Devices with links, are not what I was taught was a war bridle. More along the lines of a jaw ropes or jaw lines, commonly seen in costume classes for Appaloosa horses with only a single line to the rider’s hand. Horse both neck reined and steered with direct pull, good use of your legs, to go around with only the single rein. It was a show-off thing, “I only need this little string to control my big horse” while YOU need a real bridle with a bit.
It appears these days the Appaloosa horses wear beaded headstalls with bits for costume classes, since I could not locate a photo to link to showing a jaw line that was so common in photos when I was a kid.
Growing up, a war bridle was made with a lasso noose, across the head and nose, with Hondo on one side of face, tail of lariat run under the jaw thru noose, forming a halter type head control device. Variations could have the lariat noose around the lower jaw with lariat tail over the head down thru the jaw loop to the handler hand. I believe the drawing Randy Steffan made for Western Horseman is the most correct design for this very old-time method used by old Cowboys. My understanding of the name was that it came from when the horse wanted to battle with the Cowboy over who really was going to win, it could turn into a war of wills! Hence the War Bridle name.
Lariat is hard rolled rope, not soft at all. When rope was pulled, it put strong pressure on parts of the skull, jaw, getting the horse’s attention, pain when horse resisted lariat pull by humans. Most Western horses were older, 4-5-6yrs when first handled much. Fresh off the range, strong and determined not to cooperate. Cowboys were not training soft young baby horses, well handled young horses, but animals who believed they were fighting for their lives, all were resistant to any handling.
These devices were NOT intended to be used for riding the animal, design is for forward pulling, not pulling back behind the head in a saddle. They were just as a training device to learn moving forward when pulled, correction tool to stand for saddling, not pulling back when tied. They had to get the horses ridden, useful, whatever the means needed. Horses were cheap. While breaking bones, getting injured could be life threatening back then, so Cowboys used any means needed to protect themselves from damage by the horses. Certainly there were cruel men using such devices, but others only used them as the tool they are.
Those commercially made jaw ropes are pretty ugly looking, appear harshly surfaced, not smooth rope. Nothing shown is what I would consider “kind” for the horse. Very easy for a rider to hurt the mouth skin, bone surfaces of the bars with much rein pulling or mouth pressure on an untrained or horse not used to such a device.
We also rode our kid horses (patient and accepting) with jaw ropes, single rein “just like the Indians!” without being killed. It was close though at times!! They didn’t have mouth issues after jaw line use, no bruising, cuts, we checked after using those thin rawhide strings which were so different than a metal bit. I would say their obedience level was not as good as with a true bit and bridle, but they did listen to us riders for turns and stops with the jaw lines.
