EARLY HORSE Culture in the Americas

 
 

It has been often repeated that the great herds of horses belonging to American Indian tribes in the nineteenth century derived from the group of horses that the Spanish conquistador Coronado brought to America. However, of the 558 horses in Coronado's expedition, only two were mares (Spanish cavalry ride only stallions) and both returned to New Spain. The truth is that American Indian horses derived from a single place: livestock held by Spanish ranchers around Santa Fé, New Mexico in the early seventeenth century.