CORONADO

Everything I know about the horse is out of an exhibit I saw at the Smithsonian celebrating the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America. It’s all in a book called “Seeds of Change.” So, and I’m quoting, because there are a lot of fancy words and I don’t carry them around on the tip of my tongue. So:

Herman J. Viola, Carolyn Margolis, eds., Seeds of Change: a quincentennial commemoration, (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991),p. 105:

"Ten thousand years before [Columbus, the horse] had actually existed [in America. But] with the coming of Paleo-Indian hunters and with the changes in climate and flora associated with the terminal Pleistocene megafaunal extinction, endemic American horses also became extinct.

"The horse survived, however, on the Siberian side of the Bering Strait, and ranged through all the steppe and grassland regions of Asia and Europe.

[It was] from the wild horse population of the Volga basin in eastern Europe … some six thousand years ago, the first ancestors of the domestic horse [were captured].

SINE

Terracotta Army had horses. Two? thousand years ago?

AURA

I’d like to see that. I’ve heard of it.

CORONADO

Tell me about that too sometime. - Anyway, and I’m still quoting:

PP. 82 – 83:

Columbus brought horses … across the Atlantic in 1493. Many of these large animals, awkward to care for and difficult to feed properly on shipboard, died during the crossings, and the West Indian environment was not ideal for them; but by 1501 there were twenty or thirty on the island of Haiti – Dominican Republic, and two years later no fewer than sixty or seventy. Horses, good ones, were available when the conquistadores set off for the mainland.

P. 106

Soldier and historian Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a conquistador who served under Cortés, recorded the name, pedigree, color, sex, and qualities of every one of the horses who came to Mexico in 1519. Such recognition was not misplaced. The first of their species to set hoof on the North American continent in ten thousand years, all had been bred in the Caribbean from stock originally brought by Columbus on his second voyage. Later, Cortés imported more horses from the islands to aid in his military exploits, and other conquistadores followed his example.

P. 109

[Horses came to Florida] ... with Ponce de León in 1521, followed soon by other expeditions, including that of Hernando de Soto, who may have brought as many as two hundred to Florida in 1539 ...

The horse was a whole new thing to the American Indian. Cortes’ soldier Bernal Diaz said:

P. 34

[When we first landed in Mexico,] we noticed that many of the strongest [Indian warriors] among them [the Tlaxcalans, who were the Indians that, once Cortez defeated them, would provide Cortez with 20,000 troops for the overthrow of the Aztecs, they], crowded together to lay hands on a horse. It seemed the Tlaxalans thought these horses and riders were one great and terrifying creature, and they hoped to capture and sacrifice it.

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