*HALIM, the Arabian Stallion Who Chased After Pancho Villa—and Wound Up in a Museum!

 Tobi Lopez Taylor

An Arizona Horse History and Crabbet Chronicles essay

An article in the January 23, 1932 New Yorker, titled “Skeleton-Maker,” profiled S. Harmstead Chubb—whose name and childhood experiences sound as if they were concocted by Edward Gorey: 

“[At] the age of seven [Chubb] found a dead cat. He examined it with great interest, and then dissected it. In this pursuit, he was not encouraged by his parents.” 

Chubb (b. 1863, d. 1949) grew up to be “the sole person of the department of Specialized Osteology at the [American] Museum of Natural History, and he has free rein. He has specialized in horses.” The article went on to observe that

“he has a workshop on the sixth floor—a round room lined with cabinets containing his circulating library of bones….Among the items on file is Halim, the celebrated Arabian horse that General Harbord used to ride. Among judges of horseflesh, Halim was generally regarded as the world’s most perfectly balanced horse. Mr. Chubb hasn’t got round to putting him together yet.” 

Who was Halim—or, more specifically, *Halim (AHA No. 282)—and how did his remains end up in Chubb’s round room? *Halim’s story starts in Sussex, England at the Crabbet Stud of Lady Anne and Wilfrid  Blunt (for more essays on the Blunts, see here, here, and here). The bay colt, foaled in May 1906, was a son of the Blunts’ important stallion *Astraled and was linebred to their foundation mare Queen of Sheba. 

In 1908, *Halim was purchased from Crabbet Stud by Colonel Spencer Borden (b. 1848, d. 1921), an influential American Arabian horse breeder, and was shipped to his farm, Interlachen,

near Fall River, Massachusetts. Borden—who was related to the notorious Lizzie Borden as well as the inventor Gail Borden, of condensed milk fame—came from a wealthy textile-printing family, was educated at the Sorbonne, authored books, and worked with Thomas Edison to bring electrification to New England. 

Starting in the late 1800s, Spencer Borden owned various kinds of horses, including the well-known Morgan stallion Ethan Allan 3rd. He began breeding polo ponies in the 1890s and purchased his first Arabians from England in 1898. His positive experiences with the breed led him to believe that Arabians would be well-suited for use by the U.S. military. As he wrote in 1920, “Having for many years followed the development of ideas used in the most successful studs of nations where cavalry horses are bred…it was found that, without exception, Arab blood was the basis on which all the best horses had been established.” To encourage the U.S. government to use Arabians in its cavalry, Borden held long-distance riding tests and also gave some of his Arabians to cavalry officers, who rode them on patrol and into battle.  

*Halim was one of the Borden Arabians to be tested privately and ridden in combat. In 1912, he participated in a 26-mile riding test from Providence, Rhode Island, “over pavements and hard road,” to Borden’s Interlachen Farm. Ridden by Major George Byram of the Tenth Cavalry, *Halim finished the ride in three hours, despite carrying 200 pounds and losing a shoe en route. 

The following year, *Halim completed a 55-mile ride. He was ridden by Captain Frank Tompkins (b. 1868, d. 1954), also of the Tenth Cavalry, from Fort Ethan Allen to Northfield, Vermont, and covered the distance in nine hours and 20 minutes. It was noted that this was “3 miles more than the direct distance, caused by roads covered with ice cakes from the breakup of the Winooski River, compelling a detour.”

U.S. soldiers camped on the border with Mexico. Naco, Arizona, 1916.   Courtesy Library of Congress.

By January 1914, *Halim was in Naco, Arizona—on the U.S.-Mexico border—with Captain Tompkins. As Arabian horse historian Carol Woodbridge Mulder noted, it would have been quite a change of climate for him, having come from England, then relocating to Massachusetts, and traveling thousands of miles across America to the desert Southwest. Notably, *Halim appears to have been the first purebred, registered Arabian horse to live in the state of Arizona, as he arrived more than a decade before Tucson Mayor Levi Manning’s Arabian stallion El Jafil was purchased from California in late 1925.

Stationed in Arizona, Tompkins wrote:

“I am using Halim for all my patrolling and ‘distance’ work….Halim has never been tired yet, and I am beginning to feel that he never will be. The horses here [at Naco] are without shelter. Halim stands out like the rest and takes everything that comes along in the way of weather. The last four days we have had a fierce wind and sand storm, followed by rain and snow. Halim takes this like an old soldier. He is a fine war horse—I never owned a better one.”

In March 1916, after Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa and his men raided the border town of Columbus, New Mexico, President Woodrow Wilson ordered that a “punitive expedition,” headed by Brigadier General John “Black Jack” Pershing, ride into Mexico to capture Villa. The 11-month expedition, which was ultimately unsuccessful, was later chronicled by Tompkins in a 1934 book called Chasing Villa: The Last Campaign of the U.S. Cavalry. (Tompkins, who rode with Pershing in pursuit of Villa, was mounted on a partbred Arabian named Kingfisher.) 

The foreword to Tompkins’s Chasing Villa was penned by Major General James Harbord (b. 1866, d. 1947), who, as a member of the First Cavalry, rode *Halim in Mexico as part of the punitive expedition. In the book, he wrote that Tompkins “has probably forgotten that 20 years ago last summer [i.e., 1914]…he sent me…‘Halim.’” The horse was finally registered with the Arabian Horse Club of America in 1918, with Harbord as his owner. A 1920 article in the Cavalry Journal noted that Harbord was still riding him.

 Harbord retired from the military in 1922. He then became president of the recently created Radio Corporation of America (RCA), a position he held until 1930. During Harbord’s tenure, RCA diversified dramatically, founding the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and becoming a partner in the movie studio known as RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., which made many films in various genres, including Citizen Kane, It’s a Wonderful Life, Bringing Up Baby, Cimarron, Swing Time, Pride of the Yankees, and King Kong, to name a few. 

Also in 1922, Harbord lent *Halim to the U.S. Army Remount for breeding purposes. The stallion stood at the Front Royal Quartermaster Remount Depot, in Virginia, in 1924 and 1925. By 1927, the Arabian studbook listed *Halim as being in the ownership of the Remount. 

*Halim died sometime between 1927 and 1930.  While owned by  Borden, he sired two fillies, Narina and Primrose. In 1918, when Borden decided to stop breeding Arabians in favor of Guernsey cattle, fellow Arabian breeder/promoter W. R. Brown purchased the majority of his horses, including *Halim’s daughters. Although each mare produced one registered foal apiece, those foals did not breed on. 

Borden would have been stunned to hear that *Halim was “generally regarded as the world’s most perfectly balanced horse,” according to the New Yorker. In 1915—a few years after he had sold *Halim—Borden observed to Lady Anne Blunt, “Halim was a disappointment, though he made good in the [military] service. He never had the finish that my educated eye demands in an Arab.” Carol Mulder, who assessed *Halim from some photographs, believed that *Halim did have some good points, such as his “pleasing head,” “fine, expressive eyes,” a neck of “good length,” and good shoulders. 

The last word about *Halim, however, should go to the man who knew him best. Major General Harbord, who rode him in search of Pancho Villa, called this stallion “the most beautiful and lovely thoroughbred Arab horse that ever brought delight to the heart of a cavalryman.” 

Photo of *Halim at age 4. Rider unknown. In Imported Foundation Stock
of North American Arabian Horses, Volume II (revised edition),
by Carol Woodbridge Mulder.