I came across this article today, and it absolutely makes sense to me that the Native Americans were not strangers to the horse until the Europeans arrived.
https://ictnews.org/news/indigenous-scientists-honored-in-france-for-horse-research
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interesting
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We do know that horses were in the Americas eons ago, but if plains cultures did ride horses, I would think we would have a LOT more evidence?
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I certainly havenât done research on this matter, but it seems like the Plains cultures wouldâve had them prior to 1680, but maybe not by more than 100 years or so. If theyâd had them between when the horse died out 11K years ago, and the Spanish arrival on the continent in 1519, weâd have seen a whole lot more evidence of this, right?
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Itâs an interesting article, but it seems like it doesnât adhere to a strict timeline. Basically, it initially disputes the suggestion that Native Americans only acquired horses after the Pueblo Rebellion of 1680, when they drove the Spanish out of the Southwest and kept the Spanish horses. So, the point seems to be that Native Americans had horses prior to 1680.
But then the article implies that disputing the 1680 date might mean that Native Americans had horses even before the Spanish arrived, based partly on Native American legends about the origins of the horse. That assertion is a lot fuzzier.
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According to the Library of Congress:
Europeansâ contact with California began in the mid 1530s when Cortezâs men ventured to Baja California. Not until 1542 did Spaniards sail north to Alta California, and Juan Rodriguez Cabrilloâs expedition that year made landings as far north as modern Santa Barbara.
Iâm not disputing that the Spanish had been in the American west since the 1500s, and that means that Native Americans might have acquired horses in the 1500s.
My point was that even in the 1500s, Native Americans might have still acquired horses from the Spanish. That doesnât mean that they already had them prior to the arrival of the Spanish.
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You have to think how far away California was from the plains in those times.
I think that the whole thing is intriguing and wonder if humans came across a land bridge from Siberia to the Americas that existed 5,000 or more years ago, perhaps they brought equines with them?
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I did a little bit of digging on this topic recently, because I was at the barn, pottering along with my horses, and a couple barn friends showed up with a visiting pal of theirs (another Yank). My friends introduced me as âCaol Ila, she knows a lot about horses, and her horse is Spanish.â Next thing I know, this chap has asked me if I know anything about horses in the Americas before the arrival of the Spanish. It was an odd way to start a conversation with someone youâve just met. I said, âThere werenât horses in the Americas before the Spanish brought them.â He said, âAh, but youâre wrong. Theyâve found evidence that Native Americans were using horses way before Europeans showed up.â
I went home and did some Googling, reading a few papers making that argument - that horses did not in fact die off straight after the Ice Age and were in fact used by indigenous cultures before the Europeans. The main sources for those papers were rock art and other artefacts, as well as oral history. They were mostly written by the same people and dismissed some glaring problems with the scientific evidence, mainly a fossil record which does not support that contention and genetic analyses of most modern horse breeds which doesnât show anything that isnât originally from Europe. If there were horses in North America pre-Columbus, you think they would have bred with the European horses, and youâd see some evidence of that.
A more science-based argument can be found here: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/native-americans-spanish-horses
And the Smithsonianâs write-up of the same research: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/native-americans-spread-horses-through-the-west-earlier-than-thought-180981912/
It pretty much says what Amberley said. Horses were brought over by the Conquistadors, then made their way up from Mexico during the 1500s. Tribes throughout the Southwest desert and the mountains were likely moving the horses along trade networks, and horses were probably moving themselves as well. By the 1600s, theyâd got to places like Kansas, and the Plains tribes had learned how to tame and ride them.
So yes, it is probably the case that Plains tribes had horses long before they had to deal with the plague of European settlement, but unlikely to be the case that they had them before the Spanish invaded Mexico.
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That makes total sense. Thanks.
Here is another article in Science, which goes into far more detail on the research methods used in this study and also directly addresses the PhD thesis (and similar research) which contended that horses never went extinct in the Americas.
Itâs also just a really interesting, well-written paper. https://www.science.org/content/article/horse-nations-animal-began-transforming-native-american-life-startlingly-early
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Fascinating.
I wonder about the prevalence of color breeds in Native American communities, when this seems not to be true in European horses. Is the Appaloosa related to the Knabstrupper?
Spotting was more common in Iberian breeds (as well as other European horses like Welsh ponies) but fashion happened, solid-colouring became more desirable, and it was bred out of many of them.
Until as recently as 2002, ANCCE was trying actively to eliminate every colour that wasnât grey, bay, or black from the PRE studbook.
The registrar of BAPSH, the British registry for Spanish horses, has written, âOur breed is a very ancient one and old paintings from many centuries ago show the Andalusian in a huge range of colours, including true roans, piebalds, skewbalds, spotted ones and all shades of diluted colours. Indeed it is thought by Colour genetics researchers that the spotting genes for the Apaloosa and all other spotted breeds around the world care traceable back to Spanish horse ancestry.â
Quite a lot of information in that link as well!
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I had no idea! Thanks.
One of the arguments people use for the âNorth American horses never went extinctâ hypothesis is the prevalence of spotting in some North American breeds and the near-absence of it (barring Knabstruppers) in European ones.
But you need to look at the European horses of the 15th century, not their modern counterparts. And in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Iberian studbooks, for one, were far from closed, and they had spotted and coloured horses.
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I assume that the other characteristics like striped hooves, white eye sclera, and sparse manes and tails are genetically linked to the color?
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Someone who knows more about Appaloosa genetics will have to answer that. 
The modern Iberian horse obviously has a spectacularly full mane and tail, but you can do a lot with selective breeding in 500 years. It wasnât just Spanish horses that went into North American breeds, either. They eventually had horses from all the other invading Europeans as well.
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If I remember correctly, American Appaloosas were brought into Europe in the 1970s to develop a broader genetic base for the Knabstrupper.
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The British Spotted Pony Society claims their breed dates back to ancient times and can be seen in cave paintings. Horses are very mutable and selective breeding pressure can be intense.
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Iâve read that they were too, but not as far back as the 1970s. But I could be wrong about the decade.
