How Did The Native Americans Get Horses?

when we think of Native Americans we tend to think of people on horseback with feathers roaming around the Great Plains probably hunting Buffalo but again on horseback and we tend to think that this would be something from time immemorial the way that they were such amazing riders and incorporated horses into their lives must mean that they have been riding them for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years since time immemorial but actually in this video I'm gonna look at why that wasn't actually the case and horses are a fairly new phenomenon in North America now let me quickly qualify this and that is to say that horses did exist in North America a long time ago it was a different kind of horse it's now called the Hegeman horse although Hegeman horses for where it was found and this was a very different species of horse but they actually went extinct in the North American continent around 8000 BC so horses at the same time as the megafauna in North America like the woolly mammoth and other such animals they were potentially because of climate change as well as human hunting but it's not thought that at this time the Native Americans or the peoples in America at the time that they were riding horses as they later would so horses had to be reintroduced by the Spanish which they did when Christopher Columbus introduced himself to the new world in 1492 now did you know that Christopher Columbus actually only discovered America because he watched a Magellan TV documentary about America yeah that that that's not true but luckily you can so Magellan TV is a paid online streaming service that has hundreds of documentaries about different topics some are on nature some are on history others are on science and politics and basically anything else that you want I've talked about other history ones before in several other videos like the series on the Normans and some about the nature as well which is one of these I'd like to recommend this one to you which is called the return of the Buffalo because of course for the Plains tribes I'm talking about the Buffalo was the essential animal for their way of life and unfortunately they were hunted to near-extinction but if you watch this video on Magellan TV they actually talk about how they're trying to reintroduce this amazing species onto the North American Plains today so I'd highly recommend giving that one a watch and there is actually an exclusive offer for the viewers of my for history with Hilbert's subscribers to sign up for if you follow the link tri-dot a genin tv.com forward slash history with hilbert then you can actually get an extra free month on the trial period there so if you follow the link you can head over to Magellan TV and get this special offer and start watching away thank you very much too much on TV for sponsoring this video now the first place the Spanish landed under Christopher Columbus was Hispaniola where they landed in 1492 and by 1499 we already have accounts of horse breeding taking place on Hispaniola to boost the numbers of the Spanish army and they would need this because in 1519 obviously they started their war against the aztecs in Mexico and as we can see horses they played an important role in the Spanish conquest there the Native Americans of course had never seen horses before you know they're very distant ancestors had hunted them but by this time they had no idea what they were and this probably gave the Spanish a huge advantage now they also had enough horses in 1532 to launch their attack on the Inca Empire under Hernando Pizarro and later again in 1538 they started their colony in Florida they also have accounts there of them bringing horses over to Florida so that's the first example of horses in let's say mainland North America outside of Mexico to the north but actually the interesting thing when it comes to the Native Americans is that the Spanish pushed north through Mexico and then made forays into what's now the United States as well so in 1610 they actually founded the city of Santa Fe of course that's why it is a Spanish name because the Spanish were the first ones to push into this area of North America and they were on their expeditions bringing their horses with them because these were the beasts that had been so effective against fighting the South American peoples the Aztecs the Incas etc and so they were moving north with hope of conquering the tribes that live to the north now the Native Americans living in this area became known to the Spanish as the pueblos which in Spanish is the same word as town or village and this is because these Native Americans lived in these kind of towns these houses these made of adobe that were hacked out of the walls of some of the cliff faces that you saw now some of their ancestors were the Anasazi which were very famous for building these big cities but around this time they become known as the Pueblo there are actually lots of different groups for the Spanish all : under one name some the mother Zuni for example among others and they actually aren't the first ones to of the Native Americans to get on horses now the Spanish realized that the horse was their strong weapon over the Native Americans now they might not have been numerically superior to the people around them but technologically and with horses they were and so that there were actually some of the first laws that you find in these places are forbidding Native Americans to use horses but inevitably they do because of course there are a lot of the rancheros as they become called they're the ranches in these areas they had native servants indentured servants and they were the ones who would be riding horses to help around the farm so the skill did actually get out but these weren't the ones who became the kind of famous Plains Indians that we think of and actually for this process a lot of its in the dark because of course these native groups they didn't have any way of writing things down it's a long time ago even for oral tradition so really what we get are flashes into the darkness of how there she came across the horse how they then domesticated the horse and started using it and we we get these flashes from certain chroniclers writing things down in certain accounts the first flash that we get is in the 1650s that the Spanish settlements the Pueblo settlements suddenly come under attack from mounted warriors from the north and they described these people as being Lea Apache now of course this is one of the most famous tribes today and the Apache are the first Native American tribes the first Plains tribes to actually learn how to ride horses and then to use them against the Spanish and basically as soon as the settlement started they started being raided by the Apache who of course were on foot because they didn't have any horses but fairly soon remember that these settlements start to spring up at the start of the seventeenth century and in the 1650s already they're fully mounted and riding to these settlements and then raiding them and so we see that this actually this this horse culture that the Apaches got we don't know exactly who or when for the first time decided to try and ride like the Spanish did but clearly it was copied from the Spanish for example they would mount the horses from the right and this again is what the Spanish did because the Spanish actually of this tradition from the brewers who also mounted from the right and we see that they actually start to imitate the saddles and the stirrups and things like this that the Spanish had with their own native traditions and tried to make them of their own materials as well and of course because they were attacking the settlements the Puebla settlements in the rancheros they were then capturing horses from them and then there's this whole trade that occurs in captured horses and so they would have their own horse herd and then eventually they started to learn how to ride them but again this is just one flash into the darkness we don't know exactly the process by which this occurred it should be said though that the Apaches actually preferred eating their horses rather than riding them and the most horses they captured they actually would just butcher and kill and eat straight away and they would only ride sort of the the choicest horses if you will and essentially they mostly used horses just for transport and didn't actually ever learn to fight on horseback and this is something which is quite interesting because if you've ever seen any old westerns as a particular one I have in mind called stagecoach with John Wayne where a stagecoach gets attacked by a band of Apaches on horseback who will attack on horseback but that's not actually accurate at all because the Apache they would ride to these settlements and then they would dismount and fight on foot and then ride away again so in terms of mobility it made the Apache far more mobility they could cover huge distances and get away quickly it also added a whole new social currency to the plains that they were inhabiting although these were very much in the southern plains at this point they're not on the great plains really in the great plains proper by this stage so it is a development and they certainly were the first but they weren't let's say the best horse riders or the best example of a Plains horse riding tribe now the situation changes in 1680 and this is because in 1680 the Pueblo Native Americans in the southwest they revolt against the Spanish this is the great Pueblo Revolt and essentially what happens is they managed to drive out the Spanish back into Mexico but the Spanish left behind their huge herds of horses and these then escaped onto the Great Plains they no longer had the Spanish looking after them the Pueblo didn't know how to ride them and so essentially they escaped onto the Great Plains you know actually by a vape essential II a great coincidence of course the horses the Spanish brought over were the horses from Spain these were the Iberian horses and that distant ancestors had lived on the great steps the great Eurasian steppes and so they were really you know bred for the steppe they were then brought by Arab conquerors and mixed with desert breeds like Arabian horses and you see this in a kind of Mustang form and then the Moors brought these into Spain in the eighth century when they invaded and continually afterwards when they were involved and so the horses that the Spanish brought into the new world were actually ideally suited to somewhere like the great plains in North America and this is where they were captured by other tribes and probably as well the Apache would be trading these horses with other tribes that Native American trade routes were very extensive and covered the continent and this is how some of the other Plains tribes will have got their horses by trading with tribes like the Apache who had horses and these wild horses that were now on the plains and they rapidly bred and so you had you know tens of thousands of horses before long on the plains semi-wild that they could catch and then use to their own advantage another of these flashes into the darkness that we might see is from some of the traders that came to the great plains from the east because remember of course by the late 17th century you had a lot of traders lots of them French who were trading with various tribes in the east and this actually had a huge knock-on effect in North America and actually a lot of the the famous Plains tribes that we think of today actually didn't start off as being Plains tribes at all but were driven there by others because a lot of these tribes they were trading with the French and they were trading for things like firearms and like iron weapons and this gave them a huge advantage over their traditional enemy tribes who they'd been making war with for centuries before that but they then both had traditional weapons but when these new weapons came in they certainly had a huge firepower that were they were able to use and they could expand their hunting ranges and kick out other tribes and so there was a whole procession of tribes that were driven westwards and one of these tribes actually was a an offshoot of the Shoshone tribe and they are the Comanche now they are very famous tribe today but actually they started off in the area of Wyoming around the start of the 17th century they were in Wyoming but then they became the target of these tribes pushing in from the east with their new firearms and iron weapons and they were driven into the mountains but actually at some point in the 17th century in fact we think it's around 1680 because we know that the the Pony who were in Nebraska at the time so a neighboring tribe they had horses by 1680 so probably the Comanche already had horses at this point they also got horses and and they're one of the most famous horse tribes in the world and actually and by 1705 that they were already in Texas at this point that was where their their range was the sort of eastern extent of their range and by 1705 all the Texas tribes had horses so that included the the Navajo for example of course the Comanche the Tonkawa the kados who were a forest-dwelling tribe even they all had horses by this point and actually the Comanche or some of the most famous riders probably the best riders that ever emerged from the North American Native American tribes that lived there no actually what you can see here is that you can see the Comanche kind of swinging down and at full gallop being on their horse and then using the horses cover - then fire arrows at these - who are attacking them and this is actually something that they were actually famous for doing and we see this in the words of a very famous painter of Native Americans called George Catlin and he says amongst their feats of riding there is one that has astonished me more than anything of the kind I have ever seen or expect to see in my life a stratagem of war learned and practiced by every young man in the tribe by which he is able to drop his body on the side of his horse at the instant he is passing effectively screened from his enemy's weapons as he lays in a horizontal position behind the body of his horse with his heel hanging over the horse's back in this wonderful condition he will hang whilst his horses at first speed carrying him with his bow and shield and also his long 14 feet in length so this is just an amazing tactic that you can see that the Comanche learned and they learnt this in a rate really a record time remember that the Apache started to get horses by the 1650s by sixty and eighty the Comanche probably already have horses and you have these great big tribes on the plains and from these various accounts we know that by around 1,700 all of the the tribes on the plains they they were all mounted they were all horse riding tribes you know we have the account from 1705 actually we can see how quickly this goes because by about 1750 Plains tribes in what's now Canada were hunting Buffalo on horseback and of course that means that they were there earlier because you don't just you see a horse you don't know how to ride it and you'll know that if you've ever tried to ride a horse it does take a bit of practice so clearly this is moving really quickly through the plains tribes and this would be a result of trading obviously of observing other tribes on horseback and kind of learning what you have to do with it as well as raiding there's a lot of violence involved at this time horse raiding became a staple of life on the plains another flash that we get actually that I wanted to cover because this is talking about a more northerly tribe so we've had the Comanche or Southern Plains tribe the Apache they that there are a Plains Apache band but they're more sort of in the sonora region they're more of a desert tribe than have Plains tribe but another of the flashes we get is from a tribe called the Blackfeet and the Blackfeet they live in the area of sort of Wyoming and Montana and Alberta in Canada they kind of straddle the the border and I'm mentioning them here because I actually visited the Blackfeet in their reservation when I was in America so I thought I'd give them an honourable mention and I have a few books on the Blackfeet and which will all be in the description as well as my other sources for this video and we know about the the Blackfeet that actually they referred to the time before horses as the dog days and this is because they in Native American tribes had dogs and they would use dogs to sort of pull things that the traveler is where they would put the the TPS for example and they would get the dogs to pull them but of course when the horse came the horse is much stronger than the dog so you can make it do a lot more as a pack animal so that's why they referred to the time before horses as the dog days which shows how much the horse changed their culture and actually there we know from a source in 1787 there was a I believe it was a an American or a British explorer and trader called Daniel Thompson who stayed with the Blackfeet and he was speaking to some of the oldest men in the village and they cast their minds back and they knew that in about 1730 they remembered a time where the tribe had not had her yet and they remember that they came they were under attack by the Shoshone tribe who suddenly arrived and they were riding on big dogs and these of course are horses and that gave the Shoshone a huge advantage in that the Blackfeet lost that battle but I'm really much like this story and it dates that the Blackfeet go and they ask that they're strong powerful friends so the Cree and the Assiniboine they ask these tribes to help them when they form a huge war band and and and the Cree actually have been trading with the French and so they have ten men with firearms and so you sort of see the the advance of the Spanish technology of the horse coming from the south you see the advancement from the east of the French with the firearms and so those two worlds meet and essentially it completely changed the plains way of life but essentially the Blackfeet very soon afterwards they were riding as well they became a mounted tribe they stole horses from the Shoshone and very soon they they were at war with people like the Sioux who were soon driven out onto the plains as well and they became a real horse tribe that this painting for example which I which I rather like it is then burning the the Buffalo ranges of the the crow who were another Plains tribe so the technology spread incredibly quickly and basically as soon as a tribe came under attack from another with horses it was only an assert an amount of time if they weren't completely exterminated or driven away that they would then steal horses in reprisal learn how to use them and become incredibly mounted and and and you know a lot more deadly so this is a really interesting topic I hope that other people find this interesting as well I've been reading empire of the summer moon which is by sea s Guin which is about the essentially the history of the Comanche tribe who were essentially the most powerful tribe on the southern plains so if you do find this interesting please do let me know in the comments below because I find this absolutely fascinating and and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it I'd like to also look at some of these tribes in more detail I've got a few more videos planned in this sort of series that I think I'll upload sort of kind of with a few videos in between over the next few weeks about the Comanche and some things about the history of Texas as well and the history of these other tribes potentially also about things like how they got firearms and iron weapons from the French and now this can completely changed the life on the planes but in the meantime I hope you've really enjoyed this video and please do check out the sponsor Magi on TV the return of the buffalo it's really interesting documentary I'd really recommend it and give me a thumbs up if you did enjoy it because that really helps me also if you're catching this live and this is a premiere or if you're getting you caught it fairly fairly soon after it's uploaded I should be in the discord there'll be a link to the discord in the description below so feel free to come and join us then alright everyone thank you very much for watching I've been Hilbert and this has been the horses

Channel: History With Hilbert

Views: 166,863

Keywords: Native American, Indians, American Indians, Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Comanche, Kiowa, Apache, Apache Tribe, Native American Horses, Mustangs, American West, GCSE History American West, How Did native Americans Get Horses, Spanish in North America, Conquest of Aztecs, Conquest of Incas, Conquistadors, Comanche History, Geronimo, Quannah Parker

Id: ahKEsLInFeg

Length: 18min 21sec (1101 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 15 2020