so relieved to know they existed,’ she said. Locally, the horses are known as chaar, which means spotted. Their nomadic owners said that during the Soviet regime, the Russians tried to eradicate them by cross-breeding; but in this remote valley they survived.

A web search revealed  ‘Appaloosa’ as  an American western based on the 2005 novel, Appaloosa, by crime writer Robert B. Parker. Directed by Ed Harris, Appaloosa stars Harris alongside Viggo Mortensen.  The film premiered in the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in selected cities in Sept 2008. 

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

16^th Feb 2015.