The Princess Diary
This entry sets the context for a ‘Princess’ who became a symbol as an ‘equine heroine’. She represents the equine face of the fierce confrontation and debate here in New Zealand about the Wild Horses of the Kaimanawa. While some were happy to kill her and her kind off, others in this country fell completely and utterly in love with the Wild Horses of Kaimanawa because of her. To date this story has no fairy tale ending but this was the context she grew out from.
The first horses in New Zealand were a stallion and two mares brought from Australia by the missionary Samuel Marsden. They arrived at Rangihoua in the Bay of Islands on 22 December 1814, on board the ‘Active’. Also on board was Ngāpuhi leader Ruatara who had been visiting Sydney. He had been gifted one of the mares by the Governor of New South Wales.
The importation of horses, mainly from Australia and to a lesser extent from Britain really began in the 1840s. Very few records exist to establish when Arabian horses first arrived in NZ however 1840 is generally considered to be the date of the first arrival, a grey mare named Medora. She was followed by three stallions, Hadji Baba in 1875 to Canterbury, Crusader in 1888 to Gisborne and Arab Child in 1878 to Hawkes Bay.
Several horse types including Draught horses (or heavy horses) were used for heavy tasks such as hauling and ploughing. They were the main type in New Zealand until about 1950. Scottish Clydesdales were imported from the 1860s. They became the main draught breed because of their strength and easy temperament. Light horse breeds are more active and used mainly for riding or pulling lighter loads.
Hackneys were imported in the 1880s to pull carriages. Cleveland Bays were another carriage type but were also used for riding and carting. Arabians and Thoroughbreds are specialist riding horses with Thoroughbreds being the most popular racing breed. The Standardbred was used in harness racing. Cobs which were popular riding horses are a type rather than a breed.
Crossing different breeds was very common when horses were the main means of transportation. Often a Thoroughbred would be bred with a draught horse to produce a strong and less highly strung horse, which would be useful for a variety of tasks. After motorised vehicles and machinery began to replace working horses in the early 20th century, horse numbers declined.
It’s said that the first recorded horse in the Central North Island was presented to the son of Te Heu Heu Tukino by Tamati Waka Nene of Hokianga in 1844. The Kaimanawa’s connection to Hawke’s Bay came in the form of Major George Carlyon who in 1858 established his sheep station in Hawkes Bay. He imported Exmoor ponies that were thought to be the oldest and purest of the British native ponies. They were the direct descendants of the horses that walked onto Britain before it was an island.
This breed has two unique features that helped it survive in the harsh winter conditions of its native land. It had a “hooded-eye” that protected it from rain and wind and a “snow-chute” that channels rain and snow down away from the body. He crossed them with local horses to develop a hardy, sure-footed small horse known as the Carlyon. When he died in 1875 his Breeding Programme was taken over by the Government’s Land Purchase Commissioner Sir Donald McLean, owner of Maraekakaho Station.
McLean imported two Welsh stallions Dinarth Caesar and Comet. He crossed these with Carlyon’s Exmoor Cross ponies and produced the breed known as Comet and named after one of the Welsh stallions. Shortly before his death in 1877 McLean took a stallion and some mares up on the Kaingaroa Plains and released them. This introduced the Comet Breed into the growing herd. By the 1870’s wild herds roamed extensively.
In the early 1900’s Rab Barnett, a wild horse catcher recalls that the horses roamed from the upper reaches of the Waikato River and as far afield as Mokai, Taupo, Tongariro and Ruapehu. Throughout this wide area there were many beautiful. high quality wild horses. When caught and broken they proved to have a high degree of endurance and were invariably sure-footed and good animals in rough or rugged country.
Jim Bellis spent most of his 92 years around Taihape and was in close touch with the notable hunters and horse dealers who once operated around the high tussock country that extended from Taihape in the South to the Rangitaiki Plains in the north. This vast area carried a population of many thousands of horses of all sizes and colours. Jim can remember in the 1890’s, large mobs of wild horses being caught as far away as Atiamuri in the north then being driven to Fielding and Palmerston North to be sold in the sale ring, a distance of about 200 miles.
They found that the horses could be used to get rid of Chewings fescue (an aggressive, bunch-type fine fescue that can overtake other grasses, a bad quality if you want to preserve these but good if you want to crowd out weeds) and toi-toi (Cortaderia toetoe) infesting their land. The horses were sold when they completed their farm work and many thousands of them went into circulation as riding Ponies or light harness horses.
The last of the wild horse sales was held in the early 1930’s according to Jim. These horses were used for any need of strength or speed the settlers or natives had including times of war. They were the foundation of the New Zealand station-bred hack found on large runs all over the country. The land available for horses to roam freely over was being reduced by fencing and the planting of pine trees for forestry.
Thousands of horses were shot to reduce their numbers and the remaining were forced into the wilder, rougher country where encounters with humans were rare. Their last stronghold was the rugged and inhospitable Kaimanawa Ranges where they were isolated and surrounded by army land. In the years that followed many contributed to the bloodline of this wild horse population.
There were escapes and releases of horses from sheep runs in the area and in 1941 horses from the Mounted Rifle Cavalry Units at Waiouru were released when a strangles epidemic threatened. The survivors joined the mobs of Wild horses at the same time improving the bloodlines. The winters were tough but that, no doubt, culled those with poor constitutions.
It was also reported that Nicholas Koreneff Öger released an Arab stallion into the area during the 1960’s. The release of army mounts apparently changed the size and type of the herds, with an increase in stature and possibly better conformation, according to those who lived near enough to observe the horses often. “It was also said, that the quality of the wild horses was greatly improved by the epidemic.
Tomorrow we take a look at an equine princess. She is called Kaimaniwa Princess.
