Posted on 04/11/2023 9:34:56 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Indigenous peoples as far north as Wyoming and Idaho may have begun to care for horses by the first half of the 17th Century, according to a new study by researchers from 15 countries and multiple Native American groups.
A team of international researchers has dug into archaeological records, DNA evidence and Indigenous oral traditions to paint what might be the most exhaustive history of early horses in North America to date. The group's findings show that these beasts of burden may have spread throughout the American West much faster and earlier than many European accounts have suggested...
To tell the stories of horses in the West, the team closely examined about two dozen sets of animal remains found at sites ranging from New Mexico to Kansas and Idaho. The researchers come from 15 countries and multiple Native American groups, including the Lakota, Comanche and Pawnee nations...
For many of the scientists involved, the research holds deep personal significance, added Taylor, who grew up in Montana where his grandfather was a rancher...
The researchers drew on archaeozoology, radiocarbon dating, DNA sequencing and other tools to unearth how and when horses first arrived in various regions of today's United States. Based on the team's calculations, Indigenous communities were likely riding and raising horses as far north as Idaho and Wyoming by at least the first half of the 17th Century -- as much as a century before records from Europeans had suggested.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Yup. Just like all the marsupials in Australia have their origins here with the opossum.
95% of thoroughbreds linked to one superstud
By John Pickrell
6 September 2005
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7941-95-of-thoroughbreds-linked-to-one-superstud/
They, even, drove the Apache of of the plains, into the mountains
That isn’t accurate at all depending on your view of man in north america. Plenty of evidence has man living up and down the western coast of north and south america.
Topper, pedra furada sites are 30k bce. Monte verde 15k bce. All within the range of ancient extant equines.
Smarty pants.
Imagine my chagrin upon finding someone beat me to it up there.
My understanding is that the horses bred at Belle Meade produced the majority of famous thoroughbreds.
https://visitbellemeade.com/equestrian/
In June of 1871, William Giles Harding and his son, John Harding Jr., traveled to Glen Flora Farm in Illinois and purchased a stallion named Bonnie Scotland for $450. Foaled in England in 1853, the bay horse was by Iago and the great broodmare Queen Mary. Bonnie Scotland was the greatest sire to ever stand at Belle Meade and his descendants represent more than two-thirds of all Kentucky Derby winners to date, including 11 Triple Crown Winners. Bonnie Scotland died in 1880, the same year he was named the leading sire in American racing.
Most of the Derby horses every year descend from a stallion born in the late 1950s or early 1960s, for that matter.
Ooh, couldn’t find that, found this instead:
Almost All Modern Horses Descended From A Few Oriental Stallions
GrrlScientist
Senior Contributor
Evolutionary & behavioural ecologist, ornithologist & science writer
https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2017/07/10/almost-all-modern-horses-descended-from-a-few-oriental-stallions/?sh=34fd261e16c5
They appeared back on it when the Spanish Conquistadors arrived here with them.
Up until that time Indians had never seen one and were scared to death of them at first.
Foaled in Great Britain in 1853, Bonnie Scotland came to Belle Meade Mansion in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1872, at the age of 19. Even though he died at Belle Meade in February 1880, he was named the outstanding sire of that year. Here is a short listing of some of the pedigreed horses from his line: Bramble, 1875, earned $32,660; Man-O-War, 1917, earned $249,465; Prince Rose, 1928, earned $59,267; Sea Biscuit, 1933, earned $437,730; War Admiral 1934, earned $273,240; Secretariat, 1970, earned $1,316,808; Seattle Slew, 1974, earned $1,208,726; and Affirmed, 1975, earned $2,393,818.
https://www.crossville-chronicle.com/news/local_news/pedigree-of-derby-winners/article_9dbd72f6-10e1-5335-a8e0-58e718b40bda.html
They got them after the Pueblo revolt of 1680 when the Spanish were driven out of New Mexico for a few years. That is where Indian horse culture began.
They walked, and used dog powered travois to pull cargo.
“as much as a century before records from Europeans had suggested”
Which were probably records from the French and English who came into those areas around that time. The Spanish had been exploring North America for a century already, and it was from the Spanish that the natives got the horses.
Their feet. Or canoes and such.
Well, we got a huge desert in the Southwest, so on paper it probably made sense. They brought camels to Australia for the same reason.
In C.S. Gwynne’s “Empire of the Summer Moon” (probably the best-researched historical account of the Comanche Indians), he theorizes that the first Indians to get their hands on horses probably were Athapaskan Apaches, stealing horses from a herd of desert-bred Iberian mustangs brought to New Mexico in 1598.
There is no record of how it came to pass (because no White man ever saw an Indian on horseback until settlers moved into central Texas in the early 1800s) but the Indians — and particularly the Comanche — very soon became skilled at selective breeding. The Apache viewed the horse as more of a 4-legged grocery store but the Comanche’s entire lifestyle revolved around them. They lived on the move and — much to the chagrin of the Spanish — would stage raids on horseback from several hundred miles away ... and then vanish back into the desert.
It wasn’t uncommon for a Comanche chief to keep a string of more than 1000 ponies, and every brave would have dozens to a few hundreds. Young boys would be trained as horse-mounted warriors, and by age five or six they were expected to be competent in the Indian equivalent of the modern horse-mounted “pick-up” race (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceOAC6lhyiM).
Every plains tribe lived in fear of the Comanche. By the time Whites settled in Texas, they ruled over a quarter of a million square miles, from central Texas to the Kansas panhandle, Tulsa to Santa Fe.
And contrary to what Hollywood would have you believe, the Comanche where the only Indians who fought from horseback as a matter of course. Other tribes (including the Apache) fought as “dragoons,” riding to the battle but dismounting and fighting on foot.
Comanche lived like ghosts, here one day and gone the next. So much so that the Whites had never so much as heard mention of them until they got attacked by them in Texas. They were such a threat to western expansion that the Texas Rangers were founded specifically to live like and fight like the Comanche, and hopefully keep them at bay.
And the only thing the Comanche loved better than fighting from horses ... was betting on racing them. And from the perspective of a savvy horse-breeder, it would make sense that they would want to engage in horse-trading as far and wide as possible, in order to improve their herd.
Considering that they were both the most mobile and the least visible of all the Indians, and how their lives were built around refining their herds, it would seem to me to make sense that they would spread the animals far and wide. But at the same time, the only evidence that it was they who had done it might be in the DNA of the horses themselves.
The evil white men gave them nothing, the thieving Indians stole them. Thus: white men are owed reoperations from the Indians.
$500.00 and a free week at a casino of your choice should about cover it.
If you are an Amazon Prime member, there's a 2014 documentary titled "Horse Tribe" that is excellent.
Legendary as one of America's greatest horse tribes, the 21st century Nez Perce decided to bring horses back to their land and lives with the unlikely help of a charismatic Navajo horseman, Rudy Shebala.
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