Textbooks on the history of the Americas are definitely going to need a reprint. In any case, a good dusting off on the part concerning the Native Americans and their relationship with horses. According to the various chronicles established by Europeans, the first contacts between equines and indigenous peoples date from the revolt of the Pueblos in 1680.
A story to which the Comanches, Lakota or Pawnee have never adhered. Because for them, as the Chief Joe American Horse, Chief of the Oglala Lakota Oyate, “horses have been part of us since long before other cultures came to our lands, and we are part of them”. This eminent member of the Amerindian community co-signed with 87 scientists an article which has just appeared in the very prestigious science journale. This study undermines a part of this history of the American plains that some took for granted.
Already there in 1600 but still of Iberian origin
Thanks to animal fossils including DNA, a fascinating time machine, these researchers have been able to demonstrate that the horse was indeed present in the American West from the beginning of the 16th century. “The model, as it is consensually accepted except by some of the native peoples, is to say that at the time of the Pueblo revolt the Native American people literally took control of their horses. We have dated the archaeological remains of horses, associated with native Amerindian contexts, to carbon 14 around 1600. This means that we must advance the contact between the horse and the Amerindians by about a century. This is important. because it shows the limit of the historical approach when there is genocide involved, when there is colonization,” says Ludovic Orlando of Center for Anthropology and Genomics (CNRS-UT3) of Toulouse.
For more than ten years, with his team of geneticists, he has sequenced the DNA of more than a thousand horses that have lived in the four corners of the planet, whether contemporary or 12,000 years old. Thanks to the molecule, which never lies and does not suffer from the twists made to history, he thus succeeded in demonstrating in 2018 that Przewalski’s horse which was thought to be the last survivor of domestication has in fact left wildlife 5,500 years ago.
A small revolution, at the time, which pushed certain specialists to show on their high horses. A voice that denoted but which convinced Yvette Running Horse Collin, a doctoral student from the Lakoda community, to speak to him. This is how this project on the history of the horse of the American plains was born, at the crossroads between scientists from the Western world and indigenous nations, on both sides of the Atlantic.
The impact of colonization, even on animal DNA
“The archaeological science presented in our research illustrates all the benefits of developing sincere and equitable collaborative partnerships with indigenous communities”, insists Carlton Shield Chief Gover, Pawnee archaeologist and co-author of the study, which still leaves outstanding issues.
Because while they found the horse was indeed a companion of the native peoples in 1600, sequencing showed that these early 17th century horses weren’t brought back by the Vikings in the 11th century, they weren’t either more in America since all time. But they are of Iberian descent. So how did they get there? Since when ?
If we will have to wait for new fossils to be able to provide the beginning of an answer on the date of their presence in the American plains, one thing is certain.
Once they arrived, like men, colonization did not spare them. Teams of scientists have also sequenced the horses of indigenous peoples today and in addition to their Iberian ancestry, there are now English traces. “It’s quite striking to realize that colonization has not only impacted humans, ”genociding” them and subjugating them. She signed up by reworking, rewriting the genetic heritage of their favorite animal. Colonization is not just a man-to-man affair, it’s a human-to-environment affair,” concludes Ludovic Orlando. A new workhorse in perspective.