“The mustang is the Spanish mesteño. The animal was introduced by the first colonists, and allowed to run at large. Its great variety of coat proves the mustang’s degeneracy from the tame horse; according to travelers, cream-color, skewbald, and piebald being not uncommon. ‘Sparing in diet, a stranger to grain, easily satisfied whether on growing or dead grass, inured to all weathers, and capable of great labor,’ the mustang-pony is a treasure to the prairie-man.”
