The Pueblo Saddle Ledger
Eight saddles from the Pueblo region. Each with a documented ownership chain. Each with a history that did not end with its last recorded owner.
The saddles in this ledger were collected from a single region — the Pueblo corridor and its southern approaches, Las Animas and Huerfano counties, the trade routes that connected the mining towns to the plains — across a period of roughly forty years. They are not a planned collection. They were assembled because each one came to the attention of the archive through its history: an ownership chain that did not close cleanly, a transfer that followed something unusual, a condition that did not match the use it had seen.
Three of the eight bear arc marks on the cantle or skirt — cuts placed deliberately, in patterns that do not vary enough to be coincidence and are not similar enough to be the work of one hand. The archive has not established what the marks mean or whether they were placed to communicate something to someone. They may be a craftsman's convention that did not survive into the documentary record. They may be something else. The ledger notes them.
Each saddle has a page. Each page has what the record contains. The record, in every case, contains less than the object itself appears to.
Frazier Work Saddle, 1889
Frazier shop, Pueblo, 1889. Radial arc pattern on the skirt, three repeating. Documented four or more owners.
Trinidad Trail Saddle, c. 1882
Maker unknown, Trinidad region, c. 1882. Black leather, silver horn cap. Two deliberate parallel cuts on the left fender.
Roper's Saddle, 1895
Maker partially stamped "R.T." — possibly Reuben Tait, land surveyor, who also worked leather.
Unfinished Saddle, c. 1888
Gideon Pruett, Trinidad, c. 1888. Tooling runs three-quarters of the way around the skirt and stops at a clean edge.
Separated Saddle, 1896
Frazier second-generation, 1896. Owner Caleb Ord was found disoriented in a field in September 1905.
Southern Plains Saddle, 1878
Oldest saddle in the ledger, origin near Las Animas, 1878. Three deliberate arc cuts on the cantle.
Burial Saddle, 1903
Plain, no tooling. Owned by Harlan Moss, who requested it be buried with him. The request was not honored.
Apprentice Saddle, 1891
Made by an unnamed apprentice, Pueblo, 1891. Arc tooling on every surface.