A Horses' Tale

        This in response to  Facebook discussion wherein someone mentioned that  their English ancestors had brought the first horses to Jamestown, in Virginia Colony, which led to a multi-party general discussion of equine  origins in North America:

        Absolutely, (name of poster) ! I wasn't being contradictory regarding the English horses' origins re: Virginia at  all, but it just ain't that simple!  The horse got here (to America) by sundry paths!  There is no doubt in my mind of your  ancestors  bringing the horse from England.  Remember, however, that some of these same Virginians also proudly claim that the pony herds on Assateague Island (VA) are descendents of Spanish horses shipwrecked there in the 1500s!  Said claims, are suspect, as there is no recorded history of such events, and even more compelling, the size and conformation of the Assateague herd suggests Northern European origin, probably from the stocks brought by your ancestors.  Assateague ponies more closely resemble ponies I've seen on Dartmoor, Welsh Bog Ponies, and Shetland ponies. The first horses actually documented as brought from England arrived in 1609. Those unfortunate critters ended up as food during the "Starving Time" winter of 1609-10!

          I would have zero doubt that the first domestic horses from England came into  Jamestown, or that local indigenous native Indian groups were unfamiliar with the horse to any significant degree, since they were Algonquian speakers, and most likely not in contact with more southern and western tribes. What we do know with relative certainty is that  when Cortez landed on the land which is now Mexico in 1512, the only large animals known  on either continent were the sure-footed, high country  Camelids,   Llamas and Alpacas, which had been domesticated in South America long before. There is however, in the interest of full disclosure, archeological evidence to suggest the dog has been used in some work capacity for at least 4,000 years, especially in the extreme northwest, as sled dogs, but also to pull travois. 

        One of the things which is well established is that the American Plains Indian could not have possibly had contact with the horse before the three Spanish contacts of De Leon (1513-his horses may well  be progenitors of the current Florida wild stock on Payne's Prairie FL), De Soto-(1540s, along Gulf coast and up into the Southeast , over to the  Mississippi and west), and Coronado-(1550s - Southwest at least up to the Grand Canyon, initially with 558 horses!).

          What is known from primary sources is that Hernando Cortez  in 1519 sent 16 horses into (modern day) New Mexico and Arizona with colonizers.  And yet, by the time Northern Europeans reached into the plains as settlers, they (Plains tribes) had become some of the finest light cavalry ever and some,  like the  Nez Perce farther north and west,  had even began breeding horses with special characteristics, such as the Apaloosa. It was Indian horses given to Lewis and Clark by Sacagawea's brother, Shoshone chief Cameahwait, which enabled then to cross the Rockies. It   would have been extremely unlikely, probably impossible, that the widening horse culture of the plains would have even been known to the more northeaster  native populations by 1603. However that might be, there is a possibility, however slight, that farther West and South in what is now Virginia, the horse had at least been seen.

       Discounting Vikings, (unvalidated theories  abound!) The first European explorers in what is now Virginia were Spanish, who landed at two separate places,  decades before the English founded Jamestown. The Spanish had charted the eastern Atlantic coastline north of Florida by 1525. In 1542,  Hernando De Soto in his expedition to the continent first encountered the Chisca, who then lived in southwestern Virginia. In the spring of 1567, the conquistador Juan Pardo, from a base at Fort San Juan,  in present-day western North Carolina, sent a detachment under  Moyano de Morales into present-day Virginia. This expedition destroyed the Chisca village of Maniatique, where present-day Saltville, Virginia later developed, about 350 miles southwest of Jamestown.

       It also noteworthy, although just an aside to this discussion,  that while there is little mention of the horse, in English commentaries on Jamestown, most of which are miserable diary entries for the first 5 to ten years, there are no mentions in those primary source writings  of bison (buffalo) either,  although, they were plentiful in the wooded regions of the Virginia Piedmont well into the 1700s. Jefferson in his "Notes on The State of Virginia" (pub. 1781)  describes the American Woods bison, but remember, "Virginia" as it was pre-Constitution,  extended all the way to  the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers. The year after T.J. published "Notes,"  Virginia ceded the "Northwest Territories" to the new nation as public lands, and took its present shape with West Va.  as part of that area.  The Bison lived in Virginia until the last was killed in 1832, in what would admittedly now be West Virginia.

        Recent DNA and tissue analysis indicates that Equus (modern horse) existed in North America until extinction along with other mammals about 5600 years ago. There have been tissue remains of  both camelids and horses  identified  by several independent examiners on Clovis points of ca. 11,000 BCE  in the last decade. This further modifies former theories that only proto-horses existed in the New World.  Statistical analysis by Andrew Solow, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution  explored the radiocarbon dating of the 24 most recent known ancient horse fossils. His analysis suggests that ancient horses of Alaska could have persisted to as recently as perhaps 10,000 years ago, providing an  Equus/human overlap of centuries. What these horses were definitely not, by all indices, is domesticated!

        Evidence of early Americans hunting horses have also been uncovered by University of Calgary scientists, who discovered the remains of a pony-sized horse while excavating the dry bed of the St Mary Reservoir in southern Alberta, British Columbia.  Several of the horse’s vertebrae were smashed and it had what appeared to be butcher marks on several bones. About 500 meters from the skeleton, they found several Clovis spearheads. Protein residue testing and examination confirmed they had been used to hunt horse. Dubbed by some "The Yukon Horse" , this animal would have been of roughly the same  shape/size as the modern  Somali Wild Ass and the Zebra, as indicated by fossil remains.

       However it evolved, the "second"  American horse experience eventually combined stocks of Northern European draft animals and the  Spanish horse (Arabs, Barbs and Moors), all taller and slimmer than  the sturdier, stockier and hardier horse of the North. Whatever the source, the horse,  being assimilated more rapidly than the vast majority of cultural adaptations, changed forever the life of the Southern and Midwestern American Indian, bringing some tribes (Siouans, etc) out of the wooded verges of the plains onto the prairie as they could now move with the huge Bison herds. Farther Southwest, the adoption of the horse was instrumental in the Kiowa, Comanche, Southern Cheyenne, Arapahoe and others severely hindering Spanish colonial efforts. Farther North and West, it enabled the Cayuse, Nez Perce, Shoshone and others to come out of the mountains for seasonal buffalo hunts as well. Cowboying as we know it is the evolved invention of the Spanish vaquero using the smaller, more compact horse which evolved from the Spanish imports.

So ends the horses' tale for today!