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Short Overview of Colonial Spanish Horse History Written by Vickie Ives Speir, owner of Karma Farms Colonial Spanish Horse is a term coined in recent times by Dr. Phil Sponenberg to designate a number of antique American strains that trace to stock brought to the Americas in the small wooden boats of the Spanish colonization period. The Spanish brought early Andalusians, Ginetes, Sorraias, perhaps even Garrano-type ponies and various mixtures of these equine types then found in Spain. Columbus is said to have complained to King Ferdinand that on his second voyage, he had paid for good horses, only to find that in his absence on the docks, peasant horses had been loaded onto his ships rather than the better stock for which he had paid. This may have been a lucky thing for the Spanish in some ways, for the smaller hardy peasant stock probably had a higher survival rate during the voyages to the Americas than the larger and higher bred Andalusians. This Spanish stock predates the horses brought by the English, French, Dutch, and other equine lines that were to follow by over a century. Indeed, when Lewis and Clark crossed the Rocky Mountains shortly after 1800, they traded for horses with the Snake Indians who were already well-mounted. Much has been made of Indians taming wild horses, but in the beginning, Indian owned herds were actually the main source of the first American feral horses. Certainly some horses escaped Spanish settlements, but the Indians acquired horses from the Spanish long before wild herds roamed the West. The first tribal horses were likely liberated by escaping Indian people who had been forced to serve the Spanish as herders. In 1621 the viceroy allowed the Spanish settlers of New Mexico to employ Pueblo converts as herders. Forced into servitude by the Europeans, the tribal people learned the use of horses quickly. Who is surprised that they would then use their new transportation to escape, and, given the opportunity, take as many of the Magic Dogs with them as they could drive? Large scale revolts soon followed, beginning with the Pueblo Revolt against the Spanish settlement of Juan Onate near present day Albuquerque in 1680. Spanish horses were then bred by the tribes and very actively traded, spreading the Spanish horse northward and eastward across the continent as Pueblo traded with Apache and Navajo and Shoshone with Nez Perce and Cayuse and Blackfoot. By 1717 Derbanne noted that East Texas Caddo were driving horses to the Illinois country to trade. Some tribes excelled as early breeders. The Chickasaw Horse was considered the equal of the blooded horses from England that began to arrive about 1750. Indian agent Edmund Atkins noted in his 1755 report on the Appalachian Indian frontier that the Chickasaw had the finest breed of horses in North America. The few remaining Choctaw and Cherokee horses we have left today are probably our closest living link to these excellent Chickasaw horses. It is interesting to note that these same Chickasaw horses are the source for most American gaited breeds, and laterally gaited horses are fairly common in today's remaining Choctaw and Cherokee horses. As America moved from the colonial period into the settling of the frontier, the Colonial Spanish Horse served both white settlers and tribal people well. They were not well-suited to heavy work in collars because of their light weight and deeply angled shoulders. But in all other work on the frontier from light harness to cattle driving, they excelled. The Spanish ponies gathered the longhorns and drove them to Northern markets from Texas. They hunted buffalo, mounted the Pony Express, and served in the cavalry. As both Indian mounts and cowponies, they were recorded at their work by Remington, Russell, and other chroniclers of the period who painted what they had personally seen. Their endurance qualities were legendary well before Frank Hopkins threw a leg across the back of a Spanish pony. Colonel Richard I. Dodge recorded in his memoirs, Our Wild Indians: Thirty-Three Years Personal Experience Among the Red Men of the Great West, printed in 1886, a race between three Thoroughbred race horses and a Comanche pony that took place before the Civil War. The race horses were owned by officers at Fort Chadbourne, north of San Angelo, Texas. It was the practice of the officers to race the least fast of their horses first, the next fastest second and their best race horse last when the bets were highest. Mu-la-que-top and his band of Comanches were camped nearby and were challenged to race. To the surprise of the soldiers, the Comanche horse, a miserable sheep of a pony, won. The bets were doubled and in less than an hour the same Comanche pony faced the second fastest of the race horses and was again victorious. Determined to recoup their dollars, the officers brought forth their champion, a mare of famed Lexington breeding that regularly beat the other two by at least forty yards in a fourteen hundred yard dash. When the final race began the Comanche rider gave whoop and threw away the club he had used to encourage his mount in the previous races and easily took the lead. Fifty yards from the finish line, the Comanche swung his leg around and rode backward, making faces at the rider of the Thoroughbred over his galloping pony's tail as his Spanish mount flashed over the line. Too late the officers learned that this same pony had just won over six hundred ponies from the Kickapoo. Dodge once offered an express rider forty dollars for his mount, and the man looked up in surprise and replied that the price was $600, a princely sum for a horse in that day. Dodge later learned that the pony carried mail between El Paso and Chihuahua, about 300 miles each way. The rider once made the trip on three consecutive nights and earned $100 per trip. He had been making the journey weekly for six months, and this work had not diminished the fire or flesh of that wonderful pony. So it was not that unusual for Frank Hopkins to have selected Indian ponies for his endurance horses. "You can't beat mustang intelligence in the entire equine race," Hopkins tells us. His White-y line of endurance mustangs were bred from a 700-pound Sioux mare and an equally tough pinto Apache stallion. Joe, Hopkins' mount for the Galveston, Texas to Rutland, Vermont race in 1886, was a buckskin caught wild in Wyoming. Though nothing left today is known to trace to Hopkins horses, the mettle of these Indian ponies continues. Several tribes as well as white and Hispanic conservators salvaged a remnant of America's First True Horse just as the wild ones were being killed off or crossbred to moderns. By the turn of the century few wild horses remained of Spanish type. The Great Depression and the advent of the automobile, the pickup, and farm machinery nearly spelled the end of the few that were left on public lands. Unable to feed extra mouths and unwilling to destroy horses no longer needed on the ranches, ranchers, farmers, and other horse owners set their now-modern blooded equines free on public lands where they polluted the small amount of true Colonial Spanish blood left there. But a few very isolated ranges protected the Spanish character of their feral horses, and a few far-sighted groups and individuals saw to it that real Spanish ponies remained. The best known of these conservators was Robert F. Brislawn, who worked for the Topographical Branch of the U.S. Geological Survey starting about 1911. The Wyoming Kid as Old Bob loved to call himself had quickly found that only the sure-footed Indian ponies that he called Barbs could handle the rigors of terrain and climate that he had to deal with in the mountainous country where his work carried him. As colorful as the ponies he fought to save, Bob Brislawn collected horses from the Crow Reservation, the Bookcliffs of Utah, and from New Mexico and Oklahoma, and took the best to his Cayuse Ranch in Oshoto, Wyoming where his family continues to raise some of the world's finest Mustangs today. His brother Ferdinand also preserved the Spanish ponies, especially the highly colored Medicine Hats. Other important conservators include the Weldon McKinley family of Los Lunas, New Mexico; Ilo Belsky, an Eli, Nebraska cattleman who loved the Spanish cowponies and bred them at his Phantom Valley Ranch; and Gilbert H. Jones of Finley, Oklahoma—these are among the most widely studied conservators. In 1957 the first Colonial Spanish Horse association, the Spanish Mustang Registry, was established, led by the Brislawns, Dr. Lawrence P. Richards, and others. But dissention among the founders led Gilbert Jones and his faction to break off with the Spanish Mustang Registry and form the Southwest Spanish Mustang Association, primarily because of a decision by SMR to exclude horses with tobiano paint coloring. Many tribal lines, including the Choctaw and Cherokee, carry the tobiano color, and Gilbert's group realized how important to the preservation of America's First Horse these tribal lines were. Other registries were to follow, scattering the few remaining Colonial Spanish horses into a number of small registries. With Jeff Edwards, Bob Brislawn also formed another registry, The Horse of the Americas, to try to classify and unify the world of the Colonial Spanish Horse. But Old Bob died; Jeff Edwards contracted cancer, and HOA was dormant until Spanish Mustang aficionado and screenwriter John Fusco purchased it along with the last of the HOA herd and sent both registry and horses to Texas where they joined the original HOA herd at Karma Farms. Today HOA registers all 15 known remaining strains of the Colonial Spanish Horse and provides a forum for all breeders and conservators of Americas First Horse. |
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this site sponsored by The Horse of the Americas Registry, & IRAM - the Institute of Range and the American Mustang email:info@frankhopkins.com |
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