It seems like so much longer a span than just since March of this year that I’ve had a pile of particular books and article offprints concerning horses stacked up on a side of my desk. Perhaps it is because I’ve just finished reading Walter Edmonds’ tremendous story “Courtship of My Cousin Doone” that that I am spurred to complete my thoughts on Horses in America this evening. Or, perhaps it is the sound of thunder rolling onto the Alberta parkland from the foothills and the Rockies beyond that has suggested it is time for a storm.
In March I downloaded and read an article: “Early dispersal of domestic horses into the Great Plains and northern Rockies”. This article seemed to follow hard upon a bit of a nonplussing news story which came to my attention about a PhD. absurdly granted by the University of Alaska: The relationship between the indigenous peoples of the Americas and the horse: deconstructing a Eurocentric myth. Carl Feagans has already debunked this doctoral thesis pretty thoroughly in “Pseudoarchaeological Claims of Horses in the Americas” but I can’t help but add a few notes I’ve made over the last few months. . . .
Some may suggest that the “standard history” is that horses were only dispersed into the North American West after the Pueblo Revolt in 1680, almost a century after the Spanish began importing horses to the Americas and breeding them intensively. This “standard history” is a myth, not history, as, while it has never been doubted that the Pueblo Revolt had an explosive impact on the breeding stock of indigenous held and bred horses, there has never been a doubt, that I am aware of, that indigenous peoples held stock of horses before the Pueblo Revolt but not before the Spanish brought horses to the Americas.
There has never been any serious doubt that the horses experienced by indigenous people since 1492 have been horses derived from the Columbian Exchange. Even the much celebrated article (mentioned above) from March of this year unequivocally agrees: “Admixture graph modeling did not show evidence of gene flow from Late Pleistocene into historic or modern North American horses (“Early dispersal of domestic horses into the Great Plains and northern Rockies” Science, 379 . p. 1317. ) In a nutshell, horses in the Americas, including the commonly named “Indian Horse” of North America, are descendants of horses brought from the Old World since 1492.
A big part of the modern myth of horses in the Americas seems to be the idea that indigenous people at contact were somehow in awe of European horses. At the same time, a popular idea is that indigenous people were totally down with horses because, like, they’ve always had horses from forever. While my childhood somehow contained the erroneous idea that the Aztecs were dumbfounded by Spanish horses, my youthful reading of the History of the Conquest of Mexico by Prescott immediately cleansed me of that lie. Horses were almost always just another domestic animal to the people of the Americas, albeit a threatening one when European hands were on the reins.
It’s been several months since the Science article appeared and who knows how long since the absurd and embarassing (to the) University of Alaska PhD. thesis appeared and the kerfuffle has perhaps died down a little bit. Maybe it is safe to present the notes I made over the last few months about horses coming to the Americas.
First, some notes on William H. Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843) (I use the Random House Modern Library one volume Edition of the History of the Conquest of Mexico and History of the Conquest of Peru, n.d.), which has been described as “often cited (though seldom read)” by one Mark A. Peterson at Encyclopedia.com. For what it’s worth, I have read every word of Prescott’s magnificent Mexican and Peruvian Histories and poured over a great many passages for some four decades since first looking into those epic histories..
p. 144, note: Bernal Diaz minutely describes all the horses Cortez brought on the expedition.
p. 157: It is in describing an early encounter in Tabasco that Prescott mentions the Tabascans being panicked by the advent of the Cavalry, quoting the words of Paolo Giovo, an Italian who never once left Italy, and who was therefore not actually a witness, in his Elogia Virorum Illustrium [(sic) likely actually Elogia virorum vellica virute illustrium rather than his vitae virorum illustrium]. The chroniclers who were actually present do not seem to take much note of any panic at the sight of horses – as opposed to normal panic at the arrival of heavy cavalry as reinforcements to the foundering infantry. One might suspect that the first tank groaning across WWI trenches would have instilled a similar initial reaction, followed by a brainstorming of tactics to defeat this new feature of battle. This is exactly the reaction of every army Cortes’ horses encountered during the march to Tenochtitlan and in Tenochtitlan itself. If there were some sort of superstitious awe, it was short lived in every case.
p. 277: The Tlaxcalans kill two horses and drag riders from their mounts. Neither the Spanish Chroniclers nor the 19th century historian pretend that the peoples of the Mexica’s Empire or their neighbours were in awe of horses beyond the first moments of encounter.
p. 230: The Spaniards are explicitly disappointed that the horses are not held in awe, but rather are killed and mutilated by the Tlaxcalans as readily as they kill and mutilate Spanish soldiers.
p. 239: long before reaching Tenochtitlan all the horses have been wounded or killed.
p. 418: whatever the untold wonder might have been toward the horses, the Mexica very quickly are grappling the horses’ legs and pulling the riders from the saddles.
pp. 651-652: The Maya of the Isle of Peten are left an injured horse to care for. Not knowing what to feed it, they inadvertently let the horse die. They erect a statue of the horse on their Teocalli and give it reverence. In 1618, almost a century later, Franciscan friars come to preach the gospel in the area and find the horse statue still being revered. This is a rare case where a particular horse is revered by the Indigenous People of the Americas, and it demonstrates that the adoption of the horse into the centre of local culture could be very rapid. It should be no surprise wherever it is observed.
Contemporary European witnesses:
Bernal Diaz, in his discussion of the Tlaxcallan Campaign in his The Conquest of New Spain gives no indication that the enemy was in awe of horses.
Bartolomé de las Casas in his Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies talks a great deal of horses and cavalry, but there is no mention of any sort of superstitious awe.
David Ingram, in his account of his journey across the south-east of North America in late 1568 and early 1569, a half century after the arrival of the Spanish in continental America, mentions in passing that “there is also great plenty of . . . horses” in the areas he traversed. (p. 560 of the 1589 edition of Richard Haklyut’s The Principal Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English nation, etc. (London: George Bishop and Ralph Newberie, Deputised to Christopher Barker, Printer to the Queenes most excellent Maiestie, 1519).
It should be noted that Narváez, Coronado, and De Soto all travelled in the early 16th century into what is now the south and southwest United States with significant numbers of horses (and other livestock) which were fully capable of escaping, going feral, and being recaptured/re-domesticated.
It should also be noted the alacrity with which Old World cultures adopted and made their own such New World products as tomatoes, potatoes, chili peppers, and maize. What did Italians eat before they got their hands on tomatoes? Where would Pad Thai be without chilies? Where would the Irish be without potatoes? – well, probably exactly where a lack of potatoes put them today – but you understand my point. The process of cultural appropriation of useful products and technologies is almost universally extremely rapid. Turkeys came to England from the Americas, by way of Turkey – a country with absolutely no colonial ambitions in the Americas but quite healthy trade links apparently – in an historical blink of an eye. Remember how quickly tobacco and chocolate, fairly useless products by any estimation, were made integral to European culture! It should be very much a surprise if such a mobile and vitally useful technology as the horse had not preceded European humans in penetrating the American Plains Cultures with or without the Pueblo Revolt.
A postulated American equine survival from the Pleistocene is an absolutely unnecessary multiplication of entities which flies in the face of concrete genetic evidence and clearly established historical evidence. The notion should be set aside until new concrete genetic evidence – not simply more anecdotes – is forthcoming. That may well happen. I can remember a time not so long ago when it seemed that genetic tests of the Neandertal bones in the Shanidar Cave in Iraq “proved” that Modern Humans and Neandertals did not interbreed. Science – and scientists – moved on and forward when new evidence arrived. If ever concrete evidence of pre-Columbian domestic horses in the Americas arrives, I’m sure we’ll all move on and move forward – to investigate why buffalo jumps or buffalo pounds or fortuitous muddy bog traps were clearly used in any discovered remains of pre-Columbian Bison hunts but never, ever any horses. Yes, an absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence, but it does seem strange that if horses had been a part of Indigenous cultures “forever” that they only began to be used in Bison hunts on the great plains a century or two after the Spanish and other European powers brought their horses to the Americas.
Science is not “a Euro-centric myth”. It is Science. Science can be and is constantly tested and refined and brought closer to something which, for all intents and purposes, can be proven right.
Myth, by its nature, for its believer, cannot be tested, and so, it cannot ever be proven wrong – and it can never be proven right.
When I’m in a thinking mood, or a feeling mood, a poetic mood, or a mood of just plain wonder, I’ll go with Science.
Behind the Hedge 