Why did American cowboys need to shoe their horses, but the native Americans did not?
• The answer to this stems from evolution; not just biological evolution but also variations in technological and social evolution on both sides of the Atlantic.
The horse’s native habitat is large grassy plains with a generally dry climate, such as the steppes of central Asia, where the wild ass originated, the African savannah, which is home to near-relatives such as the zebra and the now-extinct , and the prairies of North America where the genus Equus evolved.
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Horses were driven to extinction in North America about 7600 years ago, possibly by climate change or hunting by the ancestors of Native Americans. They only returned to the New World when the Spanish brought them in the 16th century.
The and the American Southwest came across these horses, or at least their feral descendants, after they began to escape from Europeans around 1540. Newly established wild herds spread up the Mississippi valley, where most of the tribes had a settled agrarian lifestyle. The Plains Indians led a nomadic existence, and despite never having seen a European – mounted on a horse or otherwise – it was they who realised the horse’s potential for enhanced mobility.
First to mount up were the Kiowa and tribes of the Missouri valley, who were riding horses by the 1680s. By 1714 the Comanche of Wyoming had joined them on horseback, followed by the Snake of southern Idaho and eastern Oregon, and the Cheyenne of Minnesota and North Dakota, who in the 1730s introduced horseman-ship to their neighbours, the Teton Sioux. Finally, the Sarcee tribe of Canada, became the most northerly mounted tribe by 1784.
In the space of just over a century the horse had transformed Native North American society, and not always for the better. The arable society of the Missouri valley was ultimately destroyed by raiding “war parties” of Comanche, Cheyenne and Dakotas, well before Europeans began their genocidal march.
The Plains Indians were hunter-gatherers, with no significant metal-working skills, so any metal goods were obtained through trade with Europeans and hence were at a premium. Even if they had needed them, horseshoes would always have been a technology beyond their socio-economic resources. But they had no need to shoe their horses.
The horseshoe was developed to meet the conditions faced by domestic horses in north-west Europe, where, judging from archaeological evidence, they were probably first produced by the Gauls or Franks in the 5th century. Europeans needed horseshoes because of a combination of climate, terrain and pattern of use, with the generally wet weather and soft, heavy soils acting to soften the normally calloused sole of the hoof. Horses were used for travel and in wars. They were often heavily laden while travelling at quite high speeds, which placed great stress on the hooves, often causing them to wear unevenly and eventually split, rendering the animal lame and useless.
“The horseshoe developed to meet the conditions faced by domestic horses in north-west Europe”
The lifestyles of horses used by Plains Indians, on the other hand, differed little from that of their ancestors in the wild. The animals moved together in large numbers at relatively low speeds, over flat, arid steppe country. As a result, their hooves were harder and wore more evenly. In addition, Native American warriors had more than one mount each, with one band of 2000 Comanche braves keeping a string of 15,000 horses in tow.
The quality of husbandry among European settlers often left a great deal to be desired. The US cavalryman at the time of the in the 18th and 19th centuries was usually an indifferent horseman, and more concerned with his own well-being than that of his mount, which was after all government property.
By contrast a Plains Indian brave’s horses were his fortune and livelihood, and he cared for them accordingly if he valued his life. Cowboys riding the range were in a very similar position, which was why horse-stealing was considered the worst of all crimes in the old west, as it was tantamount to murder.
However, the peculiarities of their profession, and the specific qualities demanded from the horse required the use of shoes. The classic cowboy’s mount was the quarter horse, the fastest steed in the world, but only over short distances (the quarter-mile that gave it its name). This enabled a cowboy to race from one point around a large herd to another at short notice and in short order, but applied stresses a bare hoof could not sustain in the long term.
Hadrian Jeffs, Norwich, UK