ESI Q and A Forums > ESI Q and A Forum > Questions and discussions for the ESI Q and A Forum > Post Glacial Horses in America
ESI Q and A Forums > ESI Q and A Forum > Questions and discussions for the ESI Q and A Forum > Post Glacial Horses in America |
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Allen Pogue2 Guest
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Hello Dr. Deb, I am working on a new horse project and researching equine origins in the Americas. We moved from TX to NM and all my books are packed away.. ( your’s included).. My question: “Are there any fossil records of horses that (may have) evolved in the Americas unrelated to the reintroduction by the Spaniards?” Allen Pogue Pie Town, NM |
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DrDeb Super Moderator
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Hi, Allen: So good to hear from you again! And congratulations on getting a new place. Hopefully somewhat bigger than your last one, you had roundpens crashing into each other. You deserve enough space to permit you the full expression of your talents & abilities with horses. OK, as to your query, implied in it is, I think, a confusion that fuddles up the thinking of a lot of folks, to wit, time confusion. Whenever working with history -- whether within the era after writing was invented, or before that time -- it is crucial to keep your centuries straight. It would be silly to muddle up Barack Obama, Ike Eisenhower, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Henry VIII, Charlemagne, and Attilla the Hun -- all from different centuries, right? So then why do people muddle up dinosaurs, Eohippus, and Neanderthaloid humans? Equally, they did not overlap in time; they did not occur at the same time. So, to be more specific: 1. The genus Equus originated about 5 million years ago, probably in North America. The earliest species in the genus are forms such as Equus stenonis (now cosidered to be synonymous with Dinohippus interpolatus). There was considerable transit back and forth at that time between far east Asia and North America via Beringia, the swampy "land bridge" that has sometimes connected the two continents; so that we get some early members of the genus Equus in Asia and even Europe. 2. 5 milllion years ago is BEFORE the beginning of the Pleistocene. When the Pleistocene began, ice covered and blocked migration routes. Yet they were not covered and blocked all the time; in some places they would open up seasonally, and the Pleistocene is also on the whole a variable time, with warmer "interglacial" periods during which ice would melt back to a greater degree and, particularly, the great migrational corridor, the so-called "ice free zone" east of the Cordillera, would permit animal and human migration from Alaska south into the Great Plains. 3. The Pleistocene began and ended at different times in different parts of the world. In North America it began about 2 million years ago, intensified by 1.8 mya, and continued until about 10,000 years ago. During this period, Equus caballus -- the specific species of animal that we call "the horse" -- appeared in North America. Whether they originated here, or instead managed to migrate in just before the ice closed the migration route, is a matter for debate, but the answer to that problem does not affect the answer to your question -- yes, there were Equus caballus on this continent during the Pleistocene. 4. In fact, there were so many herds of Equus caballus here that they attracted humans called (by Anthropologists) "the Clovis people" or "Clovis hunters" from Eurasia. Something that most people don't know is that the main meat eaten by early Homo sapiens in Eurasia was horse. The Clovis people specialized on hunting two types of game -- mammoth and horse; but horse kills were far more frequent than mammoth kills. These people are thought to have come to North America via Beringia during one of the later ice-free interglacial periods. 5. What they did when they got here was hunt horses to extinction. And probably also the Mammoths, and the giant ground sloths. There has been rather heated debate concerning whether the extinction of large animals during the Pleistocene -- the so-called "megafauna" -- is exclusively due to human hunting, or whether hunting was only one pressure on these populations, but again the answer to that does not affect the answer to your question -- yes there were Equus caballus on this continent during the Pleistocene, but they also became totally extinct IN THE AMERICAS at the end of that geological period, about 10,000 years ago. 6. Columbus did not sail the ocean blue until calendar year 1492, and he did not bring any horses to the New World until his 2nd voyage in 1493. That would be 11,493 years after the last indigenous Equus caballus in North America breathed his last. In other words, there was a gap of 11,493 years during which there were NO horses in North America. There is also, by the way, very thin evidence for Leif Eriksson having brought horses to Vineland when he and his colonists arrived in eastern North America in the 10th century. If they brought horses, there is no record that they survived, and again, this does not affect the answer to your question: yes, there was a LONG gap during which there were NO horses in the Americas. 7. The horses which Columbus brought with him in 1493 all came from the Province of Andalusia in the Iberian Peninsula, and they, and subsequent importations made by Columbus and other Europeans during late 15th and early 16th centuries certainly did survive in the Americas. These animals were, like all other European and Asian horses, members of the species Equus caballus; but they were all of the domestic strain. Horses began to be brought into domestication in Europe and west Asia beginning about 6,000 years ago. There were multiple instances of domestication, occurring in somewhat disparate localities. But no instances of horse domestication occurred in any of the Americas, nor in the Caribbean, because there were NO horses here after the end of the Pleistocene. 8. What Columbus brought back to the New World was, then, a particular strain -- the domestic strain -- of the Equus caballus horse that had once lived here but that had gone extinct here. When he brought horses back to North America, they instantly fit right back in to the ecological niche they had occupied prior to their extinction. This is because ecological niches persist far longer than the species that occupy them. That the horse -- even the European domesticated strain which is cousin to the indigenous, but extinct, American strain -- "belongs" here is unassailably true, and proven, for example, by the history of the King Ranch mustangs (of the old "Wild Horse Desert" of southwest Texas). Read up on this in a recent issue of EQUUS magazine -- I have just concluded the history of the American Quarter Horse with a short series on the King Ranch. The bottom line on this is that cattle (which never existed in North America at all until they were imported here by colonists from Europe) destroy native prairie and cause tremendous shifts in the flora, whereas horses do no such thing. So, Allan, I hope you will not sally forth into the kind of errors in print that we can find in many books written by people who are not paleontologists or trained zoologists. This subject mixes people up, as I noted at the outset, so whatever your project is, I hope you will continue to write to me, privately if necessary, so that I can help you with fact-check. All of this story is set forth in my book "Conquerors", but of course, it'll take some time to get everything unpacked at your new place. Let me know when you're ready for the next phase. Cheers -- Dr. Deb |
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Allen Pogue2 Guest
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Hello Dr Deb, et.al. Not to worry, I would never commit to print an obvious error in research on a subject. The back story is, that I am consulting on a movie script that includes a Native American storyline and in the first draft, the native elder makes the claim they their tribe had access to horses before the white men arrived, and from there the story devolves into a myth that some horses survived the Clovis depredations and the ice age. I know that in Hollywierd one never lets the truth get in the way of a good story, but. there are limits. I wanted to share with the writer information from someone with better bona fides than myself, thanks! Just for fun here is a current photo Zi think you will like of my ‘post glacial’ mare, Elegante, a pure Cartujano Andalusian. This ride was a great way to end the day here on the western Continental Divide. warm regards, Allen Attachment: A3DAB3CF-F2C7-49A1-9AB5-9A68AD451CE7.jpeg (Downloaded 82 times) |
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DrDeb Super Moderator
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Oh, she's just beautiful, Alan. And how easy those horses do find it to travel in collection -- there is no difficulty with getting them to raise the base of their neck, such as is encountered commonly with QH's, TB's, or Warmbloods. And such contentable temperaments, too. One comes to love riding along as this photo shows you doing. Ollie my Rocky Mountain gelding and I enjoyed that many a time. As to your movie script: well, Hollywood is always looking for 'bigger, better, faster, more' -- no matter what the truth of the matter may be. However, we also here get into somewhat of a touchy area, and that will be important for you to convey to your film writer. This is because some Native Americans like to put forth the idea (in all contexts, not just this one) that they got NOTHING from the white man after contact. This is untrue on all levels, of course, and it comes from anger and resentment. I would find it hard to blame Native Americans for hating white people; however, their feelings do not alter the facts. And the facts are this: not only were there no pre-contact horses on this continent, literally every single thing that Native Americans knew, or practiced, around horses came from the Spanish, Portuguese, or other Europeans who brought the horses along with the tack, the knowledge, the long history of experience, and the technology related to all aspects of horse keeping, horse training, horse raising, horse breeding, or the design and manufacture of tack, harness, and horseshoes. Further, there is no record whatsoever of any Native American tribal group (with one exception) ever successfully breeding horses. They could not even feed them beyond one year, in many cases. And when your writer reacts with surprise at this fact, then you can ask him to tell you which 17th-19th century Native American tribe raised hay, oats, or corn? Among those tribes where corn-raising was common, horses were not kept and they certainly were not fed the corn, which was hard to grow and meant to sustain themselves and their children. Great Plains tribes depended upon raiding -- either other tribes or white establishments -- in order to keep themselves horsed. Once the animals were stolen and brought back to camp, they were let to graze on whatever graze was available. This is why the raiding season was springtime. Horses could be maintained on native fodder until winter. Then -- good luck with it, for there was no stored fodder. Movies do not show this, do they? No; they show John Wayne fighting vigorous Indians mounted on vigorous horses (supplied by the movie stock contractor). What the movies do not show is the horribly thin condition that the animals got into once there was no more grass. Sometimes in a year when the winter was not too cold or too snowy, the horses could paw through the snow to get food. Some tribesmen tried to feed them on kinnikinnick, i.e. the inner bark of willow trees; to the extent that they caused the near-total extinction of the plains native willows, because of course it kills the tree when you strip off the bark. But winter losses were always heavy, necessitating another round of raiding in the spring. The one tribal group which is an exception to this is the Nec Perce, who fairly early on encountered French-Canadian trappers and explorers. The French taught the Nez Perce a technique for gelding (which other tribes had almost no knowledge of, and didn't need, because they were not practicing selective breeding). The Anglo explorers Lewis and Clark were astonished, when they met the Nez Perce in 1805, to find that their shamans could geld a colt with much less infection and swelling than their own tradition taught. So the Nez Perce were actually able to breed horses, select for superior individuals and see to it that they and no other males covered the mares. And they were able to do this because their original home area, the Willamet Valley of Oregon, is, in almost every year, lush and green year around. But to return to the main thread -- that Native Americans had no horses at all before contact with whites, and knew nothing at all about horse husbandry, riding, breeding, training, breaking, or tack-manufacture: to point this out is not to denigrate Native Americans at all. Initially -- having never seen a horse, and having no "cultural memory" of horses at all -- tribesmen believed that the horse and rider were one, single, supernaturally powerful creature. This is parallel to their misapprehension that the 16th and 17th century sailing ships which brought the horses and their European riders were a kind of giant, white-winged bird. But the tribesmen, though unprepared for this cultural shock, were far from stupid, and they soon got over their misapprehensions and realized that horse and rider could be separated, and that both could be killed just as readily as any other enemy. Further, the Native Americans almost immediately realized the tremendous potential inherent in riding horseback -- especially for purposes of raiding and warfare. They therefore sought by every means to learn everything there is to know about horses and horsemanship; and they stole saddles and harness whenever possible, in order to take the equipment back to their camps, take it apart to see how it is constructed, and then figure out how to make something similar with the materials available to them. And still further -- Native Americans sought by every means to obtain horses and to learn how to break horses and ride them. This, like obtaining tack, was not easy, because one of the first things that the Europeans did was make it illegal to give, trade, or sell a horse to any Indian, under severe penalty. Later, when alliances between Europeans and certain tribes seemed to the whites more certain and stable, it became legal to trade, sell, or give a gelding or a mule to an Indian; but not, for a very long time -- and here I mean two centuries -- to let them have bloodstock. There are many rather rich stories about individual tribesmen who were abducted by whites as boys and put to slave labor in the stables of European masters. Often these young men would feign being stupid and inobservant while, in fact, spying on their masters at every opportunity. Then, when they escaped, they became famous within their tribe for bringing knowledge back to share. The most famous of these tales relates to the Mapuche tribe of Chile, who thanks to the escape of a slave-boy who later became a war leader, the Mapuches were never conquered by whites because they knew how to handle horses and fight from horseback and thus they met their European adversaries on equal terms. Now, Alan, when you print this memo out along with the last one, and give it to the film writer, I want you to also emphasize this to him: that it is not pretty, but rather a sly kind of reverse racism, to believe that Native Americans, simply because they are Native Americans, have any more talent or natural ability with horses than anybody else of any race. Those Native Americans who have higher abilities with horses are universally honored by the tribes to which they belong, but these honors are by no means bestowed upon everybody in the tribe. Horsemen are made by being well instructed by their elders and by spending a lot of time in the saddle and around the stable, in order to test out what they have been taught. This is just as true of the white grandpa in a cowboy hat and his eager young grandson, as it is true of the Indian grandpa in a cowboy hat and his eager young grandson. But nobody gets so-called "whisperer" abilities just because of their race. Good luck with the film, I hope they pay you a pile. Cheers -- Dr. Deb |
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Allen Pogue2 Guest
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Hello Dr. Deb, Thank you for the detailed answer. Speaking of Native American ways with horses. A few years ago I ran across a book written by Harold Watley, a fellow that claimed his Cherokee grandfather taught him a traditional way of welcoming a foal into the world.. Called Spirit Blending, Very curious, and perhaps there is something to learn. Attachment: Untitled 10.pdf (Downloaded 12 times) |
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DrDeb Super Moderator
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Yes, Alan. None of what I have said above speaks to what Native Americans might have done in terms of integrating horses into their culture AFTER contact. Of course many of them saw, and continue to see, horses in a different light, having different meaning to them, than they have to many white people. In general native peoples worldwide, and not just in North America, perceive animals to be more alive, more spirit-filled, and more conscious than people of European background do. Native American religion too, in its formal rituals including everything from Sun Dance to the Peyote Church, is quite different from, say, evangelical Christian beliefs even when those involve snake-handling and the like. What I learned from my own teachers, though they were white men, is much closer I think to Native American perceptions and beliefs. So no absolute generalizations can be made, and this is what I was thinking of when I wrote, "the white grandfather (an old experienced horseman) and his eager grandson and the Indian grandfather (an old experienced horseman) and his eager grandson." Or it could be granddaughter. The young learn from the old, if they are wise enough to sit still and listen. No matter what race they are or what tradition they come from, if their elderly teacher is a horseman worthy of the name, they will be taught the same things about the inner life of the animal and how best to communicate with it. Cheers -- Dr. Deb |
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LynnF Member 
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I just recently saw the 2015 documentary, True Appaloosa: Quest for the Secret Horse, about a breeder of Appaloosas in New Zealand who believed the Nez Perce had the Appaloosa horse before the Spanish brought horses to the new world. |
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DrDeb Super Moderator
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Lynne: You must not believe everything you hear on TV or read on the Internet. There is absolutely zero evidence for such a belief. Please be responsible and read the researched literature. When Lewis and Clark reached the Nez Perce in 1805, they had barely any appaloosa-colored horses; and even this is tentative, given Clark's particular description of the animals. The tribe had been trading with French-Canadian trappers and explorers in the far west for a number of years -- perhaps fifty years -- before they met L&C. The French taught them how to geld colts, and this plus their location in an area where there is typically graze the year around, enabled them to become the first and almost the only tribe in pre-reservation times who actually bred horses. None of this, however, occurred before 1493, the date upon which Columbus brought horses back to the New World after their long absence of 10,000 years. -- Dr. Deb |
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LynnF Member
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I didn't say that I believed any of it. |
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DrDeb Super Moderator
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Then why assist in perpetuating false information by even mentioning it on the Internet? I would think people all around the world would have learned from Donald Trump how great a potential for harm that has. Bottom line: if whatever you hear or read cannot be fact-checked, or if you cannot find the source of the information, it is best ignored. This is what happened to all fringe authors in the time before home computers and self-publishing; there were such things as 'editors' and if they got paid, they were generally knowledgeable enough to know bogus information from what would be useful and solidly researched. This is why such people are called "traditional gatekeepers". Now, two puerile 'men' can sit around in their mother's basement and broadcast any type of conspiracy theory or bogus idea, and nobody can stop them. The executives at Facebook and Twitter have not adequately stepped up to the gatekeeper responsibility. Therefore, that is why this website exists: so that people can write in to ask, if they don't feel that they can do the fact-check themselves. Cheers -- Dr. Deb From Charles Dickens, in one of the versions of "A Christmas Carol" -- at the end of the scene with the Ghost of Christmas Present, the Father Christmas figure opens his robes to reveal two gaunt, dirty children. "And who are these?" asks Scrooge. "They are Ignorance and Poverty," replies the ghost, "and of the two, the one you should fear most is Ignorance." Last edited on Mon Dec 28th, 2020 09:49 pm by DrDeb |
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Emily Member
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I am watching this documentary, and I am frustrated with how little the spotted Spanish horses are mentioned. It is also unfortunate that the DNA tree diagram was not explained in any sort of context. As someone studying science as part of a professional program, I can understand how people with no foundation in critical thinking would be taken in, though. I once accepted creation science when it seemed like it made sense and jived with my belief system in a way that took no effort to understand. I have had my work cut out for me as an older student, and many people will never realize that they have to learn how to think and learn. |
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DrDeb Super Moderator
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Emily, what documentary is "this" documentary? What are you referring to? I don't watch any TV or Netflix so you may have to describe the contents rather than expect that I have seen it. Also -- what piqued your interest in spotted Spanish horses? I do appreciate your personal "evolution" away from creation theory, having participated years ago in the creationist/evolutionist debates that were then being promoted on many college campuses by the creationists, as a way to bring attention to themselves. You may have noticed that whenever abortion loses some of its power to "stir the base", then they switch to being against "woke" consciousness, "critical race theory", or evolution. So besides needing to learn how to think critically, which means learning how to discriminate factual information from propaganda, sales pitches, and self-promotions, many students (older and younger) also need to be taught to observe and to believe in what they have themselves observed. I'm happy to continue discussing this with you and would be interested in hearing more about your experiences. -- Dr. Deb |
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MtnHorse Member
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DrDeb Can you please clarify what you mean when you say “Further, there is no record whatsoever of any Native American tribal group (with one exception) ever successfully breeding horses. They could not even feed them beyond one year, in many cases.” Later you mention gelding as a key that you may have to the word “successful”. So perhaps you have a different definition to it. Because there is just so much overwhelming evidence that Western and Plains tribes had vast herds that perpetuated themselves year after year. To be clear, I am not trying to be jerk here but to point out that well established authors/historians/museum employees have done research and it doesn’t seem to agree with some of your statements. Historians John Ewers The Horse in Blackfoot Culture 1955 Gilbert Wilson The Horse in Dog in Hidatsa Culture 1906? Both books include breaking and training the young horses and Ewers talks about breeding and feeding. Many of the Mountain Men of the early west got their horses from the Native Americans. Jedediah Smith had to walk until he could find Native Americans to trade to get more horses. The Comanche had huge herds. Yes they did steal but they certainly had their own. I mean a young Blackfoot didn’t travel all the way to Taos or California to steal a horse. He stole them from his neighbors where they had been successfully wintered. Ruxton, George Frederick. Wild Life in the Rocky Mountains. An Englishman traveling from Mexico the Missouri in the early 1800’s winters his remuda in what would be Colorado by just letting them loose and catching them in the spring like everyone else in the area was doing. Indian herds could survive just like wild horses do today without corn or grain. Some horses here in Utah are successfully grazed on a rotation of pastures and not fed hay year around. Lewis and Clark spent the winter with the Hidatsa who even built stables in their homes for their favored horses. Of course they occupied much less hospitable lands than many tribes. The United States Cavalry lost almost all their horses in winter campaigns against the Sioux and relied on their tough mules. This was in places that the tribes had kept horses for fifty or so years. I am sure that was in large part why the Cavalry manuals recommended pony like horses for mountain use. Please look at John Ewers book available online with some searching. He even describes the proliferation of the horse on the plains and it doesn’t mesh with the idea of the Nez Perce had vast herds prior to them arriving like the Shoshoni and Crow horses did. Even my understanding of the French on the coast of Oregon in numbers prior to Fort Astoria in 1811 makes this difficult to believe. Sadly, the beloved stories of the Nez Perce creating the Appaloosa are not well supported. |
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DrDeb Super Moderator
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Dear Mountain Horse: Oh, of course I am familiar with the books you mention; in fact, I own copies of all of them. Look and see -- they are cited in the bibliographic references in "Conquerors", in other words, they formed part of the background of reading knowledge and research that went into "Conquerors." I am afraid that you haven't read them closely enough, or somehow have misinterpreted what those books say -- especially Ewers. Certainly ALL authors and journalists who traveled the West at the time when mustangs were widespread (i.e., before barbed wire and railways made free migration difficult and dangerous for wild herding animals of all species) agree that there were tens of thousands of mustangs on the plains, distributed everywhere in what is now the U.S. from south Texas to North Dakota, and northward from there into Canada as far as northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. However, the mere fact that there were lots of Mustangs, and that some of them were "sort of" under the control of various tribes, does NOT mean: 1. That the tribespeople were deliberately breeding horses; 2. That the tribespeople were practicing, or knew how to practice, selective breeding; 3. That the tribespeople fed their horses hay or grain in order to help them overwinter. Ewers makes clear, through many interviews with members of the Blackfoot tribe whom he interviewed during the 1930's and 1940's when he was putting his report together, that 95% of their horses were obtained either through trade or by raiding. We find the same thread with almost all other tribes. The exceptions are the Choctaw-Chickasaw, the Mandans, and the Nez Perces, all of whom, in one way or another, had been given the concept of selective breeding, especially the necessity of eliminating undesired stallions from the breeding population by French or perhaps by Welsh explorers. This involved teaching the tribesmen how to geld colts. There are no Eastern, Great Plains, or Great Basin tribes who ever, during pre-reservation days, planted crops or raised hay. They had no hay or grain to give their horses to help them overwinter, unless they got it by trade with Whites or else with sedentary southwestern tribes who grew Maize. But such grain was obtained for human consumption and it is doubtful whether any of it was fed to any but the most highly valued individual horses. That the Mandans provided shelter for valued horses is well known; this had the added benefit, just as it did in Bronze Age northern Europe, of keeping the human domicile warm. But the fact that the Mandans and perhaps some other tibesmen were smart enough to shelter valuable horses does not mean that they had hay or grain to feed them. There are records of tribespeople gathering grass and/or stripping tree bark to obtain the inner bark to feed horses; that would be the trees not already stripped by the horses that were loose. Since writing "Conquerors" I have become aware of a tribe besides the Nez Perce who successfully wintered large numbers of horses. The Nez Perce were able to do this because they occupied the Willammette Vallley in Oregon, which typically experiences mild winters and in most years has grass growing year-around. The other tribe living in simlar conditions was the Choctaw-Chickasaw, known at the time simply as the Chickasaw. They built villages in northern Mississippi and northern Alabama, on the limestone bedrock where the grass was excellent and again, the climate was such that most winters were mild. The Chickasaws traded extensively with the English and were English allies in Colonial days. As to the Nez Perces not having many, or perhaps not any, Appaloosa-patterned horses is stated explicitly by me in "Conquerors". I adduce two possible, and plausible, sources for Appaloosa coloration/patterning: Europe via Mexico in the period immediately preceding Lewis and Clark's meeting with the Nez Perce in 1805; and via Canada in the two decades prior to that. It could have been one, both, or indeed neither. The whole "origin story" of the Appaloosa was 99% pure fiction made up by the men who founded the Appaloosa Horse Club -- as should be obvious from the bogus publicity photos reproduced in many magazines and books that show half-naked, pretty White girl wearing a Sioux feather headdress and bestriding an Appaloosa horse bareback. A tactic as sure to sell livestock as the half-naked models posed with fancy cars. Much of Francis Haines' work concerning the history of the American Appaloosa breed must be taken with a grain of salt; he's a good historian and the student of a great historian, Herbert Bolton, so he doesn't make absolutely egregious mistakes. However, he apparently knew little or nothing about genetics -- the important fact there being that the appaloosa patterning gene complex is inherited as an autosomal dominant, which means that appaloosa patterning can spontaneously "crop out" in almost any horse herd, anywhere in the world, and the animals so colored from (for example) China, Europe, South America and Oregon will have absolutely no family or bloodline relationship to each other. They merely happen to be the same color/pattern. The same type of genetics is found with dwarf dogs, of which images can be seen on the walls of ancient Egyptian tombs but also on ancient Mezoamerican tombs; the dogs look like Dachshunds, but they are neither Dachshunds nor do they have any blood relationship. Please go back and read the Appaloosa chapter in Conquerors more carefully, and look at the authors whom I cite, which are listed in the bibliography (I would never think of producing any book that did not have an extensive bibliography). Cheers -- Dr. Deb Last edited on Tue Feb 14th, 2023 04:59 am by DrDeb |
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JTB Member
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https://www.americanfarriers.com/articles/11040-podcast-reintroduction-of-the-horse-to-mainland-north-america Mtn Horse, this might be useful, it is great to listen to! |
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MtnHorse Member
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Dr Deb I don’t want to be to pushy but I think you should reconsider your stance on these ideas about the horse in North America.. First, I understand you have a very different definition of successfully breeding horses than I do. I think if a tribe can maintain a herd big enough to transport everything the tribe owns, that is successful and all the plains tribes were nomadic in that sense. (We are talking large herds of horses.) Before horses there were very few tribes living on the plains year round. (I read about that when a college student but don’t have access to the source anymore.) I and probably a lot of others disagree with you that Native Americans have to raise hay or grain, nor do they have to selectively breed to be successful. However on that note, the Horse and Dog in Hidatsa Culture shows that tribes practices when a colt was born. Page 145. It also lists the customs surrounding castration on page 146 which seemed quite common. In the foot notes he claims the practice was common among all the plains tribes and has historical quotes to support it. Some are probably the ones of Lewis and Clark you mention but they are compared to the two done by “Drewyer” who is Shawnee and French Canadian himself. I don’t have a copy the Ewers work with the Blackfeet readily available but I recall he had a drawing of how they laid the horse down to castrate it. Further, when the tribes talk about where they got their horses from they mean where the first horses came from or where they got new blood if you will. That was not where every single foal came from. Obviously, if there were thousands of wild horses being born and growing in the mountains and plains then the Indians could raise their own just as well and there are tons of sources that confirm the tribes having foals. They don’t need grain or hay, they just need produce enough horses to match the attrition rate and since at least some tribes also ate horses they lost them that way as well. Selective breeding has brought us insubstantial horses and small feet as you have so well documented in your new books, so perhaps letting nature weed out the weak would create better mountain horses. If you read Goerge Catlins delightful stories with his horse Charlie, it is obvious that these Native raised horses were athletic and capable. Perhaps your living in California has shadowed how well horses can live in harsh environments. They are tough and they can survive very well in areas that are not as mild as the Oregon Coast. (The Mongols are another example of a successful horseman in harsh environments.) I only mentioned the Appaloosa because you seem to believe that the Nez Perce have some special talents with horses and nothing against that tribe but I haven’t seen evidence of them standing out as horsemen. It has been a while since I read the Conquerors so I didn’t remember that you covered that. I am listening to the podcast JTB mentions and lets make no mistake I am not questioning the extinction nor do I have any problems with what you say there about the South American history of horses. It’s this idea that they weren’t raised on the plains and mountains that just doesn’t stand with the evidence I see in lots of the histories. We can agree to disagree on this if you want to keep your ideas. I have learned a lot from you over these years so I am not trying to make light of your vast knowledge with this. |
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DrDeb Super Moderator
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Mtn Horse, it isn't a question of whether you are being 'pushy'. You began by assuming that I had not read or considered crucial background research, and you did that without consulting the bibliography in 'Conquerors.' This might be because you don't know to do that; for all I know, you did not attend college and would therefore likely not be fully capable or aware of academic norms. But you began by ASSUMING that I had been lax. So that isn't pushy, amigo, it's hostile. I often ignore peoples' evident hostility here, because I want to keep the focus on the intellectual and conceptual content. So I regularly do people a courtesy which they do not afford to me. But don't try to kid me by saying you don't have some other agenda. It is common, for example, for non-college-degreed folks to resent and fear those who have had the benefit of a higher level of education. Because of their lack of self-confidence, fear, and/or hostility, they are positively overjoyed at any opportunity they can get to prove the great lady wrong. This makes me laugh a little bit, because it reminds me of the old joke about the guy who goes on a hunting trip. He's walking through a beautiful forest on a sparkling autumn day, and he is so taken with the beauty of the hike that he forgets pretty much about hunting. And he gets philosophical, and since he's in a forest, he starts thinking about the old saw about whether when a tree falls in a forest, if nobody is there, does it make any sound? But because he's a married man, he adapts this to his own situation and thinks -- "If I hear a tree fall in a forest and my wife is not there to hear it -- am I still wrong?" So the underlying motive might be something like that -- that just for once, please God, let me be the one to prove the woman wrong. Or, it could be something a little more insidious, i.e. maybe you're a conspiracy theorist. And the conspiracy theory in this case goes like this: White people have conspired to keep down the Native Americans for generations. The U.S. and Canadian governments were both responsible for many atrocities carried out against tribespeople. One of the things that has also been done is to squelch and deny Native American skill with horses." And your argument to this end is, as I hear it, this: that because there were tens of thousands, possibly millions, of head of mustangs on the North American prairie and in the Great Basin, everywhere from northern Mexico to northern Canada, THEREFORE native tribespeople must have been breeding them." This is a logical non-sequitur; 'A' does not follow from 'B'. In fact, that there were indeed multitudes of mustangs makes it less likely that native Americans bothered to breed them. There is abundant documentation, for many different tribes who became mounted, that horse-raiding and horse-thieving -- both from White settlements and from other tribes -- was not only a yearly event, but one from which a young man could derive much prestige and status -- not to mention garnering for himself the valuable livestock. When tribesmen raided other tribesmen, the chances of getting killed were minimal but the enterprise required all the stalking skills of the most sophisticated hunter -- just dangerous enough to be thrilling, and if successful, pretty darned profitable. The other documented way that tribesmen acquired horses was to hunt mustangs. This is why there are records of foals being kept and raised; the best and easiest way to tame horses is to get them when they are young and small. Therefore the prime target of every mustang hunter was a pregnant mare. If she could be caught -- often by being crippled -- without being killed, they would either confine her or tie her up until she foaled. At some later point, she would be slaughtered for food but the foal kept and raised. This is the identical technique by which horses were first brought into domestication over 6,000 years ago in what is now Ukraine. By contrast, as I have already said several times and as Ewers and other authorities are at pains to point out, there were very few cases where a given tribe had the resources to overwinter horses, knew how to practice gelding or selective breeding, or produced foals. What they did instead was cycle them in and out, using damaged horses as food and for hides, bowstrings etc., and raiding or trading to get replacements if they had no captured foals on hand. The idea that I or other authorities are not giving Native American horsemen enough credit is not only insulting, but it is entirely your own. We give 'em plenty credit. But we cannot credit anyone with doing things that there is no record of their doing and no basis for believing. Native Americans had no knowledge of horses before Europeans brought them beginning in 1493. Thereafter, tribespeople (perforce!) learned 100% of their horsemanship by either being instructed directly by Europeans, or else by observing them, either because they were enslaved by Europeans, or else had friendlier relationships with them i.e. as trading partners or allies in war. That they learned horsemanship and all the technology that goes with it is no discredit to the tribespeople: they were quick to pick it up and, once they did, they quickly became highly accomplished. -- Dr. Deb Last edited on Thu Feb 16th, 2023 06:30 am by DrDeb |
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