Our American Horse

By Dorothy Childs Hogner and Nils Hogner

Discover the history of horses in America with this engaging survey of equine development from prehistoric to modern times. Recounted in simple language and illustrated with accurate drawings, the book chronicles the horse's New World origins and extinction as well as the animal's return with the conquistadors and its subsequent roles ― as farm and carriage horses, thoroughbreds, ponies, mules, and trained horses in the army, circus, and elsewhere.
Starting with tales of the Mustang, the Dawn Horse, and horses of the Ice Age, the book traces the path to the great horse age that powered the country's westward expansion by way of Conestoga wagons, prairie schooners, and stagecoaches. Profiles of renowned American horses include Dan Patch, Seabiscuit, Man O'War, and many others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Sep 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9780486799131

Book preview

Pony

1

The Mustang, Our American Pony

Out in Wyoming and the country roundabout lives the mustang, an American pony. Although he may grow to be horse size, the mustang is more often small, of pony height. Neither long legged nor fleet, he is stockily built, a compact bundle of horse endurance, hardiness and strength. Described in a few words, he is an amazingly sturdy and intelligent little horse.

The name mustang suits him. It comes from the Spanish mesteño, meaning strayed or wild or belonging to the graziers. This is the pony which developed from the mounts which strayed away from bands of Spanish explorers who came to America in the sixteenth century and from horses which escaped from early Spanish settlements. When America was discovered there were no horses living in the New World. The wild colts, bred from the Spanish horses, became the smart little cow ponies of today.

The first mustangs brought up their colts like wild animals and soon they were as wild as the buffaloes and the prong-horned antelopes among whom they lived. Later there were herds of these mustangs living among the mesas of the Southwest or ranging over the plains. Led by a stallion traditionally but infrequently coal black, the herds added a romantic note to the old West. The mustangs also spread eastward. By the beginning of the eighteenth century there were wild herds in Virginia. Originally descended from the same stock as the mustang of the plains, they mixed with domestic Dutch and English breeds of the south. Still other Spanish stock, shipwrecked off the islands of the southern states, founded herds of wild marsh ponies which Negroes of today sometimes tame to cultivate their rice patches.

The wild herds rapidly increased. In South America the descendants of horses brought in by the Spaniards were known as baguales and in early times these baguales were reported in herds of incredible size, sometimes numbering over ten thousand head! Since today wild horse herds tend to be small, not over fifty in the largest, one wonders if the South American herds increased to such enormous numbers only in the imagination of the early settlers. In those days travellers herded remounts before them, unroped, unharnessed. When they encountered a herd of baguales their own remounts would desert and join the wild ones and perhaps this multiplied their numbers in the settlers’ minds.

But whether the first herds were large or small, the mustangs prospered and increased in North America as well as in South America. Young stallions ran by themselves or in small groups until one was able to contest the leadership of a band of mares. Then a battle royal followed, the old stallion and the young one fighting with teeth and hoof. Often a young stallion would entice a number of mares away from a domestic herd and form a band of his own. Very soon the wild mustangs were so numerous that many people believed that they had lived here always and were natives of our plains.

Like Joseph of the Bible, the mustang has a coat of many colors. Some mustangs remind one of patchwork quilts. These are the pintos, the painted ponies which are born with coats patterned in vivid splashes of black and white or brown and white, regular circus animals. Others are sombre grey. Still others are black, roan, or the cream-tan of the palely beautiful palomino, a very light buckskin with light mane and tail. A common mustang coat is the dun or buckskin which sports a dark stripe down the back from mane to tail and often has faint shoulder and leg stripes as well.

This striped mustang has excited wonder and speculation. He looks as though he might have a strain of zebra blood. He appears to be a throw-back, descended from an ancient and primitive stock. However, the dark bay horses of North Africa, the Libyan horses, also exhibit this tendency to stripes, and so the mustang’s zebra-like appearance comes directly from his Libyan blood through his Spanish grandparents. His coat of many colors is the result of mixed ancestry. Dun horses and white horses originally came from northern Europe and Asia.

As the mustangs multiplied many were captured by the early ranchers and the plains’ Indians. Before Europeans brought horses to America the Indians had no means of moving about except on their own feet. Dogs carried their burdens—tents and other equipment loaded on to tepee poles. The first Indians who saw a man on horseback were terrified. They thought that man and mount were one animal, a two-headed monster, a double-headed centaur. They found that when they sent an arrow into one head, the man’s, part of the animal fell to the ground but the rest ran away. They concluded that the animal was two headed and two lived.

When the plains’ Indians caught some stray mounts and rode them bareback, they discovered that they rode as if born to horses. Soon the tribal life of the nomadic groups became so interwoven with the life of the horse that it was difficult to believe that they had been horsemen for only a few years.

The mustangs were first used as cow ponies on the enormous Spanish ranches of the Southwest. They were the mounts of the Spanish grandees and they were the horses on which the ranch-hands herded cows to supply meat and leather to the haciendas. The herds increased because there were no western markets in the early days. So with Spanish trappings, American ranching had its beginnings and the American descendants of Spanish horses were tamed and once again served man.

When the cattle kings of the west rose to power and when Americans other than those of Mexican heritage came to ride the range the Spanish influence was seen in everything the horse or rider wore. The American cowboy set a western saddle on his mustang’s back, a saddle of Spanish origin. The western saddle is patterned after the Moorish, the type which came to America with the conquistadores when they brought the ancestors of the cow pony to these shores.

Invariably the saddle is fitted with wooden stirrups, deeply hooded with leather. The body is reinforced with hard wood and metal, and built with a horn strong enough to hold the rope that snubs a running steer. A western saddle is made for heavy duty but also decorated as if it were designed for riding to a dance. Elaborately tooled with figures incised in the leather, it is further ornamented with brass nails and rattlesnake skins, if the cow-puncher is poor; and with costly jewels, silver and gold, if the puncher is rich. The cowboy often refers to the small eastern saddle as a postage stamp.

The western bridle is likewise a thing of beauty, heavily embossed, ornamented with metal conchas and with leather or horsehair tassels. In the old days on very special occasions the wealthiest of ranchers guided their horses with bridles made entirely of woven silver wire.

The western bit is also of Spanish origin, usually of the spade type. Various attachments make it a cruel instrument if used with force against a horse’s mouth.

The other implement for punishing an ornery western horse is the quirt, a word derived from the Mexican-Spanish cuarta. The quirt has a short stock of woven leather with two lashes and is usually filled with lead at the top end. This leaded part is used only for striking a vicious horse which rears and threatens to fall backwards on his master.

The mustang or the cow pony

No outfit is complete without a lariat, the Americanization of the Spanish la reata, the rope. This rope with which the mustang helps his master lasso steers is from forty to seventy feet long, and made of hemp or rawhide. In the early days it was made of hides of buffaloes. When not in use the lariat is coiled and looped over the saddle horn, fastened just below with straps or buckled to the base of the horn.

The American cowboy, when he mounts his Spanish-saddled mustang, wears a Spanish hat so wide of brim that it serves equally well for parasol or umbrella. Tied down, it makes ear-muffs against snow or cold, scooped up it is a drinking-cup, and for all purposes it is often called a sombrero which is from a Spanish word meaning shade.

Another distinctive part of the cowboy’s outfit then and now are his chaparajos, commonly known as chaps. The word, of Mexican origin, describes the leather trousers, open at the back, which protect a cowboy’s legs against weather and from being cut when riding through the brush. Even the words which describe the life of the mustang and his rider are often Spanish-Mexican in derivation. Such is stampede, the wild headlong rush of cattle which occurs after the steers roll their tails. This word is derived from estampida, the Spanish