The Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and Development

by John Hankins Wallace

Historians tell us that the military establishment of the city of Carthage alone, when on a peace footing, consisted of three hundred elephants, four thousand horses and forty thousand foot soldiers. When Hannibal started out to fight Rome, in the second Punic war, say B.C. 218, he had with him eighty thousand footmen and twelve thousand horsemen; and he left thirty-two thousand soldiers at home to guard his Spanish and his African dominions. With a proportional division of the home troops, he then had about seventeen thousand mounted men in his army. These were not war levies, but hardened and trained soldiers, and it is, therefore, not remarkable that he held nearly the whole of Spain in subjection, and practically all of Northwestern Africa. Polybius, the soldier historian, tells us that “his Numidian cavalry formed the strongest part of his army, and to their quick evolutions, their sudden retreat, and their rapid return to the charge, may be attributed the success of Hannibal in his great victories.” At an earlier period, we learn that in the organization of the Phœnician armies the numerous nomadic tribes were placed on their flanks, and wheeled about on unsaddled horses guided by a bridle of rushes.

At a very remote period there were two tribes in the interior of Spain, the Celtæ and Iberi, that were greatly distinguished for their love of independence and their bravery in defending it. The antiquarians have failed to give us any information as to what they were or whence they came. They were contemporaneous with some of the early colonies of the Phœnicians. Their tactics in battle seemed to have been to break the enemy’s ranks by a charge as cavalry, and to then dismount and fight on foot. They united as one people and called themselves Celtiberi. Where they got their horses, or whether they had them before the Phœnicians arrived, are questions that cannot be answered.

The Visigoths, or western Goths, overran Northern Italy, settled in Southern France and eventually passed over into Spain, where they established a dynasty that lasted over two centuries and until it was overthrown by the Saracens, A.D. 711. Roderick, the king of the Visigoths, went out to battle with the Saracens, arrayed in his most showy apparel, and mounted on his splendid chariot, made of ivory and set with precious stones. As the battle progressed he saw what he had good reason to believe was treachery on the part of one wing of his army and he alighted from his chariot, mounted his horse called Orelia and rode away while his soldiers were being butchered. He was the last of the Gothic dynasty. There had been a battle between the navies of the Saracens and the Goths, A.D. 680, fifty-one years earlier, in which the fleet of the Saracens had been entirely destroyed, and at that time the Saracens occupied the whole of the southern shore of the Mediterranean. The word “Moors,” as often used to designate the people of Northern Africa, is not well chosen, for it really belongs to but one of many different tribes of different names. The term “Saracen” anciently meant only an Arab born, but since the middle ages it has come to mean any and all adherents to the Mohammedan religion, in the usage of Christian people, and is particularly apposite when speaking of a number of tribes engaged in a common cause.

The people of Northern Africa were not negroes as we understand the word, but a mixture of different races. When the Phœnicians settled among them they were nomadic barbarians, possessing a country of great riches without knowing it. Under the tuition of their new masters they made great advances in many of the arts of peace and in all the arts of war. The Phœnician blood was liberally commingled with that of the natives. The blood carried the brains, and hence the beautiful structures that came from their hands and heads. No purely bred nomad ever could have conceived or constructed the Alhambra. The Phœnicians were refined and educated idolaters, as refinement and education were understood in their day, while the native people were literally barbarians.

The then recent and rapid spread of Mohammedanism among all the people of Northern Africa is, on its surface, one of the most remarkable facts in history. As a religion it served to unite, under the banner of the Crescent, all who accepted it, and guaranteed to all who fell in its defense immediate admission to paradise. All who did not accept it were enemies and only fit to perish by the sword of the Saracen. The founder of this religion died A.D. 632, and seventy-nine years afterward his followers, in Northern Africa alone, won their great victory over the Gothic dynasty of Spain. When once on Spanish soil they appeared to take root there and held possession of a large part of Spain for nearly nine hundred years.

Now that I have traversed the field of Spain and Northern Africa, from the first dawnings of history down to the beginning of the seventeenth century, in order to gather in all that history reveals touching the introduction and propagation of the horse in those regions, we are ready to summarize the facts that we have gleaned. At the periods of six hundred (when Carthage became independent of the mother country), four hundred, and two hundred years before the Christian era, there is undoubted evidence, over and over again, that Spain and Northern Africa were abundantly supplied with horses. Then, how is it possible that the hordes of Barbarians from Asia could have supplied these countries with horses, when they did not arrive there until several centuries after the supply is established to have existed? Take, if you please, the shortest of the periods suggested above, when Hannibal’s cavalry almost annihilated a great Roman army, two hundred and sixteen years before the Christian era. This was five hundred and seventy-two years before Arabia had any horses; and how can “the blind leaders of the blind” supply Hannibal’s cavalry with Arabian blood? When the people of Northern Africa, west of Egypt, fought their way into Spain it is not known that there was a single Arabian soldier nor a single Arabian horse in the whole army. They were all called Arabians, however, and that pretense has existed ever since.

The Phœnicians were the most remarkable people of all the early ages and indeed of any age. They belonged to the Aramaic or Semitic race; they settled in Canaan long before the days of Abraham and attained their greatest prosperity in the days of Solomon, when his fleets and those of his friend Hiram, King of Tyre, controlled and monopolized the commerce of the world. More than five hundred years before this alliance, however, they had established commercial relations with all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, and their ships were trading in the ports of every country from Egypt to the Pillars of Hercules and far beyond. There seems to be no doubt that they carried tin from Britain and amber from the Baltic, and, of course, they had to bring something to exchange for what they carried away. What did they bring? As amber did not enter into the necessary arts it is not probable the trade was very large, but tin was required by many nations in their everyday life, especially the Egyptians, who had no foreign commerce and were thus dependent upon the Phœnician merchants. We may conclude, therefore, that the trade in tin was large, and as there was no Phœnician colony in extreme southwestern Britain, the foreign traders would bring just what the Britons most needed. If they were already in possession of horses they would not need that kind of exchange, but if they were not in possession of horses, that would be just the kind of exchange they would want, and probably this was the source from which they obtained their supply. The question, however, of how or when our British ancestors obtained their first supply of horses has never been positively answered. That they had them in great abundance at the beginning of the Christian era is fully established by the experience of the Romans when they captured Britain. From their great numbers and the skill displayed in their management in battle, it cannot be doubted that they were there for many generations before the Roman armies came in contact with them. Many theories have been advanced as to how the horse may have reached Britain, but no one of them rests on so reasonable a basis of probability as that of the Phœnician traders. If from this source, which I am strongly disposed to believe was the true source, it must have been during the maritime supremacy of the Phœnicians and their colonies, and this would place the date several centuries before the Christian era. If we were able to reconstruct the original line of the migration of the early English horses, we would, probably, first find them in “the land of Togarmah” starting to market at Tyre, where they were exchanged for supplies needed in Armenia. There they were put on board one of the great “ships of Tarshish,” and when they next touched the land it was at one of the ports at the southwestern portion of England, where they were exchanged for tin and other products of the mines.

In addition to the argument furnished by this known course of trade between nations and peoples, in prehistoric times, we have an additional one in the natural perpetuation of racial qualities, extending through many centuries. In reply to some questions submitted to a friend of mine who was born in Western Persia, educated in this country, and then returned to the land of his nativity, I have replies to my questions bearing date of July, 1896. He is located at Oroomiah, not far from the modern line between Persia and Turkey, and in what may be considered the very center of ancient Armenia. He is not skilled in horse lore, but he uses horses a great deal and is a very intelligent observer. He says that the Persian horses have been greatly overrated and that the country is full of very ordinary horses. He says that they are all colors, with bays probably predominating. There is a great variety of mixed greys, shading into white, and a few that are dappled. Then there are chestnuts, sorrels, “mouse-color” (duns), and not many blacks. They are small, as a rule, and a harness of small size from this country has to be cut down for them. From this I infer that they are generally under fourteen hands. On the whole the horses are nicely shaped, have slender, clean limbs, small ears, and carry the head and tail well up. As a rule they are great stumblers. With regard to gaits he says that stress is laid on a rapid walk—a half walk and half trot. In this country we would call it the “running walk” that may be kept up for days in succession. In speaking of the pace, my correspondent says: “There are some horses trained to pace, while some pick it up naturally, that is, are born pacers. The greater number are natural pacers. Now and then one will find a rapid pacer, but commonly the pace is a five or six miles an hour gait. There are some that single-foot naturally, and from birth.”

He then says horses are not bred with any care. They are turned loose in herds and the breeding is such as would naturally occur.

It will be observed that my Persian friend speaks of the different colors “of grey, shading into white,” which suggests a possible descent from the famous breed of white Nissæan horses kept by the great Darius and other Medo-Persian monarchs for racing purposes. But the striking feature in this description of the horses of Persia, or more properly, of ancient Armenia, of this day, is the fact that they are of the same size and color and habits of action as the horses of Britain when first visited by the Romans, as well as when they were more minutely described twelve hundred years later, and as they were at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and as they still were at the middle of the eighteenth century. As evidence on these points reference is made to the chapters on horses of the colonial period that will follow in their place. In ancient Armenia, as with all pastoral people of the early ages, horses were turned out to run in herds and literally left to Mr. Darwin’s law of “natural selection and the survival of the fittest.” So it was in Britain to a great extent, until the eighteenth century, and so it was in the American colonies until fifty years later; hence the same types and characteristics prevailed and were perpetuated in all these countries.