File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (17540928993).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo16amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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AMERICAN INDIAN SADDLES 499 dog; thus, Dakota, shunhawakan (dog supernatural), and Blackfoot, ponoka- mita (elk-like dog). The first exploration by La Salle (1682) revealed horse-using Indians on the lower Mississippi River and the first visitor to the Blackfoot of Canada in 1754 found the whole tribe mounted. It is therefore likely that many of the Plains tribes had horses one hundred years before they were visited by white men. The tribes in contact with the Spanish settlements drew their supply from the whites and in turn traded to their Indian neighbors or lost to them by theft. In this way horses could be rap- idly carried to the tribes of the north, in fact some of the earliest explorers in west- ern Canada occasionally found the Indi- ans riding horses with Spanish brands. Thus the study of the Indian saddle will lead one to the whole story of the horse in the New World and eventually to the Old World. The association of horse and man may be traced back to the dawn of culture in Europe. On the second floor of the Museum (directly above the Plains hall) is shown a rock carving of a wild horse from the cave men and on the wall a reproduction of a cave painting. Just where and when the horse was first tamed and ridden is not certain but everything points to the great plains of western Asia, where even today we find the most distinctive horse culture in the world. That the horse was developed by a non-agricul- tural people is clear from the almost universal Old World use of the ox with the plow and cart even to this day. The horse first came to the historic nations as a military aid and it was but recently that he displaced the ox as a draft animal. We have thus far discussed the his- tory of the horse in North America, but in the pampas of the southern continent this animal played a similar role. Al- though we have less data, it appears that the method of introduction and the rapidity of native adoption closely paral- lel the above. At least, we find the same general types of saddle, lasso, and other trappings.
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Before they had horses the Indians used dags, attaching them to the travois, a primitive vehicle consisting of two trailing poles bearing a net or cross bar for a load. The horses of the Spaniards no doubt seemed to the Indians very wonderful "dogs"; Indian names for a horse are derived from their words for dog

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