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

by John Hankins Wallace

After more than a hundred years of faithful service, of great popularity, and of profitable returns to their breeders, the little Narragansetts began to disappear, just as their ancestors had disappeared a century earlier. Rhode Island was no longer a frontier settlement, but had grown into a rich and prosperous State. Mere bridle paths through the woods had developed into broad, smooth highways, and wheeled vehicles had taken the place of the saddle. Under these changed conditions, the little pacer was no longer desirable or even tolerable as a harness horse, and he was supplanted by a larger and more stylish type of horse, better suited to the particular kind of work required of him. This was simply the “survival of the fittest,” considering the nature of the services required of the animal. The average height of the Narragansett was not over fourteen hands and one inch. His neck was not long, even for his size; he dropped rapidly on the croup, and his carriage was low, with nothing of elegance or style in his appearance. His mane and tail were heavy, his hind legs were crooked, his limbs and feet were of the very best, but aside from his great speed and the smoothness of his movements under the saddle, there was nothing very desirable or attractive about him. In a contest with a type of the harness horse, at least one hand higher, of high carriage and elegant appearance, there could only be one result, and that soon decided.

As in England, so in this country, the blood of the running horse soon worked the extermination of the pacer; not because it was stronger in reproducing itself, perhaps, but because it had the skill and fancy of the breeder enlisted in selecting and mating so as to make the expunging process complete. Only a few years ago a pacing horse could hardly be found in any of the older settled portions of the country, especially where running blood had become fashionable. He was literally banished to the frontiers of Canada, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and especially in the latter two States, where his blood is still appreciated and preserved for the luxurious saddle gaits which it alone transmits. In many individual cases he has shown wonderful power in meeting and overcoming antagonistic elements, but with the tide of running blood all against him, it was only a question of time as to how soon he would be totally submerged.

It is only a quarter of a century ago that the first volume of “Wallace’s American Trotting Register” was published, and then began the great task of bringing order out of chaos. In a historical introduction to that work, I inserted the following:

“So many pacing horses have got fast trotters, so many pacing mares have produced fast trotters, and so many pacers have themselves become fast trotters, and little or nothing known of their breeding, that I confess to a degree of embarrassment, from which no philosophy relieves me. If the facts were limited to a few individual cases we could ignore the phenomena altogether, but, while they are by no means universal, they are too common and apparent to be thus easily disposed of. I am not aware that any writer has ever brought this question to the attention of the public; much less, attempted its discussion and explanation. Indeed, it is possible that the observations of others may not sustain me in the prominence given these phenomena, but all will concede there are some cases coming under this head that are unexplained, and perhaps unexplainable. It is probable trotters from this pacing origin, and that appear to trot, only because their progenitors paced, will not prove reliable producers of trotters. Such an animal being in a great degree phenomenal, should not be too highly prized in the stud, till he has proved himself a trotting sire as well as a trotter.”

This very comprehensive little paragraph, put modestly and tentatively rather than positively, contained a germ of thought that is to-day exerting a very wide influence. So far as my knowledge goes, this was the first time in which the public attention had ever been called to the intimate relations between speed at the pace and speed at the trot. Some laughed at it as not practical, others sneered at it as a theoretical abstraction, a few gave it some thought, while the writers who never think left it severely alone. It required the cumulative experiences of nearly ten years before horsemen generally began to think about it, and then ten more before the germ had matured itself in the minds of all intelligent men who were able to divest themselves of their earlier prejudices. The great primary truth now stands out in high relief that the pace and the trot are simply two forms of one and the same gait, that lies midway between the walk and the gallop. At last the truth, dimly foreshadowed in the paragraph above, is received and accepted, in some form or other, almost if not quite universally. This fact and its acceptance are now shown in all the recorded experiences of racing, and especially in the origin and habits of action of many of the heads of trotting and pacing families, to which the reader is referred.

At the beginning of Chapter XIII. I have labored to make plain the proposition that the pace and the trot are simply two forms of one and the same gait. This is evident from the fact that this gait, in one form or the other, is the intermediate link between the walk and the gallop, and this is true among nearly all quadrupeds. I have also there shown, and I think beyond cavil, that the mechanism of the pace and the trot is the same, and especially in the fact that in both forms two legs are used as one leg. That is, if the two legs on the same side move together, we call it the pace, and if the diagonal legs move together we call it the trot. The rhythm is the same and the sound is the same, and by the ear no man can tell whether the movement is at the lateral or diagonal motion. In all the varieties of steps that a horse may be taught, and in all the methods of progression that he may naturally adopt, there is no step or movement in which he uses two legs as one except in the pace or the trot. From the place, therefore, which these two forms of the gait hold, indifferently, in animal movement, between the walk and the gallop; from the unity of action and result in the use of the same mechanism, and from the wide disparity between the mechanism of this gait and that of all other gaits in the action of the horse, we must conclude that the pace and the trot are one and the same gait.

Another evidence of the unity of the two forms of the trot is to be found in the great numbers of pacers that have been changed over to trotters and the astonishing readiness with which they took to the new form of action. To go back no further than the records sustain us, we find that the converted pacer Pelham was the first horse that ever trotted in 2:28. This was in 1849, and four years later the converted pacer Highland Maid trotted in 2:27. Twenty years later, Occident, another, trotted in 2:16¾. These were champions of their day, and when we come a little nearer we find that Maud S. was a pacer and Sunol was a pacer, although neither of them ever paced in public, and the fact that they ever paced at all was held as a kind of “home secret.” Since the days of Pelham, literally thousands of horses have been changed from pacers to trotters, and some hundreds have been changed from trotters to pacers successfully. Then there are quite a number, like Jay-Eye-See, 2:10 trotting and 2:06¼ pacing, that have made fast records at both gaits.

At one time the pacing horse Blue Bull stood at the head of all sires of trotters in this country, and it is not known or believed that he possessed a single drop of trotting blood. He was a very fast pacer and could do nothing else, and a large percentage of the mares bred to him were pacers, and practically all the others had more or less pacing blood, but his great roll of trotters in the 2:30 list was the wonder of all horsemen of that period. Certainly the average of the elements in his inheritance would place him very low in theory, but in practice he struck back to some ancestor that was strongly prepotent. The trouble in his case is practically the same as in all other pacing stallions—the inheritance traces back to a period more remote than any of the fast trotting stallions, but at intervals it has been neglected and not developed until it has become weak and uncertain from lack of use. The same may be said of the Copperbottoms, Corbeaus, Flaxtails, Hiatogas, Davy Crockets, Pilots, Rainbows, Redbucks, St. Clairs, Tippoos, and Tom Hals, as well as other heads of minor families that will be considered in their proper places.

The changes that have been wrought in the status of the pacer have been truly wonderful. Instead of being hidden away as an outcast and a disgrace to the family, condemned to a life of inferiority and drudgery, he has been brought out and exhibited to the public as a son and heir and the equal of the best. In looking back over the trotting records of twenty years ago, any one will be surprised to observe that at all the leading meetings of the whole country there were no pacing contests. Occasionally at the minor and local meetings of the middle Western States, a pacing contest would be given for a small purse, in which local and obscure horses only would be engaged. Very naturally the owners of pacing horses protested against this practical exclusion of their favorites from the trotting meetings, and employed all their energies in begging for admission. When they began to be really clamorous the managers of trotting tracks argued that there could be no profit to them in opening pacing contests, for nobody cared about seeing a pacing match, that the entries would not fill, and especially that there would be no betting, that, consequently, the pool-sellers would have nothing to divide with the management. As the receipts for pool-selling and all other gambling privileges were making the track managers rich, they were very slow about admitting an untried element that might diminish their profits. But gradually and patiently the pacers worked their way into the exclusive circle, and when they appeared everybody, especially in the Eastern States, was surprised to see what excellent horses they were and the terrific speed they showed. Instead of the typical pacer, as formed in the popular mind, with the low head, bull neck, low croup, hairy legs, exuberant mane and tail, and generally “Canuck” all over, that would stop at the end of the first half-mile, here was an array of horses that in make-up and gameness would average just as well as the same number of trotters. This was a revelation to great multitudes of people, and from that time forward the pacer had a fair show, on his merits. For hundreds of years the pacer, with very few exceptions, has been able to show a little higher rate of speed than the trotter. When Flora Temple smashed all records in 1859 by trotting in 2:19¾, Pocahontas had drawn a wagon, five years earlier, in 2:17½; and when Maud S. trotted in 1885 in 2:08¾, this beat all laterals as well as diagonals, except Johnson, who the year before had paced in 2:06¼. In 1894 Alix trotted a mile in 2:03¾, which stands the best at this writing, but the same year Robert J. paced in 2:01½, and John R. Gentry in 2:00½ in 1896.