North Carolina was first permanently settled by a colony from Virginia, led by Roger Green, July, 1653. For some years previous to this it had been the refuge of Quakers and others fleeing from the persecutions and proscriptions that prevailed in Virginia at that time, against all who did not conform to the ritual of the English church. These refugees and colonists took their horses and all they had with them, and as this was but a few years before there was an overproduction of horses in Virginia, and great droves were running wild without an owner, we may conclude they cost but little and that they spread rapidly in the new colony. As we thus know whence they came, we necessarily know what they were in size and gait, and we need not trace them any further.
South Carolina received her colonial charter in 1663, and the earliest newspaper that I have found was for the year 1744, from the advertisements in which I have extracted the following data as to size and gait. In the first four and the last four months of the South Carolina Gazette for 1744 I find thirty horses advertised as strayed or stolen, in which the size is given, and they average within a small fraction of an inch of thirteen and one-half hands, and of this number three are given as fifteen hands, which was considered, in that day, a large horse. Out of this number the gait is given in only twelve cases, ten of which were pacers, one paced and trotted, and one trotted only. The foundation horse stock of South Carolina was obtained chiefly, if not wholly, from Virginia, and the practice of branding and turning out, to roam at large, prevailed everywhere.
In the issues of the Gazette for this year (1744) I find but one advertisement of a stallion for public service, and he is called the “famous racing horse named Roger,” and is advertised as a great, race horse, but there is no attempt to give a pedigree or to claim that he possessed any blood that was not the inheritance of all others. Another advertisement is a lengthy challenge from Joseph Butler to run his gelding Chestnut against any horse, mare or gelding for five hundred or one thousand pounds “inch and weight,” the lowest horse carrying thirteen stone. No mention or reference is made to his blood, and from these two facts we may reasonably infer that at that time there were no strains of blood, known to the Carolinians, specially bred to run. The distance to be run is not definitely mentioned, but it was on a road from one point to another, and I suppose it was about two and a half, or possibly three miles. This was three years before the first English race horse was imported into Virginia. It has been represented that an old gentleman, whose name is forgotten, imported into South Carolina a number of English race horses at a period long anterior to this, but that claim has never been in a shape that placed it above very grave suspicion and doubt; and the claim accompanying it, in the way of apology, that the old man would never allow any of his horses to race, did not improve its credibility. From the advertisements just referred to, it seems evident that there was no distinctively English running blood in the colony till after this date.
This review of the horses of the colonial period embraces all that I have been able to glean of the character, qualifications, size and habit of action of the earliest importations and their descendants. Their diminutive size will be a surprise to my readers as it has been to me, and the overwhelming ratio of pacers to trotters will be a still greater surprise. The importance of increasing the size by judicious selections of the largest seems to have been ever present to the minds of the colonists, but not much could be accomplished in that direction, under the system prevalent everywhere of roaming at large. The little pacers were great saddle horses, and down to the days of good roads and wheeled vehicles they were deemed indispensable. That there were race horses among them at the running, pacing and trotting gaits there is indisputable evidence, covering about a hundred years of the colonial period, but there is no record of the rate of speed. The pacer was the favorite and fashionable horse of that period, and after something has been said about the Canadian horse we will take up his history and treat it with that fullness its importance demands.
CHAPTER XII.
EARLY HORSE HISTORY—CANADA.
Settlement and capture of Port Royal—Early plantations—First French horses brought over 1665—Possibly illicit trading—Sire of “Old Tippoo”—His history—“Scape Goat” and his descendants—Horses of the Maritime Provinces.
Before taking up the two provinces of the Dominion—Quebec and Ontario—to which reference is made in this volume as “Canada,” there is an incident in the history of Nova Scotia, full of sadness, that I cannot pass over without mention. The French made a settlement here in 1602, and named the country New France. The settlement to which I refer was at Port Royal, afterward named Annapolis by the English. This seems to have been a thrifty and flourishing little plantation, far removed from all outside associations, except the savages of the forests, with whom they lived in peace. The first horses brought to North America were owned and bred by the people of Port Royal. In November, 1613, Captain Argall, of Virginia, organized a plundering expedition, and having learned of the defenseless condition of Port Royal from Captain John Smith, he sailed up there with two or three ships, captured the place and carried away horses, cattle, sheep, wheat, farming utensils, and indeed everything their ships would carry, and then sailed away to Virginia. This raid was without authority or orders, but it was winked at by the officials, and forthwith a second raid was made by Argall, and all that had been left in the first was carried away in the second, as well as some of the inhabitants.
The pacer of Canada, generally believed to be of French origin, has long been an object of diligent investigation, without reaching any satisfactory results. Again and again I have gone over the first half-century of the history of the French plantations on the St. Lawrence; examining everything in the English language that held out any hope of throwing light upon the question, but nothing was revealed. The trouble was that my search stopped a little short of the date when the first horses arrived. The management of the affairs of the plantations on the St. Lawrence being in a company located in France, there was a lack of vigor, not much growth, and still less profits to the projectors of the colony. The energies of the people seemed to be directed almost wholly to collecting and trading in peltry instead of building up a commonwealth from the productions of the soil. For half a century these primitive people lived without horses. Their farms, if they could be called farms, all had a frontage on the water, running back in narrow strips to the highlands. They did their plowing with cattle and their canoes supplied the place of the saddle horse, the family carriage and the lumber wagon to carry the scanty surplus of their little farms to market. At last the company in France, holding direction and control, got out of the way, and the king of France assumed direct authority over the affairs of the plantation. On June 30, 1665, the Marquis de Tracy arrived at Quebec, as viceroy, with a numerous suite of retainers and a regiment of French soldiers. Two months later a large fleet arrived bringing many colonists, embracing artisans, farmers, peasants, etc., with their families, and a good number of horses, the first that had ever been seen on the St. Lawrence. There is a tradition that a horse had been sent over to the governor in 1642, but it is probable he was lost on the voyage, as the older people of the colony had no recollection or knowledge of any such animal. These colonists came from the ancient province of Picardy, not now to be found on the modern maps of France, but it lay on the English Channel in the extreme northwest of France. As it is expressly stated that these colonists came from Picardy, it is fair to conclude that the horses came from that portion of the kingdom also. At this period in history there had been no wars between France and England for many years, and commercial as well as social intercourse had long been cultivated between the people on both sides of the channel. We know but little of the early horse history of France, but in our own time we know that France has been largely benefited by the diffusion of the English blood among her horse stock, so we may conclude that if a man in Kent had a horse that a man in Picardy wanted, he very soon got him in the way of legitimate trade. I think, therefore, it is safe to conclude that the horse stock of Northwestern France and the horse stock of England were very much the same in appearance, action and blood. On this basis of reasoning, which involves no improbabilities, we may conclude that the same proportion of the horses from Picardy were natural pacers.