Where did the first horses in America come from?
I was at the American Indian Museum in DC and read in one of their many exhibits that horses were brought in the New World by Spanish Conquistadores. That’s what it said. My 92 year old friend was also surprised to find that out. I thought there were horses in America since the Indian race was here. But no, according to the exhibit. Would you have more historical info on this?
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www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_horse
The spanish are credited with introducing the first horse to north america after indigenous species had become extinct.
Funny…I JUST changed my avatar to the muley girls over here. Yes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. lol
It depends upon how you look at it. There was a type of horse that used to exist in the US, but they died out long ago. There is a theory that they came across the Bering Straight. When Spanish settlers arrived on US soil and noticed that there were no horses to provide transportation and aid in labor efforts, they brought horses over from both Spain and existing settlements in Mexico.
Here is a link to some interesting history on horses in the US.
From what I heard the wild herds of horses in America originated in horses that were on Spanish Galleons that wrecked, and the horses escaped and made it to shore. (See “Misty of Chinoteague”)
It is hard to imagine that the Indians only had horses over the last 400 or 500 years out of a total of about 20,000 years. They’re like peanut butter and jelly. And horses WERE indigenous to North America, until about 13,000 years ago but for whatever reason they died out. (Any coincidence that that was when the second waves of humans came in across the Bering Strait?) I think those horses may have been much smaller than the horses the Spanish brought over, maybe more like a large dog or small pony. The Indians probably didn’t see them as anything but potential food.
@Coloma is right, with her links, and @Dutchess_III too. Native horses in the Americas became extinct about 10,000 – 12,000 years ago. Modern horses were brought to the New World by the Europeans, first by the explorers. Both wild horse are indeed descendants of horses brought here by the Europeans. It’s an interesting history. And as @Dutchess_III points out, I think many modern people might have trouble imagining some native american “tribes” who adapted the horse in their cultures very quickly, without them, but horses are not native to the Americas.
This is interesting. From @Coloma‘s link “The indigenous peoples of the Americas did not have a specific word for horses, and came to refer to them in various languages as a type of dog or deer (in one case, “elk-dog”).”
^ LOL Yep, must have been planting all those horse apples along the trails.
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