ENHS Nature Trails February 2001 Article 2

Natural History and You - The President's Forum
by Nathan Tublitz

Did the native North American horse realy go extinct? A clash of cultures

When does one re-evaluate a long-standing, commonly held position? Listen to this story and decide whether you are open to possibly amending your views (this is not a test, but it could be...).

It is common knowledge, based on overwhelming paleontological data, that the horse originated in North America. These small (12-13 hands), straight-backed horses wandered across the Bering Strait, quickly spreading into Asia and subsequently throughout Europe. The realistic depictions of horses in cave paintings and rock art throughout Eurasia are testaments to the migration and importance of the horse in pre-historic human cultures in Europe and Asia. Along with the horse's origin, it is also commonly accepted that the ancestral horse in North America went extinct during the Pleistocene ice flows, as did the mammoth, giant ground sloth, and other Ice Age mammals. As every school child knows, horses returned to the Americas during the exploration of Mexico by the Spaniards in the 16th C. European legend has it that the Spaniards lost 11 horses which multiplied and reached the North America prairies, where they were tamed and used by the Plains Indians.

This history is strongly disputed by many Plains Indian nations, including the Dakota/Lakota people. Many Native Americans contend that the aboriginal horse survived the Ice Age and that horses were part of their culture long before the arrival of the Spaniards and other Europeans. Moreover, they claim that the native North American horse continued to thrive until the mid 19th C, when the US Government ordered them rounded up and destroyed to prevent Indians from leaving their newly-created reservations. Evidence of a US Government-sanctioned slaughter of Indian horses is abundant; however, data supporting the contention that the native horse survived the Ice Age and that Indians autonomously developed a horse culture are hard to find. Yet there are clues to support the Native Americans' position.

The extinction of the horse in North America has always been causally linked to the onset of the Pleistocene Ice Age, however if that is the case, then why did the Eurasian horse survive the Pleistocene? One argument is that the Pleistocene climate and environment in the Eurasia steppes must have been quite different than that of North American plains, yet recent investigations on the fauna and flora of the two regions suggest similar climates and habitats in the two regions. To date, a good explanation for their extinction has not been presented.

Another piece of evidence used to support the extinction theory is that horse remains are not found in North American settlements whereas they are extensively found in archeological sites throughout Eurasia. Extinction supporters claim that the appearance of horse remains in Eurasian sites indicate that these people used horses for a variety of reasons. They ate horses, buried them with their chieftains, and used horse bones as tools. In North America, however, there is a notable lack of horse remains in pre-historic archeological sites, which have lead many to conclude that there was an absence of horses in Indian culture. Dakota/Lakota elders respond simply; Plains Indians culture revered horses to such an extent that they did not eat horse meat nor make hand tools derived from horses. Moreover, Plains Indian burials were always on scaffolds above ground without many personal effects, and the remains were collected and buried a full year later. Hence it would be unlikely to find horse remains in Indian burial sites.

Yet another piece of this fascinating puzzle comes from the language of the Plains Indians. Dakota/Lakota language has an extensive vocabulary of horse terms, including distinct words for the native, small-legged horse and the newly-introduced long-legged or American horse. According to Dakota/Lakota elders, the small-legged horse was short (13 hands), had a straight back, wider nostrils, a long mane, curly hair, and was renowned for its enormous endurance. This description is very reminiscent of the Polish Przewalski horses of the eastern European steppes. Polish Przewalskis were not brought to the new world by the Spaniards, who much preferred the long-legged, faster horse of Arabian descent. Did the long-legged horses of Spanish origin evolve into short-legged American versions of the Przewalski horse once lost in the American plains, or do Dakota/Lakota elders remember a horse that pre-dated the European invasion of the Americas?

Furthermore, if the Plains Indian culture arose without horses, how come they were expert horsemen at the time of first contact with Europeans? Many of the first Europeans who visited the New World wrote that the indigenous native people were superb riders. In 1657 Prince Fredrick of Wurtemberg noted on a visit to the Dakota/Lakota people with the French explorer La Salle " The Indians are extremely bold and daring riders". Anthropologists are in agreement that the domestication and use of horses by Eurasian cultures emerged thousands of years after horses first appeared. However, in the Americas it took the Indians only 150 yrs after Columbus arrived in the New World to domesticate the horse? Most experts find this an unlikely scenario.

According to the Dakota/Lakota people, the native horse never became extinct and was an integral part of their culture for 1000s of years prior to the first European contact. Their high level of horsemanship, cultural traits, and linguistic abilities as well as a lack of an explanation for the extinction of the horse by scientists all argue for a re-evaluation of the commonly held belief that the native horse disappeared at the Ice Age. Are we (and you) open-minded enough to consider this possibility?

Nathan Tublitz
Professor of Biology
Institute of Neuroscience
University of Oregon
Eugene OR 97403
Phone: 1-541-346-4510 FAX: 1-541-346-4548

[ Back ]

Page last modified: 15 April 2001
Location: http://biology.uoregon.edu/enhs/archive/feb01/feb012.html
E-mail the WebSpinner: cpapke@gmail.com