By Photo: Marjaliisa / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Released in 2004 by Touchstone Pictures, Hidalgo starred Viggo Mortensen as Frank T. Hopkins, an American long-distance rider who, according to the film, won a 3,000-mile race across the Arabian desert in 1890 on a mustang named Hidalgo. The film was directed by Joe Johnston, written by John Fusco and marketed as based on a true story. That claim set off a long argument among horse historians.
The story the film told
In the film, Hopkins is a dispatch rider and a performer in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West who is invited to enter a legendary endurance race known as the “Ocean of Fire.” Riding against the finest Arabian horses and their Bedouin riders, he and his paint mustang win. The film draws on accounts Hopkins himself gave in articles and letters before his death in 1951, in which he described hundreds of long-distance races and many other adventures.
What researchers found
Before and after the film’s release, a group of researchers, including members of the Long Riders’ Guild, an association of equestrian travelers, and historians of the Arabian horse, looked for evidence to support Hopkins’s accounts. They reported that they found:
- no historical record of a 3,000-mile “Ocean of Fire” race in Arabia;
- no record of Hopkins in surviving rosters and route books of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West; and
- inconsistencies among Hopkins’s own accounts of his life.
Scholars of Middle Eastern history also said that a race of that kind, with foreign entrants, would have left traces in the record and did not. The film’s writer and studio defended the project, saying it was based on Hopkins’s accounts and that the debate itself was part of the legend.
Why it still matters to horse people
The argument mattered to riders because Hopkins’s accounts had been cited for years as evidence of the mustang’s endurance. Supporters of the mustang point out that the horse’s toughness is well documented without Hopkins. Real long-distance riding in the West is documented too, for example in the history of the Pony Express and in modern endurance races such as the Tevis Cup in California, which has been run since 1955.
Watching the film today
Hidalgo is an entertaining adventure film with striking horse work, and it is best enjoyed as that: a tall tale in the tradition of the Wild West shows. For the real story of a Wild West showman, see our piece on Buffalo Bill Cody.
Sources
- Touchstone Pictures production information for Hidalgo (2004).
- The Long Riders’ Guild Academic Foundation, published research on Frank Hopkins.
- Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Papers of William F. Cody.
- Western States Trail Foundation (Tevis Cup).
