Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island (31 page)

By the seventeenth century, Comanche and Apache tribes in present-day Texas and New Mexico began to acquire horses through trades with Spanish explorers. Eventually, horses escaped from their loosely tended, unfenced herds and spread across the Wild West.

In the United States, horses became emblems of unfettered freedom. Americans romanticized the horses’ thundering stampedes, coats glistening and twitching, as they galloped free across sagebrush wilderness. Cowboys—from Buffalo Bill to the Lone Ranger —became quintessential American icons, mounting their horses and trampling underfoot the untamed wilderness. Like the horses they saddled, cowboys represented American ideals of ruggedness and vigor. Horse and human have become so entwined in American mythology that they have fused: perhaps no words better capture the unbridled American spirit than
mustang
and
maverick
.

When the frontier closed in the twentieth century and the Wild West was cross-fenced by cattle farmers, free-roaming horses no longer had endless wildlands to graze. Ranchers considered horses a nuisance. Some horses were rounded up by breeders in the East, who selected horses for racing and showing. The Carnegies brought trailer loads of polo horses and retired circus ponies to Cumberland Island to breed with a remnant herd of horses left behind by Oglethorpe and the British. One islander thought spotted horses would be pretty, so Appaloosa horses were introduced to Cumberland. Lucy brought over Arabian horses and her racing stallions to bolster the island herd.

All free-roaming horses in the United States today—including the 250 now on Cumberland Island—are feral. The government spends $75 million each year rounding up and corralling feral horses. In the West, over forty-two thousand stray horses are packed into crowded feedlots for slaughter annually. To deliver them to slaughterhouses alive, wranglers handicap them by sewing their noses partially shut with thongs of rawhide, cutting ligaments in their knees, and gut-shooting them. Most are then crammed into railcars and shipped to dog-food plants. The iconic American mustangs are being butchered to feed Fido.

Few other options remain for the once-wild horses. Their lands have been leased to cattle ranchers. Horse adoptions have steadily declined. Sterilization and castration programs have not been widely successful so far.

The feral horses on Cumberland Island face different but equally dismal fates. Most of the island horses are shabby, sickly, and emaciated. Three out of ten foals born on the island die in their first year. Most have worms and parasitic diseases. Their stomachs are eaten up with botflies. Some die of anemia and encephalitis; outbreaks are common on Cumberland. Carol has found dead horses tangled in vines and wedged between trees. Many more get trapped in the marsh mud and starve to death or drown. The horses breed beyond the carrying capacity of the island, and many suffer and die. The park stealthily stacks horse carcasses behind the Dungeness dunes, out of view of tourists.

The horses also devastate the island. Feral horses have so overgrazed the sea oats and vegetation near Lake Whitney that the denuded dunes are collapsing into the lake and filling in the island’s largest source of freshwater. They also trample the nests of endangered least terns and other shorebirds, who bury their camouflaged, cream-colored eggs in scoops of sand along the dunes. In the forest, horses browse on Spanish moss, shearing it beyond the reach of native deer. In the marshes, feral horses shave the anchoring grasses that are essential for shrimp and shellfish nurseries. In short, they are an ecological nightmare.

But they are a tourist’s dream. Nearly every camera-toting tourist who boards the island ferry hopes to catch a glimpse of a horse, partially because the National Park Service has promoted the island as a wild horse sanctuary. The horses are also a popular draw for Greyfield Inn’s guests. Like Lucy before her, Gogo claims the horses’ ecological impacts have been exaggerated.

Fearing public outcry and island family backlash, the National Park Service has been reluctant to remove the feral horses, even though they are mandated to do so. All feral animals in national parks—especially ones that threaten endangered species—are required by law to be removed. But tourism has trumped turtle habitat. The only steadfast voice for ending the suffering of the horses and the island has been Carol’s.

“It’s time for the feral horses of Cumberland to ride off into the sunset, for their own health and the island’s,” she said at a park meeting, despite the boos and catcalls of island families.

Not surprisingly, Carol’s outspoken opposition to the feral horses has prompted a few dustups. One afternoon, Grover Henderson was fishing at the jetty when Carol passed by on her way to investigate a dead sea turtle.

“Why do you hate horses so much?” Grover asked her.

“They’re suffering and starving. How can we wish that kind of anguish upon a creature just to fulfill our own misguided romantic notions?”

“That’s a load of horseshit. Look at those horses grazing on the dunes. Do they look miserable? They got food in their bellies, a view of the ocean, a nice breeze to keep the flies down.”

“Those horses are grazing sea oats, which hold the dunes in place. If people pull up sea oats, they can be arrested.”

Grover staked his fishing pole in the sand and got up from his lawn chair. “Let me get this straight. You want to get rid of the horses to protect the grass? This is the biggest damn island in the South. The sea oats will grow back.”

“Horses are also smashing the nests of shorebirds, starving out the deer, and mowing down the marshes.”

“Cut the crap, Carol. We got thousands of acres of marsh surrounding the island. You don’t have to be a PhD in flora n’ whatever to see that. Where else can wild horses run free on an undeveloped island? This is as good as it gets.”

“Not for the sickly, scraggly horses. Not for the dead stallions stuck in the marsh mud. The horses are not native to the island. They belong here about as much as they belong in downtown Atlanta.”

“The horses will control their own population,” Grover argued. “They’ll die off. They’ll get diseases. Let God handle the horses—not the government. I don’t want the government doing anything except guarding the coast and carrying the mail.”

One possible compromise solution to the horses is removing all but a small remnant herd on the south end of the island, where most of the tourists flock. The visitors get their horses. The horses’ health dramatically improves. The island takes much less of a beating. Nests of endangered terns and turtles get a fighting chance.

It’s worked on another barrier island. On Virginia’s Assateague Island, a local fire department removes feral horses each year and sells them at a public auction. Assateague Island also uses contraception to control horse reproduction. Their smaller horse population is much healthier. Foals live longer, horses suffer fewer diseases, and their impact on the island is greatly diminished.

In the spring of 1996, the National Park Service began to consider plans to reduce the herds on Cumberland Island. “We are being selfish in wanting to maintain a large number of unhealthy horses simply because we like to see them and feel that they are free,” concluded the National Park Service’s natural resource manager Jenny Bjork.

The park hoped that the south end herd solution would solve more than the feral horse headache. It would also help resolve the standoff between historic preservation and wilderness. Vehicle tours could circle the southern half of the island, so that everyone could see both the horses and the historic structures. They would stay out of the northern half of the island, which was already federally designated wilderness.

Most island residents supported a north-south compromise for the horses and the island. So did hikers and environmental groups. The park drafted a new management plans that limited the number of horses and confined them to the south end.

But then, in September of 1996, U.S. Representative Jack Kingston a friend of the Carnegie families on Cumberland intervened. Kingston added a one-paragraph rider to the federal budget bill banning all horse management at Cumberland Island National Seashore. The Park Service’s south end horse plan was nixed.

And just a few weeks later, a humble structure on the north end would become a tourist attraction even more popular than the horses.

John F. Kennedy Jr. began visiting Cumberland Island in 1986. It was a quiet retreat for the handsome, adventurous son of the thirty-fifth president. For twelve years, he swam in the ocean, ran the island trails, paddled the marshes, and hiked deep into the forests.

John had met Carolyn Bessette in 1992, and she soon began joining him on Cumberland getaways. Together they dug for clams in the marshes, trekked beneath the moss-festooned live oaks, and strolled along the seashore hand in hand. They stayed at Greyfield and became good friends with Gogo.

John proposed to Carolyn in the spring of 1995, and they decided to marry the following summer on Cumberland Island, where they had spent some of their most cherished and romantic moments together. John and Carolyn asked Gogo if she would help coordinate the wedding for them at the abandoned First African Baptist Church on the island’s north end.

“I knew that it was going to be logistically very hard to do that,” Gogo said, “but I also knew that it was the one gift that I could give: privacy.”

Gogo kept the wedding plans a secret from the National Park Service, Greyfield Inn employees, and even most of her family. She even stealthily arranged the marriage certificate and bloodwork required by the state. Two days before the wedding, the county clerk was sent to the tiny airport in St. Marys, where she was to help a young couple complete pre-wedding paperwork.

When she arrived at the airport, the clerk met a young woman who was, according to the clerk, “the picture of an excited, anxious bride.” As she filled out the marriage license, the clerk asked what her married name would be.

“Carolyn Bessette Kennedy,” she replied. Suddenly, the county clerk understood the significance and the secrecy surrounding this license. Soon, another plane touched down, and out stepped John F. Kennedy Jr., who took his turn doing paperwork and giving blood.

It was one of many attentive details handled by Gogo, who pulled off one of the most successful covert celebrity weddings ever. Her secrecy and subterfuge kept gossipers perplexed and most of the media in the dark. Only one photographer from the French paparazzi managed to sneak onto Cumberland beforehand, and he was escorted off the island the morning before the wedding.

Gogo paid a friend to wash out the cobwebs and oil
the floors and benches of the First African Baptist Church, which had not been used since 1963, when Beulah Alberty gathered all of the Settlement residents together to hold a memorial service for President
Kennedy after he was assassinated. The National Park Service had recently applied a fresh coat of white paint to the clapboard church, along with a new red tin roof. Carolyn drove up to see the church beforehand. She hid on the floor of the car to avoid being recognized.

For the wedding weekend, Gogo hired former FBI agents to provide security for the couple and their guests at the Greyfield Inn. They installed a laser beam around the compound, which ended up being triggered by every horse that wandered through it.

On the afternoon of September 21, 1996, Gogo drove Carolyn from the Greyfield Inn to the wedding. Because of high tide, they could not drive up the beach, so they bounced up the washboard-rutted main road to the church. To avoid wrinkling her dress, Carolyn stood in the backseat and leaned into the front for fourteen jarring miles. As soon as she stepped out, she sunk down into the mud in her beaded satin sandals.

John delayed the wedding by several hours. He had misplaced his father’s shirt and cuff links, which he had hoped to wear. Gogo’s husband, David, scoured the Greyfield Inn and finally found them. It was nearly dark by the time John arrived at the church.

While the guests waited at the church, several of them—including Robert Kennedy Jr.—meandered over to meet Carol. She gave tours of her museum and introduced guests to Pretty Butt. A few guests wandered into the woods and were covered in ticks for days afterward. At dusk, Carol loaned the guests kerosene lamps and flashlights, which were used to illuminate the church.

Crowding into the chapel’s eight wooden pews were forty guests, including John’s longtime friend and CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour, who had flown in from the Middle East. Caroline Kennedy’s three-year-old son, Jack, was the ring bearer. When the bride appeared at the chapel entrance, Jack said loudly, “Why is Carolyn all dressed up?”

Carolyn wore a $40,000 pearl-colored silk crepe floor-length gown, a handrolled silk veil, and long silk gloves. A bun at the nape of her neck was pinned with a clip belonging to Jackie Kennedy. A gospel soloist sang “Amazing Grace” a cappella as she walked down an aisle carpeted with rose petals.

John, wearing a single-breasted, midnight blue wool suit, a white waffled vest, and his father’s shirt, cuff links, and wristwatch, smiled as Carolyn arrived beside him. She handed her lily bouquet to her matron of honor, Caroline Kennedy, wearing a high-waisted, navy blue silk gown.

Carol watched from the church steps with the Greyfield staff. During the long Catholic service, she walked over to her horse pasture, adjacent to the church. Pretty Butt nuzzled in beside Carol and dropped a pile of manure at her feet. A hulking, muscle-bound African American security guard chatted with Carol about her rugged life in the woods.