Later, in the bloody wars of Mexico and Peru, the war-horses, whose riders were slain, escaped and reproduced themselves rapidly in the great and luxurious plains, well provided with food and water and in a climate especially suited to them.
De Soto had horsemen with him on his expedition when he discovered the Mississippi River, and doubtless many of the horses were left behind to run wild when the survivors of that disastrous expedition, without their leader, returned in rough boats and rafts.
It is thought by some investigators that the horses found by Cabot in La Plata in 1530 could not have been imported, but this is highly improbable. There is practically no doubt but that the wild horse of America is a direct descendant of the Spanish horse, and therefore of the selfsame blood, which later made the thoroughbred in England, and the trotter in the United States, the fleetest and most valuable of their race.
The first importation of horses into what is now the United States was in 1527 by Cabeza de Vaca; these, forty-two in number, were brought to Florida, but through accident, disease, and ill-usage, all of them died.
The next importation was by De Soto from Spain, and these no doubt were the progenitors of our wild horses of the West and Southwest.
In 1625, the Honorable Pieter Evertsen Hueft agreed to ship, and did ship, to Manhattan Island, one hundred head of cattle, including a certain number of stallions and mares. These horses were of the Flanders breed, from which descended the Conestoga horse, afterwards justly prized in Pennsylvania.
The first horses came to Massachusetts probably in 1629. At any rate, we know that Governor Winthrop, writing on board the Arabella, at Cowes, March 28, 1630, says: "We are in all our eleven ships about seven hundred persons and 240 cows and about sixty horses."
English horses were landed at Jamestown, Virginia, as early as 1609, and there is a tradition that the first horse to land in Canada was brought to Tadousac in 1647.
As early as 1641-2 we read of horses and carts crossing Boston harbor on the ice, so severe was the winter of that year. In 1636, when the Reverend Thomas Hooker and his followers left the colony to found Hartford, Mrs. Hooker, so a letter of that date reads, was carried in a horse-litter. But the diligence and care of these first settlers in New England is nowhere more clearly shown, than by the fact that already, in 1640, Governor Winthrop writes of shipping eighty horses from Boston to the Barbadoes. Hardly had they imported horses for themselves before they were breeding them and shipping them to other parts of the world.
These horses were not of very valuable stock. As early as 1650 a young mare with her second or third foal was valued at about $60; a five or six year old stallion at about $55—this in Manhattan. In New England, where cattle were especially abundant, horses were worth about one-third less.