ENHS Nature Trails March 2001 Article 3

Show us the Bones, Nathan!
by Reida Kimmel

In last month's 'President's Forum' Nathan Tublitz challenged us to reconsider the standard scholarly belief that horses, which evolved in North America, went extinct in the Western Hemisphere at the end of the Pleistocene era, and that therefore Native Americans must have developed their seventeenth through nineteenth century horse-based economy and culture using stolen and feral Spanish horses. Nathan told us that according to the traditions of the Lakota people, a small primitive horse like the Polish Przewalski persisted in the Western Hemisphere and was utilized by the Native Americans before the arrival of Spanish horses in the early sixteenth century.

I have been thinking a lot about this idea, and I am afraid that I cannot accept it for many reasons. Most importantly, the historical records are quite clear. When native Mexican people saw the Spaniards on horseback, they were astonished. They thought man and beast were one, and godlike. Disease, treachery and terror were the means by which the Spaniards so easily conquered Mexico, as the contemporary chronicles tell us. We also know that within a few decades the plains of Mexico were filled, and overgrazed, by huge herds of cattle, horses and, in the wetter places, pigs. [Amicus Journal, Spring, 1997] This population explosion implies that the grasslands were a previously under exploited ecological niche. These feral animals spread north into Texas and the Great Plains before the end of the century. Long before this, Native Americans knew what these animals were and what to do with them. Riding stolen and tamed feral horses, Plains tribes were able to hunt buffalo far more efficiently and to successfully harass their sedentary neighbors. [Mandan oral tradition attests to this insurgency.] The great skill and daring on horseback shown by the Lakota, Apache and Commanche people did not take millennia to develop. Individuals learned these skills from childhood within a cultural context that demanded that successful male tribal members be superb horsemen. That these tribes had a rich vocabulary of horse names and equestrian terms is no surprise. Language is very flexible and can change rapidly. Witness changes in our own vocabulary in the few decades since commuters have been with us. Horses are intensely social animals with important hierarchies and nuances in their relationships. They come in a multiplicity of colors, shapes and sizes, and they require gear to use. A people coming to use horses will need a new vocabulary and often they will use very old words to make new expressions; so looking for ancient linguistic roots in the Lakota's equestrian vocabulary may not tell us anything.

I will digress slightly here to tell this anecdote regarding the flexibility of language in times of cultural upheaval. When I was discussing Nathan's article with a friend who is a horse person and also part Ojibwa, she told me that in her family only one word is left of the traditional speech of her great-grandmother's people, the word for cranberry sauce "mashkiigiminim-baashkiminagigah-bakaakozhigan". Curious to discover the exact meaning of this ancient term, Meg consulted a dictionary of the Ojibwa language only to find that the word translated as "low bush cranberries-gathered, cooked/preserved-in a can"! The word is partly ancient and traditional and partly borrowed [gan] and constructed to give a clear description of a popular food. The "ancient" word is at best only a century old!

If we look at the Plains Indian's gear, for instance in the wonderful painted leather version of Custer's Last Stand, we see the warriors rode bareback using a simple bridle which often lacked a bit. The horses also pulled travois, poles laden with the humble possessions of a clan on the move. The travois was an old means of transport, well suited to rough ground. Before the advent of horses, it was pulled by dogs or women. Contrast this simple, makeshift, equestrian tool kit with the rich trappings and tack found in the burial chambers of early Eurasian horsemen like the Scythians, the Hittites or the Celts. Is this a cultural difference or had the Lakota not had the time to develop a taste for luxuries and the skills to make them?

Because wild horses are so -well- wild and difficult to handle, Nathan wonders at the speed with which the Native Americans were able to develop their horse culture and economy. However, taming these descendants of Spanish horses was not at all like taming the first wild equines six or seven thousand years ago. The Spanish mustangs were feral, not truly wild. For many generations, their ancestors had been bred for tractable natures and the ability to bond with people. Today, young mustangs captured from the range and trained intelligently make fine reining and even dressage horses. To succeed as well as they do in these sports, the mustangs must submit to their riders' commands with complete trust, sensitivity and willing enthusiasm.

I was very intrigued by Nathan's statement that the "Dakota/Lakota language has ...distinct words for the native small-legged horse and the newly introduced long-legged or American horse." The former animal was "short...had a straight back, wider nostrils, a long mane, curly hair and was renowned for its enormous endurance." This description reminds Nathan of the very primitive Eastern European Przewalski horses. It reminds me of Spanish mustangs, which are the size of large ponies, and in their purest form have the short backs and level croups of their Arabian ancestors. Like Arabians, they even have two less vertebrae than other horses. Spanish mustangs have long, often wavy-haired manes. Primitive horses have short stiff upright manes like the horses in the beautiful 30,000 year old cave paintings of France. Both Spanish mustangs and Przewalski have genes for the dun coloration, though not the same genes, as there are four separate loci that give this dominant mutant phenotype, and different genes underlie different color patterns. [Horse Color Explained, Jeanette Gower] Oregon's Kiger mustangs are stunning examples of the 'buckskin' dun coloration pattern brought to America by the Spanish. Today's Norwegian Fiords and the Przewalski show a dun coloring more like that of the primitive horse. For complex and fascinating reasons, the former dun gene will be expressed in some, not all individuals in a population, while the latter gene in a few generations will become the sole color pattern of the population. The coloration of the feral horses of the Americas in no way reflects the possibility of the persistence of wild horses in this hemisphere beyond the Pleistocene. It seems that mustangs have always been a colorful lot, but only the Nez Perce practiced selective husbandry and bred their stock for a particular coloration [appaloosa] and body type. This fact implies to me that the horse-human connection was a relatively new one for Native Americans. I think that the "newly introduced American horse" was likely the type of horse, larger, heavier and with more upright [rather than reaching] action, that was introduced by the English and French settlers. These horses also contributed genes to the feral horse herds.

The reason for the extinction of horses on this continent is indeed a mystery. Keep in mind that many other large species went extinct in North America at the end of the Pleistocene. Some blame diseases brought by humans and their dogs. Others blame hunting pressure by the new top predator, man. Possibly we will never know. If, however, horses survived this mass extinction there would be at least a few bones from the period 8,000 BCE to 1500AD- in caves, in alluvial deposits, in canyons in the arid Southwest. We know of none. Nathan, if we are to accept the Lakota's theory, you must show us the bones.

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