Horses and Native Americans... Horse Nation...

The Plains Indians use dogs as best of burdens before the horses were interduce into their society. It transform them...


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By approximately 850 CE, some residents of the central Plains had shifted from foraging to farming for a significant portion of their subsistence and were living in settlements comprising a number of large earth-berm homes. As early as 1100, and no later than about 1250, most Plains residents had made this shift and were living in substantial villages and hamlets along the Missouri River and its tributaries; from north to south these groups eventually included the Hidatsa, Mandan, Arikara, Ponca, Omaha, Pawnee, Kansa, Osage, and Wichita. Some villages reached populations of up to a few thousand people. These groups, known as Plains Village cultures, grew corn (maize), beans, squash, and sunflowers in the easily tilled land along the river bottoms. Women were responsible for agricultural production and cultivated their crops using antler rakes, wooden digging sticks, and hoes made from the shoulder blades of elk or buffalo. Women also collected medicinal plants and wild produce such as prairie turnips and chokecherries. Men grew tobacco and hunted bison, elk, deer, and other game; whole communities would also participate in driving herds of big game over cliffs. Fish, fowl, and small game were also eaten.

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Until the horse the only domesticated animals were dogs; these were sometimes eaten but were mostly used as draft animals. Dogs drew the travois, a vehicle consisting of two poles in the shape of a V, with the open end of the V dragging on the ground; burdens were placed on a platform that bridged the two poles. Because of the limitations inherent in using only dogs and people to carry loads, Plains peoples did not generally engage in extensive travel before the horse. However, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado’s expedition in 1541 reported encounters with fully nomadic buffalo-hunting tribes on the southern Plains who had only dogs for transport.

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By the mid-18th century horses had also arrived, coming from the Southwest via trade with the Spanish and the expansion of herds of escaped animals. Guns were also entering the Plains, via the fur trade. Plains peoples, whether established residents or newcomers, quickly combined horses and guns to their advantage. Unlike pedestrian hunters, mounted groups could keep pace with the region’s large buffalo herds and thereby support themselves on the grasslands. Most hunters initially chose to use bows and arrows in the mounted hunt, as these provided greater accuracy than early guns. However, as firearms became more accurate, they were readily adopted

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Differences in wealth arose from the increased productivity enabled by the horse. There was a flowering of what one authority has termed luxury developments—“showy clothing, embroidered footgear, medicine-bundle purchases, elaborate rituals [culminating in the Sun Dance], [and especially] gratuitous and time-consuming warfare.” Horses became so valuable that horse stealing became a major reason for raiding; in the villages the best horses were even brought inside the earth lodge at night. The man who had many horses could use this wealth for a variety of purposes, such as giving them to those in need, offering them as bridewealth, or trading them for other materials.

Here is this...


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As more Native tribes encountered the horse, that initial fear gave way to awe for the animal’s speed and power. With the dog as their closest reference, Indians gave this mythical new creature names like “elk dog,” “sky dog” and “holy dog.”

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“The Spanish quickly realized that the last thing they wanted was for Indians to have horses, because that would put them on equal footing,” says Viola, but that’s exactly what happened following the Pueblo Uprising of 1680. After enduring a century of harsh Spanish rule, the otherwise peaceful Pueblo Indians violently drove the Spanish from Santa Fe and captured their prized horses, which they then traded with neighboring tribes.

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For the Plains Indians, the newfound speed and efficiency of hunting on horseback provided an abundance of high-quality meat, hides for tipis and clothing, and rawhide for shields and boxes. With the help of a draggable wooden sledge called a travois, horses could now transport entire villages and their possessions to follow the seasonal hunt

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Competition among the Plains Indians for the best hunting and war horses turned old allies into rivals, says Her Many Horses. More and better horses meant you could expand your hunting territory, bringing even more wealth to the tribe. Raiding and capturing enemy horses was a key tactic of inter-tribal warfare and was considered an “honorable” rite of passage for a young man trying to earn his place as a warrior.

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The iconic image of the war-painted Plains Indian chasing down buffalo—or U.S. soldiers—on horseback, rifle raised at full gallop, belongs to a surprisingly short period of Native American history. The full flowering of Plains Indian horse culture lasted little more than a century, roughly from the 1750s to the 1870s, when it was ended by the Indian Wars and forced relocation to reservations.

At its height, the “Horse Nation” of the Plains Indians included the militant Comanche, who were “probably the finest horse Indians of the Plains,” says Viola, in addition to the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Lakota (Sioux), Crow, Gros Vent Nez Perce and more.

It's amazing that Horse Nation survive for such a short period of time...

One time Buffalo Bill brought Crimean horsemen into his show - they were no slouches at riding either. The Plains people in his show loved competing with these guys!

The Indian vacquero should be looked into - a very important part of the economy and culture of Alta California.

diane said:

One time Buffalo Bill brought Crimean horsemen into his show - they were no slouches at riding either. The Plains people in his show loved competing with these guys!

The Indian vacquero should be looked into - a very important part of the economy and culture of Alta California.

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Crimean horsemen were no doubt Cossacks or descendents of the Mongol horsemen of the Golden Horde. Both were outstanding light cavalry and horseback hunters.

Wailakki women racing near the Trinity River, Northern California.

The Vacquero is where we get the word... Buckaroo...

Indian cattlemen...

The buckaroo is still around Eastern Oregon - the tribes around Pendleton are prominent in rodeos. The Great Basin people had a different horse tradition than the Plains people! The Cayuse had a breed of horse particular to them that is almost gone - they are trying to bring it back. The Cayuse were noted for sturdy but very graceful horses. In Oregon, a lot of ranching families are Native, or have substantial Native ancestry.

Here a brief history...


The Spanish offered many wonderful things that Native Americans found useful or beautiful — iron for tools, weapons, glass beads, mass-produced pottery — but the most prized possession of many Indians was the horse.
In ancient North America, horses had become extinct, probably around 10,000 years ago. Meanwhile across the sea, horses were becoming common in many ancient civilizations and were establishing their place in human history. Around 3,000 years ago, horses were tamed in Europe for the first time and used for transportation of both humans and cargo. Five hundred years later, Persian officials began using mounted messengers.
Soon after they arrived in America, the Spanish reintroduced horses to the continent. The Spanish horses were from the finest strains and were regarded as the top breed in Europe. Plains Indians prized them. Stallions and mares that escaped from the Spanish started the great herds of wild horses that spread north from Mexico into the United States and the western Plains country. These herds of wild horses still exist.

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Life on the Plains before horses returned was very different. The introduction of horses into plains native tribes changed entire cultures. Some tribes abandoned a quiet, inactive life style to become horse nomads in less than a generation. Hunting became more important for most tribes as ranges were expanded. More frequent contact with distant tribes made competition and warfare more likely. Eventually, in most tribes a person’s wealth was measured in horses, and great honors came to those who could capture them from an enemy.
Before horses, dogs were the only pack animals on the plains. The harnesses and equipment originally designed for dogs were easily adapted to horses. Obviously, horses could carry much larger loads than a dog.

Horses reached Nebraska by the 1680s and the upper Missouri by the 1750s. Tribes in eastern Nebraska (Pawnee, Ponca, Omaha, and Oto) used horses for buffalo hunts, but continued to grow maize and live in earth lodge villages. In the western part of the state, the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho lived in skin tepees and roamed over most of western Nebraska as nomadic hunters. Horses allowed them to expand their traditional nomadic lifestyle across the plains

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The Spanish brought horses to California for use at their missions and ranches, where permanent settlements were established in 1769. Horse numbers grew rapidly, with a population of 24,000 horses reported by 1800.

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In the upper Mississippi basin and Great Lakes regions, the French were another source of horses. Although horse trading with native people was prohibited, there were individuals willing to indulge in illegal dealing, and as early as 1675, the Illinois people had horses. Animals identified as “Canadian,” “French”, or “Norman” were located in the Great Lakes region, with a 1782 census at Fort Detroit listing over 1000 animals. By 1770, Spanish horses were found in that area, and there was a clear zone from Ontario and Saskatchewan to St. Louis where Canadian-type horses, particularly the smaller varieties, crossbred with mustangs of Spanish ancestry. French-Canadian horses were also allowed to roam freely, and moved west, particularly influencing horse herds in the northern plains and inland northwest.

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Although horses were brought from Mexico to Texas as early as 1542, a stable population did not exist until 1686, when Alonso de León’s expedition arrived with 700 horses. From there, later groups brought up thousands more, deliberately leaving some horses and cattle to fend for themselves at various locations, while others strayed. By 1787, these animals had multiplied to the point that a roundup gathered nearly 8,000 “free-roaming mustangs and cattle.” West-central Texas, between the Rio Grande River and Palo Duro Canyon, was said to have the most concentrated population of feral horses in the Americas. Throughout the west, horses escaped human control and formed feral herds, and by the late 1700s, the largest numbers were found in what today are the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and New Mexico

Here is about the Indian painted horses


Horses were painted for battle, buffalo hunting and celebrations of victorious battles and successful horse raids or hunts. It was not only a sacred ritual, but a means of creative and artistic expression. Fearsome warriors and their mighty warhorses in brilliant splashes of color were spectacular sights to behold and some U.S. soldiers of the Indian Wars wrote in their journals of the pomp and color that bedecked the enemy warriors and their mounts on the battlefield. Paint was power and the act of painting a war horse was a sacred act, like a prayer to the creator or a behest to nature to unify strength and spirit and galvanize horse and warrior as one in battle. It was a prayer for survival too

https://www.aaanativearts.com/indian-symbols-used-on-the-war-horse

Indian would decorate his horse with carefully chosen war symbols or power symbols which might be intended to give him protection, to indicate the troubles which lay ahead, or which spoke of the courageous heart of the war horse. Some symbols told of the horse’s affection for the warrior

@diane , @O' Be Joyful , @rittmeister , @Wehrkraftzersetzer , @jgoodguy ... Hoses come from the Americas...

Here is an article arguing that horses are not a non-native species but an indigenous species in the Americas. Our modern horses are related to the earlier horses that die out. It's like the Mongolian horse was only in Zoos and die out back in Mongolia. It was reintroduced back in the 1990s to the Mongolian steppe just like the Spanish did unknowingly back in the 1500s in the Americas. It seems horses went from the Americas back to Asia...

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Equus, a monophyletic taxon, is first represented in the North American fossil record about four million years ago by E. simplicidens, and this species is directly ancestral to later Blancan species about three million years ago (Azaroli and Voorhies 1990). Azzaroli (1992) believed, again on the basis of fossil records, that E. simplicidens gave rise to the late Pliocene E. Idahoensis, and that species, in turn, gave rise to the first tabloid horses two million years ago in North America. Some migrated to Asia about one million years ago, while others, such as E. niobrarensis, remained in North America.

Here is an article about horses being in Indian oral history before the Europeans arrived...


But according to Indigenous oral histories and spiritual beliefs from Saskatchewan to Oklahoma, America’s Native horses never went extinct. They survived the Ice Age and lived among Native people before, and after, the arrival of European colonizers, and a mountain of historical and archaeological evidence proves it—from ancient clay and wood horse figurines from North America and horse petroglyphs in Peru to accounts recorded by early explorers.

diane said:

The Indian vacquero

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They build a fort and surround the Fort with horse ranches and later with cow ranches...


The word vaquero is usually translated as “cowboy” in English, and literally means “someone in charge of cows.” It also gave rise to the word “buckaroo,” another name for cowboy in English. The vaquero was in charge of managing the cattle and horses of Spanish and Mexican California, and was the most important worker in the mission and rancho economy, .

The vaquero phenomenon is widespread all over Latin America. In Mexico they are commonly known as charros, and the gaucho of Argentina and Paraguay is well known, as is the huaso of Chile. Wherever cattle were raised, vaqueros became important.

Here is a great video about the first know horse riders... We ate horses for thousands of years...

the first horse warriors... one group of people... changed the world...

It seems in Patagonia the Native Americans developed a similar horse culture to the plans Indians... @diane



The first Europeans to visit the southernmost tip of South America marveled at the people they met there. They were so tall, one version of the story goes, that Ferdinand Magellan’s 16th century crew dubbed them “Patagones,” from the Spanish for “big foot.” The name came to describe Patagonia, the southern tip of South America as well.

Two hundred years after Magellan’s visit, a British sailor stranded in the region recorded a very different picture. The locals, probably Indigenous Tehuelche people, were no longer notable just for their size. They were now thundering across the Patagonian plains on horses, an animal that went extinct in the region thousands of years earlier. The reintroduction of the horse dramatically transformed Patagonian societies, and its impact there was more profound than perhaps anywhere else in South America.

Patagonia. Extant pre-Hispanic horses?

Hippidion saldiasi . Online H orses originated in America several million years ago, from there they spread into the Old World where ...

patagoniamonsters.blogspot.com

Patagonia has its own horse breed...

Criollo horse - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Criollo (in Spanish), or Crioulo (in Portuguese), is the native horse of the Pampas (a natural region between Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, in South America) with a reputation for long-distance endurance linked to a low basal metabolism.[1][2][3][4] The breed, known for its hardiness and stamina, is popular in its home countries.

Patagonia. Extant pre-Hispanic horses?

Hippidion saldiasi . Online H orses originated in America several million years ago, from there they spread into the Old World where ...

patagoniamonsters.blogspot.com

French engineer Narcise Parchappe reported in 1828 that “it is notable that nearly all the Indian’s horses are picazos (red and white) and stained in a strange manner; while this variety is very rare among the Creoles”. As these colors were also rarely found in the large herds of wild horses; he thought that the natives selectively bred these strange colored animals.[2]

Gauchos! Very intriguing people - there's something about miles and miles of wide open space and a horse to race across it with. Plains people who have horses - whether in the Asian steppes, the Great Plains, or Patagonia - are always mystics!

I have noticed combining horses and humans with endless plains, savannahs, and grasslands. You get a great horse culture or nation evolving from it. I wonder if horses had made it to the savannahs of Africa, I guess another great Horse nation would have arisen too.

5fish said:

I have noticed combining horses and humans with endless plains, savannahs, and grasslands. You get a great horse culture or nation evolving from it. I wonder if horses had made it to the savannahs of Africa, I guess another great Horse nation would have arisen too.

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There were several! The Yoruba and Hausa tribes were great horsemen, there were several formidable African cavalries as well. Sudan, Nigeria, Namibia. (Namibia has Africa's only wild horses.) Even today, mounted horsemen are a frightening part of warfare in northern Africa.

diane said:

There were several! The Yoruba and Hausa tribes were great horsemen, there were several formidable African cavalries as well. Sudan, Nigeria, Namibia. (Namibia has Africa's only wild horses.) Even today, mounted horsemen are a frightening part of warfare in northern Africa.

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