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

by John Hankins Wallace

The most striking fact in the history of the pacing habit of action is its great antiquity. The average Englishman of to-day and the average American of twenty years ago have been united in insisting with the greatest vehemence that the pace is not a natural but an acquired gait, resulting from some injury or malformation. One of the great leaders on that side of the discussion called it “structural incongruity” arising from the breeding of the “thoroughbred” horse on the “slab-sided” mares of the West and South, and thought the idea was unanswerable, but never cited any instances to prove it. Now, the truth is, the earliest unquestioned evidence we have that horses paced is that furnished by the chisel of Phidias when he sculptured the horses on the frieze of the Parthenon at Athens, and that is two thousand three hundred and thirty-three years old. From the period when the sons of Japheth turned their attention to horse-breeding on the fruitful plains and valleys in the regions of the mountains of Ararat down to this culmination of Greek art, I have not been able to find any contemporaneous evidence of the existence of the lateral habit of action; but as we know it existed more than two thousand years ago, we are justified in concluding that among the original bands of horses, in their original habitat, pacers as well as trotters abounded. From the erection of the Parthenon in Athens, the occupation of Britain by the Romans, and through all the centuries down to the plantation of the colonies in this country, we have mountains of indisputable evidence of the antiquity of the pacer. In its place this topic will be quite fully discussed.

The relation which the pacer bears to the American Trotting Horse has for twenty-five years been a topic of much senseless discussion. In the historical sketch which served as an introduction to the first volume of the “American Trotting Register,” the attention of the breeding public was first called to this question, in a form that was somewhat tentative, and much less didactic than my judgment suggested, but it served as an introduction to the study of the question which it foreshadowed. From this initial paragraph grew the discussion that has been going on ever since, much of which has been the merest jargon. The essential oneness of the trot and the pace has been clearly demonstrated by thousands of experiences. The trotting inheritance that produces the fast trotter also produces the fast pacer; and the pacing inheritance that produces the fast pacer also produces the fast trotter. The trotting-bred John R. Gentry, with his pacing record of a mile in two minutes and one-half a second, is but a single instance of very many of the same character. The fastest harness racers in the world are the pacers, and it seems to make no difference whether the inheritance of speed comes from the trotter or the pacer. The subject of the pacer in his diversified historical relations to the American trotter will be found in different portions of this work, and all tending to show the significant fact that he is again rapidly attaining the position of honor among the equine race which he maintained for so many centuries in the far-distant past.

Early in this century the American Saddle Horse, the real saddle horse of all time, past and present, began to vanish from sight. Improved roads and wheeled vehicles superseded him, in great measure, long before the days of railroads. For business and travel he was the sole dependence of our forefathers for two hundred years, and in point of health it is a great misfortune that he has gone so completely out of use. The horse that cannot take the “saddle gaits” and carry his rider without discomfort or fatigue is not a saddle horse. Springing up and down at every revolution of the horse is not riding for pleasure, but to avoid punishment and a torpid liver. In the chapter devoted to his description, origin, and breeding, it will be clearly shown that he is indebted to his pacing ancestry of the past centuries for his saddle gaits. As the mere matter of great speed cuts no figure in the qualifications of a saddle horse there is a wide field here for the production of style and beauty in the breeder’s art. The aims of a goodly number of intelligent breeders are now moving in this direction, and with the foundations so well laid as they now are, we can look forward to a grand superstructure. As the breeder of speed at the trot goes to the horse that can do it himself, and as the breeder of speed at the gallop goes to the horse that can beat all the others, so the breeder of the saddler will go to the handsomest and best of all his tribe, and when we reach the horse that is perfect in symmetry, style, quality, and disposition, he will be a saddle horse and no questions will be asked about what particular combinations of blood he may possess. He will be strictly eclectic, with the one exception of the inheritance of gait, and he will be the result of wise choosing in his size and structure, and of skillful handling in his disposition and manners.

The Wild Horse of the plains and pampas of North and South America was at one time an object of great interest and curiosity with all our people. No schoolboy of sixty or seventy years ago knew any lesson in his geography so well as the one which pictured and described the millions of wild horses that roamed over the Western plains. In the field of imagination and exaggerated fiction he was a fairly good second to the Arabian—both arrant humbugs, at least so far as their merits have been tested. In the past, the question has sometimes been asked, tentatively, whether the horse may not have been indigenous on this continent? The paleontologists have undertaken to answer this question in the affirmative and have produced the bones of what they call the horse to prove it. This “horse” is scant fifteen inches high and he has three, four or five toes on each foot. These toes resemble “claws” more than anything else. They tell us these little animals flourished over two millions of years before man was placed on the earth, and that they are now found imbedded in the solid rock, say two hundred feet below the general surface. The outline drawing of horses on works supposed to have been erected by a prehistoric and lost race, and also the linguistic question as to whether any of the oldest Indian tribes had any word representing the horse, will be fully considered, with that presented by the paleontologists, in the chapter devoted to the Wild Horse. Too much prominence has been given to the horses of Cortez in his conquest of Mexico, as the progenitors of the American wild horse. He had very few horses in his command, and it is very doubtful whether any of them escaped the slaughter of battle and found a home in the wilderness. The horses in the army of the unfortunate Ferdinand De Soto, that were abandoned on the confines of Texas, after his death, became the progenitors of all the wild horses of North America.

The remarkable pre-eminence to which Messenger attained as the founder of a great race of trotters, in his own right and by his own power, and more especially as he was the only English-imported running horse that ever showed any tendency whatever in that direction, the study of Messenger’s lineage becomes a question of very great interest and value to all students of trotting history. His sire, Mambrino, was a great race horse, and was distinguished above all others of his generation, or indeed of any other generation, before or since, as the progenitor of a tribe of coach horses of great excellence and value. In addition to this, the evidence seems to be conclusive that he had a natural and undeveloped trotting step that far surpassed that of all other running horses of his day. His sire, Engineer, was notoriously short on the side of his dam, and his grandsire, Sampson, was a half-breed of great size and bone, and ran some winning races, in the best of company, for that day.

The history of Messenger himself is still clouded in mystery, and the blood he inherited from his dam remains hopelessly unknown. The identity of his importer and owner has never been established, which of itself throws a suspicion upon the pedigree that is said to have come with him. He ran several races at Newmarket, England, and proved himself a second or third-rate race horse. The racing records there show that he was by Mambrino, and that is all that is known about his inheritance. He left a few tolerably good race horses, for their time, but he filled the country with the best road and driving horses that the horsemen of this country had ever known. A chapter each to Messenger’s ancestors and to himself will be found in their proper places in this volume. The twenty years of Messenger’s life and service in this country fell in a period of indifference to all kinds of racing except running. The English race horse was then the popular idol, and it is not known that any of his sons or daughters were ever trained to trot. Neither can it now be certainly determined that any of them were disposed to pace, but if we may judge of the habits of action of his immediate progeny by what we know of succeeding generations, we can hardly doubt that there were pacers among them. As the custom then was, and as it so remained for at least half a century later, all pacers were hidden away from public sight, as they were supposed to furnish evidence of ignoble breeding.

The chapter on “The Sons of Messenger” will be long, but it will be of exceeding interest. They constitute the connecting link that brings together the peculiar trotting instincts of the sire and develops them in their own progeny. Several of them were not only trained to run, but did run successfully. It is not known that any of his sons was ever trained to trot, but it is known from contemporaneous evidence that several of them were fast natural trotters, notably Bishop’s Hambletonian, Bush Messenger, Winthrop Messenger, Mambrino, etc., all of which will be considered in their proper place. When we reach the second remove from Messenger we begin to enter into the full fruition of all the promises, and in considering such animals as Abdallah, Almack, Mambrino Paymaster, Harris’ Hambletonian, etc., we begin to feel that we are well within the trotting latitudes, for this remove began to found families and tribes that attracted the attention of all intelligent breeders.

In the next remove from Messenger we strike the most famous of all trotting progenitors in Rysdyk’s Hambletonian. At one time there was an active and determined difference of opinion among breeders as to which of three horses, Hambletonian, Ethan Allen, or Mambrino Chief, would in the end prove to be the most successful sire. This controversy may not be remembered by the younger of the present generation of horsemen, but it was bitter and uncompromising, and it presents a lesson so important that it may be here referred to. The adherents of Ethan Allen argued that as he was handsomer, that his gait was the very perfection of trotting action, and that he was incomparably faster than either of the other two, he must of necessity prove the most successful in begetting trotters. The adherents of Mambrino Chief used the same argument, with the exception of beauty and style, and dwelt strongly on the fact that he was a faster horse than Hambletonian, and would consequently get faster offspring. Both these arguments were good, so far as they went, but they lacked completeness and hence were not sound. Neither Ethan Allen nor Mambrino Chief had a dam, and so far as we know the inheritance of both was restricted to the male side of the house. Development of speed is a valuable and real qualification in any sire, but all experience goes to show that it is only a help to an inheritance. Hambletonian was not much developed, but it is conceded on all hands that he could show a 2:40 gait at any time and that his action was very perfect. He was got by a grandson of Messenger, whose dam, Amazonia, was one of the fastest mares of her generation, whatever her blood may have been. Abdallah got more and faster trotters than any other grandson of Messenger, and his daughters were very famous as the producers of trotters. Hambletonian’s dam, the Kent Mare, was by imported Bellfounder, a horse that got no trotters practically, but this mare was the fastest four-year-old of her time, and that because she was out of a very fast mare, One Eye, that was a double granddaughter of Messenger. That is, One Eye was by Hambletonian, the son of Messenger, and out of Silvertail, a daughter of Messenger. This double Messenger mare was unknown to the trotting turf, but she was well known throughout Orange County as a remarkably fast trotter. Hence Hambletonian not only possessed more Messenger blood than any horse of his generation, but that blood came to him through developed trotters, and he had a right to surpass all competitors, especially the two that were, at one time, the most prominent.

Several of the sons of Hambletonian, as shown by the tabular statistics which will be introduced, became greater than their sire, not only in getting trotters from their own loins, but in transmitting the trotting instinct to their descendants. The growth and spread of this family is far and away beyond any precedent that can be cited in any age or country, and is simply marvelous. It is said that fully ninety per cent. of the fast trotters now on the turf have more or less of the blood of Hambletonian in their veins, and I think it is a safe conclusion to say that no intelligent breeder in all the country is trying to produce trotters without it. All the other tribes are dropping out of sight, and at the present ratio of rise and fall it will be but a few years till every trotter on the turf will be credited in some degree to the one really great progenitor, Hambletonian. The other tribes will not be blotted out nor will their merits be lost, but absorbed into the mightier tribe.

Such families as the Bashaws, the Clays, the Black Hawks, the Mambrino Chiefs, the Pilots, the American Stars, the Blue Bulls, etc., will be fully considered through several chapters, according to their strength and merit. As these families have not been able to hold their own in the rush to the front, and as they seem to be falling further to the rear in the number and quality of their performers each succeeding year, we may as well begin to designate them as “the minor families.” Their inheritance was feeble and unsatisfactory, and more or less sporadic, and we never had any right to expect a brilliant and permanent success from such beginnings.