The South Shore News & Tribune
Cracker Horse Still Runnin'
Greg Fight/Tampa Tribune
Paula Moore, a friend of Joe Sumner Jr., walks Blueberry, one of Sumner's Cracker horses, which are descended from the original Spanish horses that came here in the 1500s.
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Published: February 23, 2008
Updated: 02/21/2008 04:45 pm
BALM - The photo hanging on a wall in Joe Sumner's house looks like a scene out of a Western flick: four horses splashing through a creek, carrying men in broad-brimmed hats under a canopy of moss-draped trees.
The picture ran in The Tampa Times on July 4, 1945, shortly after the Florida Legislature passed a law that put an end to the open range that had become a tradition for cattlemen driving their animals across the state to market.
The men in the picture are related to Sumner, who traces his Florida heritage back seven to nine generations, depending on which side of the family you ask about. The photo was taken on a section of Bell Creek in Boyette, a 19th century settlement between Brandon and Wimauma that has all but vanished.
"This one pasture my granddaddy had was 15,000 acres," Sumner said. "It went all the way to Ruskin."
Cattle could be hiding anywhere in the vast expanse of pine and palmettos. Cow men had to be tough and smart to hunt them and herd them, and they depended on horses that had the same kind of "cow sense" as their human riders. The mount of choice: A breed now dubbed the Cracker horse.
"They had to go all day long in the heat," Sumner recalled. "One of these little horses could carry a 250-300 pound man. It was unbelievable, the hardiness of them."
Sumner supports a push by the Florida Cracker Horse Association to get the small horse that once ruled the range named the official horse of the Sunshine State.
To spotlight a bill pending in the Legislature that would do just that, two association members are going to ride a Cracker horse about 300 miles from Cockroach Bay in Ruskin to Tallahassee, starting Monday.
The riders, Billy Ray Hunter of Alachua and Carlton Dudley of Newberry, are expected to leave the Cockroach Bay Aquatic Preserve office at 10 a.m. His route will take him through the Little Manatee River State Park on Lightfoot Road and over to the Alafia River State Park on County Road 39, where he and his mount will meet media representatives at 4 p.m. Wednesday. He is scheduled to meet lawmakers at the DeSoto Site Historic State Park in Tallahassee on March 6.
The idea, organizers say, is for Hunter to retrace much of the trail forged by Spanish conquistador Hernando DeSoto in the 1500s, one of the first explorers to bring horses to Florida when it was still part of the New World. DeSoto is thought to have landed at a site a little south of Cockroach Bay, but security at Port Manatee precluded starting the Cracker ride there, Levy said.
Other Cracker horse fans and breeders are expected to join Hunter along the way, said James Levy, a state historian and executive director of the Florida Cracker Horse Association.
"The purpose of the whole event is to celebrate the long history of the Cracker horse in Florida," said Levy, who traces the ancestry of the breed to at least the 1600s. He said aficionados have managed to build herds totaling about 850 throughout the state, but that's still not enough horses to make sure the breed survives.
"This is Florida's heritage horse," he said. "We think the attention will help us promote these horses. ... We'd love to have people all over the country get interested in them."
The original Spanish horses that carried explorers through Florida's mosquito-ridden wilds are thought to have perished without leaving offspring behind, Levy said. One conquistador, Panfilo de Narvaez, skinned his horses and used their hides to make boats, Levy said.
Pioneers in the 1600s brought horses of similar Spanish stock, he said, and they were used extensively by white settlers and Indians.
When Sumner's ancestors drifted into Florida from Georgia in the 1800s, the descendants of those horses were pretty much the only equine stock available in the state, said Sumner and other historians. The animals are built somewhat like the quarter horse, introduced in Florida in the mid-1900s, but stand smaller and have a gait that Sumner describes as smooth and fast.
Sumner said his family worked its herds from the backs of Cracker horses, first because that's all they had, and later by choice.
He has built a replica of a Florida pioneer house on what's left of his family's spread in Balm. The dirt road that leads to the homestead is called Heritage Trail. Sumner keeps cattle, largely for old-time's sake, and he doesn't mind if his bovine charges venture right up to the house.
Some of those hooved critters are Cracker horses and cattle, lingering on the land as tribute to the job their ancestors did.
"I have deep appreciation and high esteem for these cows and horses," said Sumner. "The cow and the horse - that's what made us."
As cattle ranching declined and herding practices changed, the Cracker horse fell out of favor. In 1989, when a group of history and horse buffs started efforts to preserve the breed, experts counted only 141 in the state who matched Cracker characteristics.
"That's all we could find that were left," Levy said.
Almost 20 years later, efforts to breed the best of the remaining stock has beefed up the herd statewide to about 850, he said.
Sumner said his father's line of Cracker horses fizzled out. About seven years ago, he saw a light gray Cracker filly at an auction that reminded him of his father's favorite mount, Old Ribbon.
"I just fell in love with her," Sumner said.
Today, the mare, dubbed Blueberry, shares pasture and woods with 10 other Cracker horses in Sumner's herd.
"They're not barn-kept," Sumner said. "They're self-sufficient out on the range."
Sumner and Levy say the little horse needs to find a new niche, and they both predicted it will be trail-riding. Sumner said the horses generally combine an easy-going demeanor with a willingness to work.
"There's a walk they can get into," Sumner said. "It's so comfortable to ride. It's like riding with air shocks on."
He grinned. "And when you fall off, it's not so far to the ground."
Sumner said he has a limited number of the horses for sale, but he's not trying to make money off the herd.
"This is the way this country was built, with these horses and these cattle," he said. "It's a mission now for a lot of old pioneer families. We're going to hold onto them if we got to graze them in someone's backyard."
Prices for the horses vary widely, depending on lineage and training, but Sumner said a person could probably buy one for $800 to $1,000. For information, call Sumner at (813) 633-1355 or check the list of breeders on www.florida crackerhorses.com.
Reporter Susan M. Green can be reached at (813) 865-1566 or sgreen@tampatrib.com.
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