About the author
Forrestine Cooper Hooker (1867–1932) was the daughter of Charles Lawrence Cooper, a white lieutenant serving with the black 10th Cavalry. Forrestine grew up in the army, living in the army posts in which her father served in Fort Sill, Texas, Kansas and Arizona. She wrote nine books for children, of which Star, the Story of an Indian Pony is the one with most horse content. Her memoir of life on the frontier, Child of the Fighting Tenth, was published after her death, but besides this memoir she is probably best remembered for her account of the life of Wyatt Earp; told to her by Wyatt Earp, and quite possibly complete with a good degree of inaccuracy on his part!
The date of the first edition of Star has been hard to track down. The National Library of Congress’ first copy is dated 1946. The British Library has a copy dated in 1913, which is certainly possible given the dates the author was active, but I’m not convinced that an edition would have been published in the UK before the USA. From a trawling of copies available on the internet, a first USA edition of 1922 seems most likely.
Finding the book
The book is easy to find in most of its printings, and is now available as a paperback print-on-demand.
Links and sources
Terri A. Wear: Horse Stories, an Annotated Bibliography, Scarecrow Press, 1987
Many thanks to Lisa Catz for the photograph.
A review of Child of the Fighing Tenth on HistoryNet
Forrestine C Hooker’s manuscript on Wyatt Earp (with editorial comment)
Bibliography (horse books only)
Star, the Story of an Indian Pony
World’s Work, Kingswood, 1913, 168 pp.
Doubleday & Co Inc, New York, 1922, 1925, 1926, frontis Charles Livingstone
Doubleday & Co Inc, New York, 1946, cover Wesley Dennis, 191 pp, foreword by Lieut-General Nelson A Miles
Doubleday, New York, 1964, 168 pp, illus Cristina Christensen (right)
Running Deer the mare and her foal Star belong to the Chief of the Comanches and his daughter. The two horses talk about the way of life they see, and learn from the white men’s horses they encounter about the fighting between the Comanches and the whites.
