Something that initially struck me about both the Longhorn and the Mustang, is their intricate relationship with our Southwestern culture, history, economics, and social life. For those of us who were not raised as longhorns or who did not instinctively gravitate to burnt orange, the unabashed history and nature of the longhorn helped explain this “Hook ‘em” pride endemic to the UT community. (How many people do you know who claim to bleed a color other than a deep crimson, as many Longhorns proudly claim to “I bleed orange”?) Our culture of totemism stakes a totem pole through our collective experiences, history, and land, and reminds us of our role as descendants of this earthy tradition to continue growing, yes, but also to remember our roots. What struck me is the intricacy of the relationship between Tejano culture and the Longhorn. For one, we don’t even have the vernacular, the language, to articulate the relationship between the Longhorn and the land—and yet the Spanish word, “querencia” (104) perfectly identifies this absolutely loving relationship. Moreover, the Longhorn did not love to eat some typical Anglo food, but rather, as was the case in Sancho’s experience, what set fire to his soul was some “piloncillo sugar,” Mexican tamales, and “chiltipiquin peppers” (107). Sancho would even “halt[] every now and then to sniff southward for a whiff of the Mexican Gulf.” (109) The Longhorn, for all we know, could have felt culturally Mexican through and through—just as the history of Texas is firmly grounded in Mexican soil and soul. Perhaps it is important to reiterate that the Texas Longhorn has roamed through the not without a hoof in the increasingly multicultural and multiracial identity of the Southwest. The Longhorn itself was considered an “outlaw,” though it has been made clear that the term is “inaccurate and man-smug” (114), just as the Mexicans who fed him, were too often deemed “outlaws.” The “Texas Longhorn has [case in point] made more history than any other breed of cattle.” (103) Furthermore, the powerful allusions to conquest in the history of the horse in the western world--the “stallions that bore conquistadores across the Americas”—begs perhaps a less “picturesque and romantic” (103) understanding to the “pristine times.” In terms of a “determinant in social economy” and also the sculpting of the New World, “the horse is utterly of the past.” (130) The Mustang's character is perhaps closely reflected in the attitudes of the conquistadores who introduced them to their new land and who rode them--"wild and free." (132)