Anglo Settlement and Westward Expansion

Pioneers! O Pioneers!

How the heart leaps!

Have you your pistols?

Problem was, as the Pioneers looked Westward, all the nearby land was already settled. Staring them in the face were the French - occupying the Midwest areas of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and part of Kansas, mostly in harmony with the Native Americans.

France, though, double-crossed its own people, selling their Territory to the United States without so much as a mention to the French speaking people rooted in that region. Thus it came about that Anglo expansion throughout the Mid West, though wild and woolly and risky enough, was mainly filling in the gaps around the French settlers.

That didn't take long. Now where?

The Spanish, before and during this time, were ranching, farming, and mining throughout Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, and California while enslaving and destroying the Native Americans as they took over their lands.

Nothing for the Anglo to do but butt in, or buy in, whichever was more convenient in any particular instance, and take over the Spanish domains..

The other western states, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Oregon, and Washington, and the other part of Kansas, had been generally left to the Native Americans.

Auspiciously for the Anglo and European immigrants, as they came crowding each other out of the Midwest and into these northern and mountain west areas, the US Cavalry came along in order to handle any misunderstanding by the Indians as to “who's land is it, anyway?”

The biggest peril for the Anglo settlers turned out to be each other. Pistols were still needed because land and water disputes were far more of a worry than Indian attacts. There were also such things as horse thieves, bank robbers, and tax collectors roaming around causing mischief. [Though in its own way this was all very fortunate because it gave the Dime Novel and Movie Industry, later on, vast literary ore to mine for gold.]

For these people out there in the West, far, far away from the old home grounds, in wild, open country where it was necessary for one to make their own, new, home ground, there was plenty of need for good horses. Good Horses, that is, because anyone that wasn't on horseback had horses pulling whatever they were riding in. They quickly found that in this wide, rough country they needed tougher horses than they already had – horses that would not go lame, break a leg, or play out. The larger breeds weren't holding up. Small horses could whip like fury through the rocks, trees, or sagebrush where it was hard for bigger horses to go. Small horses were needed on the stagecoaches, too, because a draft team of larger horses could not stand the strain when traveling fast. And as chance would have it, there were Good Horses available right at hand that had been brought in by the Spanish explorers.

Part of them were the wild Spanish Mustangs running by the thousands everywhere in the West. Others came from huge horse ranches that had sprang up – raising and selling Spanish Mustangs as cowponies, farm horses, and polo ponies.

There was turning out to be truth in the old Iberian saying, “The Elegant Will Not Serve in Hard Times.”

Even the Conquistadors had used these small, hardy horses rather than larger, more Elegant ones, because:

First, these horses and their young acclimated immediately to the new and severe, tropical climate of Hispañola, while the others, brought by Columbus in the next voyages did not, requiring generations before becoming useful;

Second, the elegant horses being brought in were too expensive to squander on such an undertaking. Some of these horses had prices equivalent to $50,000 in today's money. The descendent's of the horses the Conquistadors had used – these small, intelligent, quick as lightning, almost uncrushable horses - a couple of centuries later, were found to be the ideal horse for the fronter and pioneering conditions of what became the Western United States. The Indians thought so too, as well as had the French explorers as they spread down from the north [coming even into the Oshoto, Wyoming country, along the Little Missouri and Belle Fourche rivers, long before Louis and Clark in 1804].

These horses, then, were the Cayuses, the Chevaux à (au) Pelouse, the Texas Pony, the Indian Pony, the Cowpony, the New World Spanish Barb, the Cavallo, the Spanish Pony, and the Spanish Mustang that roamed free throughout the West.

The Westerner once again soon proved, by using them under harsh and difficult conditions, that here was a superior horse. With their short head, full neck, slight shoulders, round cannon bones (lower leg bone, just above the ankle), small hard feet, short back, round, bulged belly, squeezed rump, hips sweeping in a graceful French curve into the hocks (with full mane and tail thrown in for beauty), these horses turned out to be both rugged and adaptable to all conditions. They didn't have to be 'toughened in'. They were born with what it takes to make a rugged horse.

But at the same time, these horses were as beautiful as they were stalwart and strong. Put a Spanish Don and his accouterments on one of these horses and you see appear before your startled eyes a magnificent Spanish fancy riding horse.

Put a Western Range Rider and his accouterments on one of these horses and you see appear before your startled eyes a Western Cow Pony. The Spanish horse sees what is needed and responds. They like to be needed, useful, and be praised for doing what they've done.

The girls and boys, the men and women, who rode these horses through the West, valiant in their vigorous adventures and strenuous achievements, all had that touch of bold spirit as filled our Katie O'Hurragin 20,000 years before. They were those, from among their own kind, who, in the words of one old time Wyoming rancher, “could understand an honest to God cavallo.”

These Seáns and Katies of today, now dream of such ships as will take them and the Spanish horse into such new lands as they may find...

[For there is another part of the tale: throughout the spread of eminence in the Americas, there had continued the importation of 'Elegant' horses. With living conditions becoming ever more easier, less hardy, showier horses were used by the then more prosperous settlers, and sometimes, even by the more prosperous Indians. Good roads and motor cars replaced the rugged Spanish horse as the means of travel.

So that with the 'civilizing' of the Gringo West, and with the innumerable crosses with brood stock from other lineage, much of what is left today is that later supplementation, the more stylish 'Colonial' Spanish Horse.]

Time Segment One - Ancient Emergence
Time Segment Two - Iberia up through the Moorish Invasion
Time Segment Three - During the Middle Ages
Time Segment Four - Coming to the New World
Time Segment Five - Indian Ponies
Time Segment Six - Anglo Settlement and Westward Expansion
Time Segment Seven - Pushed Aside and Regained
Spanish Mustang Research Facility - Welcome