For those of you who also read the APPALOOSA JOURNAL, you may
recognize the name of Marianne Love as the author of several "Pillars of
the Breed" articles. She is also the author of several books, including
the delightful POCKETGIRDLES AND OTHER CONFESSIONS OF A NORTHWEST
FARMGIRL. Her books are available on the internet at amazon.com or
directly from the author.
Marianne is Harold Tibb's stepdaughter, and so grew up with some of the
most wonderful Appaloosa horses like we now yearn to produce. She is a
school teacher and resides in Sandpoint, Idaho.
Marianne interviewed Harold and has graciously written this 'Spot of
History' for the ICAA.
Old-time Appaloosa owner Harold Tibbs has never strayed too far from
home. He once resided in California while working for a logging company,
and he spent a few months in a Chicago hospital being treated for
complications from a broken leg. During the late 1930s, he lived in
Montana's Madison Valley riding 40,000 acres of range as a ranch hand.
Most of his 82 years, however, have been spent in North Idaho. He grew up
in Bonners Ferry (about 30 miles south of the Canadian border) where his
parents were school teachers. Most of his adult life he's lived in
Sandpoint, a resort town 30 miles south of Bonners Ferry.
As a retired water filter operator for the City of Sandpoint, Tibbs enjoys
puttering with machinery or attending to various maintenance needs on his
30-acre Tibbs Arabian farm north of Sandpoint where he lives with his wife
Virginia, a Western artist. Of their six kids, two daughters, Barbara and
Laurie—both school teachers—also live on the farm where they train
Arabians and teach general horsemanship in the indoor arena.
Tibbs may not have strayed too far from rural North Idaho, but his
influence with old-time Appaloosas spans the world. In fact, last fall he
received a sample registration form from the Appaloosa Horse Club of South
Africa. Smack dab in the middle of the document was a cut-out of Harold
riding his beloved Toby I in the first-ever National Appaloosa Show at
Lewiston, Idaho in 1948. Tibbs and Toby cleaned up at the show, winning
three national classes and taking second in another. Ardis Racicot, a
friend (who later owned the stallion after Tibbs gave him to her), rode
Toby in Women's Pleasure. When the day had ended, Toby (F-203) had won the
performance championship. Prizes included a silver belt buckle, which went
to Racicot, a Navajo blanket and a bridle.
Tibbs thinks that Toby's "star" qualities gave him an edge. "I felt like I
had the best horse there," Tibbs recalled. "Toby was a horse of good
saddle and stock type. He would weigh around 1,100 pounds and stood about
15.1 hands. His head wasn't too refined, but it was still a smart head,"
he added. "He was a horse that would and could do anything you wanted him
to do."
Tibbs had purchased Toby from Floyd Hickman of Palouse, Washington, for
$350. Former Appaloosa Horse Club Executive Secretary George Hatley was
thrilled to see Toby at that first show.
"He had heard of him but had never seen him, "Tibbs recalled. "He had Toby
II, so we rode matched pairs and showed together several times afterward."
A photo of the two appeared in the July, 1997, Appaloosa Journal. Hatley
liked the looks of the sire of his horse. "He looked real good to me,"
Hatley recalled. "The breeder Floyd Hickman had always spoken very highly
of the horse. I was happy to see him. He was a very well-reined horse and
he made a favorable impression on the people."
An estimated 700-800 spectators watched the show which was coordinated by
the Lewiston Kiwanis Club. The event included entries from all over the
West, Southern Canada and the Midwest. Sixty-five horses competed.
"Anybody who could get there competed," Tibbs recalled. "Everyone was
friendly and trying to learn from the other guy…comparing notes with what
they were doing."
"At that time there were no questions that they were Appaloosas…they had
to be colored to be registered," he added. "Some were the leopard type. A
lot of them came from back in the Dakotas. Some came from down in
Colorado—they called them "rangers"—they were a white spotted leopard."
Tibbs said historian Dr. Francis Haines had traced the breed back to Asia.
"We also knew they were predominantly horses that the Nez Perce Indians
had bred," he added. "It was questionable where they came from to get into
the United States, but the Nez Perce seemed to have a corner on the
breeding—as verified in the journals of Lewis and Clark."
Tibbs also owned Toby's half brother for three years. He purchased the
younger stallion named "Mickey" for $175. The horse was black in front
with a white spotted blanket over most of his body.
"I renamed him before I registered him," Tibbs said. "I thought Chief
Joseph was a more fitting name." The horse is listed in the ApHC registry
as "Chief Joseph, ApHC 92". "He was as smart a horse as you'd ever want to
find," he recalled. "You could teach him anything. He was a little bit of
a handful, but not bad." Tibbs sold the horse because, "I got offered more
than I thought he was worth, so I took it: $ 350."
At the time that Tibbs owned Toby I, he knew of four studs in the region
which were outstanding horses—all half-brothers. Besides Toby and Chief
Joseph, he recalled a sorrel-and-white stud named Johnny which was used as
a pony horse at a Spokane, Washington, training stable. The fourth
stallion came from Cusick, Washington. "He was chocolate with a white
blanket and spots," Tibbs said. "He traveled the rodeo circuit, and he was
a wonderful trick horse." Neither of these horses were registered.
"The fellows weren't interested in registering," he said. "They were
saddle horses, and these horses were all alive during the era where the
value of the horse was what he could do—they were good ones."
Appaloosas back in those days had emerged from three influences, Tibbs
said. "We saw the influence of the Appaloosa as the Nez Perce had him, "
he explained. "Then afterward, the white man tried to make draft horses,
which made them coarse." Oregonian Claude Thompson, who started the
Appaloosa (Club) registry and owner of foundation sire Red Eagle's
Peacock, crossed them with Arabians to get them back to a normal size,"
Tibbs said.
Tibbs also served on the Appaloosa Horse Club's first Board of Directors.
The Board included Hatley, Haines, Thompson, Mrs. Fred Huseman, Ben
Johnson and Ed McCrea.
He continued his involvement with the breed off and on for the next 45
years. When he married Virginia in 1954, she owned a half-Saddlebred mare
named Adare's Countess Largo. A few years later, a Largo/Toby match
produced a handsome black-and-white blanketed stud colt named Pend
Oreille's Fancy Pants. The big stallion competed in Appaloosa shows
throughout the inland northwest and took some reserve championships under
Simcoe's Sarcee, a leopard stallion.
Eventually, the Tibbs family acquired some Quarter Horses and Arabians,
but they continued to admire Appaloosas for their common sense. When Tibbs'
youngest daughter, Laurie, turned 10, a Toby granddaughter named Sassy
became her first horse.
The Tibbs' also bought Pend Oreille's Tonkawa, a Toby granddaughter who
had walked the mountain trails for more than 50 days in 1967, packing
supplies to fire camps on the huge Sundance Burn in the Selkirk Mountains
northwest of Sandpoint.
Horses remain synonymous with the Tibbs name. Daughters Barbara and Laurie
have successfully shown the Arabians to Canadian and U.S. Top Ten placings.
An admirer of a good-looking, intelligent horse in any breed, Harold Tibbs
still holds a soft spot for Appaloosas. He also has definite ideas about
what has happened to the breed since those days in 1948 when he hauled his
stallion to the first national show in a homemade horse trailer.
"Go back to breeding Appaloosas," he said. "The Appaloosa breeder should
get back to the basics of colored horses and put as much premium as
possible on the old-line Appaloosas."
"They're trying to make these peanut roller Quarter Horses with their
heads dragging down on the ground instead of having their head alert and
looking like they know what they're doing," he added. "No horse can travel
with his head down between his legs."
He granted that going back to the old-lines might yield an occasional
disappointment with a solid colored horse or two. "But that has to be
expected until the breed is back to where it once was," he added. |