“In Frank A. Root and William E. Connelley, The Overland Stage to California, p. 100, the authors state that Russell bought some 200 ponies at Salt Lake City, and large numbers in California, Iowa, and Missouri. At San Francisco it was announced that W. W. Finney had bought mules and horses. The animals used were almost always referred to as ‘ponies,’ but were really fleet American horses, California mustangs–a small, hardy Mexican stock, then regarded as the fleetest animal in the West. See, also, Arthur Chapman, The Pony Express (New York and London, 1932), pp. 84-89.”
