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.
“(because no White man ever saw an Indian on horseback until settlers moved into central Texas in the early 1800s”
Con respecto, senor-that is somewhat inaccurate-my ancestors first made their way from Northern Mexico to what is now Texas and NM in the late 1700’s-they were originally from Spain-Basques from the Pyrenees. They wanted to be far away from the Spanish govt, so they came North with livestock like sheep and goats-and they had horses to ride and donkeys to carry packs. The Comanches and Apaches in the areas they settled also had horses long enough to be riding and selectively breeding them for speed, endurance, same as those Spanish settlers did...