trade with the Utahs. We have horses, mules, and sheep, more than we want. We heard that you wanted beaver skins. The beavers in our country are eating up our corn. All our rivers are full of them. Their dams back up the water in the rivers all along their course from the mountains to the Big water. Come over among us and you shall have as many beaver skins as you want.” Turning round and pointing to the Spaniards, in [a] most contemptuous manner and with a scornful look he said, “What can you get from these? They have nothing to trade with you. They have nothing but a few poor horses and mules, a little puncha, and a little tola (tobacco and corn meal porridge) not fit for any body to use. They are poor – too poor for you to trade with. Come among the Utahs if you wish to trade with profit. Look at our horses here. Have the Spaniards any such horses? No, they are too poor. Such as these we have in our country by the thousand, and also cattle, sheep, and mules. These Spaniards,” said he, turning and pointing his finger at them in a style of contempt which John Randolph would have envied, “what are they? What have they? They won’t even give us two loads of powder and lead for a beaver skin, and for a good reason they have not as much as they want themselves. They have nothing that you want. We have every thing that they have, and many things that they have not.” Here a Spaniard cried out: “You have no money.” Like a true stump orator the Utah replied, “and you have very little. You are depicca.” In other words you are poor miserable devils and we are the true capitalists of the country. With this and much more of the same purport, he concluded his harangue, which was delivered in the most independent and lordly manner possible. He looked like a King upbraiding his subjects for being poor, when they might be rich, and his whole conduct seemed to me like bearding a wild beast in his den. The “talk” being had, Lechat produced the calama or pipe, and we smoked together in the manner of the Indians. I sent to my store and procured six plugs of tobacco and some handkerchiefs, which I presented to him and his company, telling them when they smoked the tobacco with their Chiefs to remember the Americans, and treat all who visited their country from mine as they would their own brothers. The council now broke up and the Chief, reiterating his invitations to me to visit his country, mounted his noble steed, and with his company rode out of the city, singing and displaying the handkerchiefs I had presented them, from the ends of their lances as standards. They departed without the least show of respect for the Spaniards, but rather with a strong demonstration on the part of Lechat of contempt for them…
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John C. Ewers, “Horse Breeding”
The adoption of horses by Indians required large cultural changes. As they turned this new organism to their own use, they also changed their cultures and their ways of interacting with nature. A common misconception is that horses “ran wild” for the most part, and that some of these might have been caught and tamed by Indians, who otherwise had no horses unless they stole them from their enemies. Although some Indians did specialize in catching wild horses, and horse theft was a common way of gaining new animals, breeding horses from Indian herds was also widespread. In fact, the propagation of the horse throughout the Americas came about in part because Indians developed ways of breeding and rearing horses. In Montana, horses could not survive the winters without Indian caretakers to feed them and provide minimal shelter. In the 1950s, anthropologist John C. Ewers investigated traditions of horsecraft among the Blackfoot Indians of the northern Great Plains. Many of the men he interviewed were Piegan, a sub-tribe of the once-powerful Blackfoot Confederacy. Some of them had known the great horse trainers, horse catchers, and horse doctors of the 1850s–70s. What steps did Blackfoot horsemen take to differentiate their horses from their neighbors’ animals? How did they control horse breeding to maintain the best horse lines in their possession?
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(Reprinted from The Horse in Blackfoot Indian Culture. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1955.)
Important Role of Horse Breeding
So much emphasis has been given in the literature to the more exciting topic of horse raiding as a source of Plains Indian wealth in horses that the subject of breeding horses has been neglected. In reality animals bred from their own herds comprised a goodly proportion of the horses owned by the Blackfoot in nineteenth-century buffalo days. If the increase of the Indians’ herds through breeding was not as great as that achieved by modern stockmen, we must remember that their herds were periodically reduced by destructive winter storms, diseases, animal predators, and other causes, as well as by theft on the part of enemy raiders. Had it not been for the breeding of their own herds, Blackfoot horse population surely would have shown a steady decrease during nineteenth-century buffalo days.
Blackfoot men differed markedly in the attention they gave to horse breeding and in the success they achieved in building up their herds thereby. It is noteworthy that those Piegan who were named by my informants as owners of the largest herds were also remembered as men who were especially successful in breeding horses. Stingy, the blind man, could not participate in horse raids, but he became one of the wealthiest Piegan horse owners through his skill in raising horses. Many Horses and Many-White-Horses were mentioned frequently in informants’ discussions of breeding practices. The Blackfoot believed that those men who were very successful in raising horses possessed a secret power that insured their success in that enterprise.
Blackfoot efforts in breeding generally were directed toward producing one or more of three qualities in colts. These were (1) a certain color, (2) large size, and (3) swiftness of foot. Although many of their methods hardly can be considered scientific, they bear evidence of Blackfoot concern with problems of horse breeding.
Selection of Studs
There was little or no effort to mate certain stallions with selected mares. The studs were permitted to mate with any mare in a man’s herd. However, the most successful breeders were careful in the choice of their stallions. A man who desired to raise colts of a certain color chose a stallion of that color for a stud. If he wished for large colts he selected a stallion of greater than average size. If he wanted fast animals above all else, he employed a stallion of demonstrated swiftness. Generally men with small herds possessed a single stallion. Owners of large herds kept four or more stallions. Usually all other males were castrated. The Blackfoot recognized that some stallions were poor breeders. If, after a period of trial, a stallion failed to produce colts in the number or quality desired, a man who could afford to do so replaced that stud with another one.
Three Calf, whose father owned a fine herd of 40 pinto horses, said his father had but one stallion, a large, black pinto, bred from his own herd. Many Horses owned a number of stallions, pintos of several varieties, which he used for no other purpose than breeding and on which he lavished great care. His stallions were never broken to the saddle. Stingy, who bred for size, used a large horse for a stud. He rode it, and kept it picketed at night in the spring breeding season to prevent other Indians from making use of it. When colts dropped, he herded them with the mares and colts. The Piegan sometimes called Stingy “White Man,” because he raised such large horses. Other breeders selected their stallions for swiftness regardless of their size or coloring. All careful breeders took pains to obtain the best horses they could get of the type they most desired for studs. However, most men were too poor or too careless to devote much thought to stallion selection. They were happy just to possess a stallion. “That is why there were so many scrub, no good horses around.”
If a man owned one or more mares but no stallion he might go to his neighbor’s herd at night and “borrow” his stud to mate with his own mare, without the knowledge of the stallion’s owner. This is said to have been a rather common practice.
Careful breeders also took pains to prevent old, broken-down stallions of their neighbors from mingling with their mares. Where so many horse herds were pastured in the neighborhood of a camp this was a difficult task. However, boys caring for the herds of cautious owners were instructed to keep their herds separate in breeding season
