Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The History of Horses in North America

Episode Date: June 18, 2022

When one thinks of the history of North America, it often invokes images of native Americans and cowboys riding on horseback.  However, horses weren’t in the Westen Hemisphere when Europeans arrived. There was a time when if native people had to move from one place to another, they had to do so on foot.  But, while that is true, the truth is more complex because if you go back far enough, there was a time when horses were in North America.  Learn more about the complicated history of horses in North America, and how they unleashed a revolution, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://podfollow.com/everythingeverywhere/ -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Darcy Adams Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Everything Everywhere is an Airwave Media podcast." or "Everything Everywhere is part of the Airwave Media podcast network Please contact [e-mail] to advertise on Everything Everywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When one thinks of the history of North America, it often invokes images of Native Americans and cowboys riding on horseback. However, horses weren't in the Western Hemisphere when Europeans arrived. There was a time if Native people had to move from one place to another, they had to do so on foot. But while this is true, the truth is more complex, because if you go back far enough, there was a time when horses were in North America. Learn more about the complicated history of horses in North America and how they unleashed a revolution on this episode of everything everywhere daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may

have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. When I began this podcast almost two years ago, I started by creating a list of 100 ideas for episodes. The topic of this episode was one of the very first ideas I came up with. The reason why is because the story of horses in North America is fascinating. The story lies at the intersection of history, politics, technology, archaeology, and evolutionary biology. I'm going to start

the story somewhere in the middle, which is the point where we have firsthand information that we can verify, which is when Europeans arrived in the new world. When Columbus landed in what we know today as the Bahamas in 1492, he did not have any horse. horses with him. However, he found that the local people didn't have horses either. On his next trip in 1493, he had with him about two dozen Andalusian horses. When these horses landed, they were the only horses to be found in the entire Western Hemisphere. The Taino people of the Caribbean were terrified at the sight of men riding on horses. At first, they thought they were some sort of monstrous man-beast. Not only had they never seen horses, but they had

never seen anyone riding any sort of animal. In Cuba, the Spanish found that there was enough land where they could begin breeding horses, and they actually thrive there. Horses remained solely in the Caribbean until 1519, when the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortez landed in Mexico with 16 horses and a handful of men. Over the next two years, with additional reinforcements of men and horses, he managed to conquer all of Mexico. The Aztecs, too, initially had a fear of horses, but the fear soon dissipated, and they were just left with the reality

that the Spanish had a superior technology in the form of a horse. The Spanish realized this too. Yes, they certainly had other advantages in the form of ships, firearms, and disease, but the real advantage they had over the native peoples that they encountered was the horse. They had a standing rule that under no circumstances were horses to be allowed in the hands of native people, because to do so would eliminate the Spanish technical advantage. For 160 years after the arrival of Cortez in Mexico, the Spanish were able to, for the most part, keep their monopoly on horses.

Some Aztecs, for example, were riding horses as early as 1541, but they didn't have the ability to breed them and use them in really large numbers. The first horses which were brought over were actually rather small due to space constraints on ships. Once horses arrived, they began breeding, and through natural selection, new breeds of horses were created that were unique to the new world. One breed in particular was the Galiseño. Over the years, as the Spanish expanded their empire, the native peoples they encountered developed a respect for the horse.

Their size and speed were something that they desired. The names given to the horses in local languages were usually based on the animals that they already knew. These included names like the elk dog and the holy dog. As you of course know, the Spanish horse monopoly eventually came to an end. In fact, the transfer of horse technology occurred in one particular event which changed the course of history. It happened in 1680 in what is today the state of New Mexico. The Spanish ruled over the Pueblo people. The Pueblos were not nomadic but lived in established communities with subsistence agriculture.

And fun fact, you can actually still visit a Pueblo today in the city of Tos, New Mexico. The Spanish rule was by any definition tyrannical. They outlawed the Pueblo religion, whipped and killed their religious leaders, and destroyed their religious objects and places of worship. The Pueblo people lived with this for over a century, and eventually, one of their leaders decided that enough was enough. A Pueblo shaman by the name of Popay organized 46 Pueblo communities in the region over the course of five years for a coordinated attack on the Spanish. It's believed that some other tribes, including the Apache and Navajo, may have also participated in the rebellion. On the 10th of August, 1680, the uprising began in the town of Santa Fe.

The very first thing that the Pueblo people did was steal the horses and mules so the Spanish couldn't get the word out to bring reinforcements. Over the course of the next two weeks, they destroyed every Spanish settlement, killed every Catholic priest they could find, and burned down every church. 400 Spanish were killed, and the remaining 2,000 people were expelled from the territory. However, as far as history is concerned, the biggest thing to come out of this uprising was that now the Pueblo people had horses. Thousands of horses. The Spanish didn't come back to conquer this region for another 12 years, and that was plenty of time for the horse genie to get out of the bottle. The Pueblo began trading horses with their training partners, and soon horse technology began to spread. Within years, tribes all over the American West and the Great Plains had their first horses.

The Apache, Navajo, Kiwa, Nez Perce, Blackfoot, and Comanche all soon had horses. And within decades, horses were in the possession of the Lakota, Si, Cree, and Crow. It's hard to state just how much the horse radically changed everything for these people. It was the greatest cultural and technical revolution that had been seen in North America for thousands of years. The horse literally changed almost everything, especially for the people who lived on the Great Plains. Prior to this point, the only domesticated animal that the Native people of North America had were dogs. Dogs eat meat, which meant that a portion of whatever was hunted had to go to your dogs. And also, dogs are rather small and can only haul so much.

Horses were the perfect fit for the Great Plains. Horses ate grass, and other than the Eurasian steps, there was no better place in the world for horses. Horses dramatically improved the ability of bands of people to travel from one place to another. Hunting became much easier, rather than hurting a group of bison off of a cliff, which was a pretty common method of hunting bison, hunters could much easily go out and just kill a few when needed. Some tribes totally changed how they lived. Some native people in the east of the Mississippi were more settled and engaged in agriculture. However, the horse now made it possible to roam and hunt in a way that made growing corn unnecessary. Horses became the most valuable thing that somebody could have. Wealth was now

expressed in horses. Perhaps the best example of how radical this transformation was can probably best be seen in the Comanchee. Not every tribe developed the same sort of horse culture. Some were more pragmatic in their use of horses, and others like the Comanchee centered their whole culture around the horse. The Comanche were some of the first people after the Pueblo to get horses. Within the span of just a few generations, the Comanchee went from having no experience with horses, and perhaps having never even seen a horse, to becoming some of the greatest horsemen in the world. Their military ability as light cavalry was on a par with the Mongols, who had developed similar techniques over the course of centuries. They developed wholly innovative methods

of capturing wild horses and breaking them. They quickly began selectively breeding horses for strength and endurance. As with all quick, significant cultural changes, there was a down. downside as well. Horses made it easier to wage war. An imbalance in horses meant that one tribe would be significantly stronger than another. Horses became the cause of conflict, and there was an arms race over horses among some tribes. Horses also competed with bison for grazing. It was now much easier to overgrazing area than it would have been before. Over time, horses also got loose and became feral. Feral horses are known as Mustangs, and there were large herds of Mustangs that began to roam all over the plains. While they are often called wild, they are technically feral because they

are descended from domesticated horses. The Mustang population probably peaked in the late 18th or early 19th century was somewhere between 2 to 5 million horses. Today, there are somewhere between 75,000 to 90,000 Mustang in the United States. And I'd like to make a special note of one of the best places to see Mustangs in North America, Sable Island. Located off the coast of Nova Scotia is really just a very long sandbar in the Atlantic Ocean that's 31 square kilometers or 12 square miles in area. 200 years ago, horses were taken to the island to be kept because they couldn't run away. They were eventually abandoned and have just lived there feral ever since. There's currently a population of 550 horses which have developed its own breed.

It's a difficult place to visit, but it's actually well worth it if you can, especially if you love horses. I got to visit in 2017, and it was an incredible experience. Now, at the very beginning of this episode, I said that I was starting this story in the middle. And if you listened carefully, I said there were no horses in the Americas when Europeans arrived, which is true. But I never said that horses weren't native to the Americas. Because the real beginning of this story goes back millions of years ago. In the 1830s, an early American paleontologist by the name of Joseph Lytie found fossils that looked suspiciously like horses. He figured that horses had to have been in North America thousands of years.

ago. At first, his theories were rejected because it was well known that there were no horses in North America until the Europeans brought them. However, over time, the evidence began to pile up, and a clear picture developed as to the real history of the horse. It turns out that there were 45 million-year-old fossils of an early ancestor of the horse called the Eohippus that had been found in North America. The current theory is that horses didn't originally come from Asia. They actually evolved in North America. During the last several Isisos, ages when the land bridge connecting North America and Asia was exposed, horses migrated from east to west, from North America into Asia, just the opposite of human migration. The horse populations were

eventually cut off from each other, and they diverged. It's believed that the North American horse probably went extinct soon after the last Ice Age ended about 11 to 12,000 years ago, along with many other large mammals that were on the continent. There's no evidence that these horses were ever domesticated, and they were probably hunted for meat. It was several thousand years after the extinction of the North American horse that they were domesticated in Eurasia. So, Europeans didn't introduce horses to the Americas. They inadvertently reintroduced horses to the Americas. By the year 1912, the United States had the largest horse population in the world,

and after that, like everywhere else in the world, modern technology caused horse populations to decline rapidly. I find the story of the horse in North America to be a fascinating one. It's a story of conquest, rebellion, cultural and technical changes, adaptation, and evolution. In the end, it's the story of an animal that traveled all the way around the world to find its way back to where it originally came from. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener Opie NZ over at Apple Podcast in New Zealand.

They write, best out of many. There's no shortage of podcasts now. days. A new one pops out of the woodwork almost daily. This one is by far the most interesting, and I learned things I wasn't even aware of being curious about. Also, what's what the music each episode starts with? I quite like that. Thanks, Appie. I'm always glad to hear from folks in one of my favorite countries. And I love to make Kiwis jealous by telling them that I was in the stands at Eden Park for the finals of the 2011 Rugby World Cup to watch the All Blacks win. As for, as for the music, it was something I selected and purchased the rights for over a year before

actually launched the podcast. It was composed by Sergei Azapov, who writes music for video games, movies, and TV. I only play about nine seconds of what is a much longer piece of music. And if you want to, you can go back to Episode 100, which is titled Episode 100, and at the very end of the episode, I actually play the entire piece of music. And that's the only time I'm ever going to do it. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you two can have it read on the show.