Posts Tagged ‘native american tribes’

Broken colored horses are associated in the popular imagination with the old American west. In particular, they are associated with Native Americans, with whom they were a popular choice, as the pattern of broken colors made the horses hard to see, either during a hunt or during war.

Broken colored horses – also known as pintos – continue to be popular today, both in the American west and around the world. However, even though “pinto” is the Spanish word for “paint”, pinto horses are not quite the same thing as paint horses.

To be registered with the American Paint Horse Association (APHA), a horse must not only have the classic broken-colored coat, it must also have either the sire or the dam registered as an American Paint Horse and have Quarter Horse or Thoroughbred blood somewhere in its background, Quarter Horse for preference.

Thus, while all paint horses are pintos, not every pinto is a paint horse – for example, a chestnut-and-white Shetland pony, while it certainly fits the description of a pinto, is not a paint horse. The same is also true, for obvious reasons, for parti-colored donkeys and mules.

Appaloosa horses, while they were also developed by Native American tribes for a similar purpose, are not classified as pintos, even though an Appaloosa can do much of the work that a paint can. The Appaloosa spots and “blanket pattern” are unique to that breed alone. The same applies to other spotted breeds.

Those not familiar with the term “paint horse” or “pinto” may be uncertain as to what the terms actually mean and what all the fuss is about. In general, paint horses are bi-colored horses, having a coat that is a mixture of white patches and patches of another colour. This should not be confused with the color known as roan, where individual white hairs are interspersed with either chestnut (red roan) or black/grey (blue roan).

A horse with black and white patches is often referred to as a “piebald” and a horse with patches of white and another color is known as a “skewbald.” The most common patch colors in skewbalds are brown and chestnut, but patches of palomino (gold) and buckskin are also possible.

Among paint horses, further distinctions are made, tobiano and overo being the main ones. A horse classified has a tobiano is predominantly dark on the belly and neck with the white markings being smaller, while an overo is the reverse. Paint horses are often bred for the beauty of their markings.

Why choose a paint horse? As they have Quarter Horse ancestry, paint horses can take on a number of working roles with ease. They make excellent mounts for stock work, combining beauty with practicality, and perform well on the rodeo circuit in cutting competitions and barrel racing.

Paint horses also make good trail horses or general hacks. They also do well in the show ring, their distinctive coats making them particularly eye-catching. And, of course, many are kept as companion animals by those who admire the beauty and history of the breed.

For more information on horses, try visiting http://www.interestinghorses.com – a website that specializes in providing horse related tips, advice and resources including information on the paint horse.

Author: Samantha Davis
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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It is natural to believe that wild horses have “always” roamed America’s Western States, but that simply is not the case. Horses were native to North America until the end of the last ice age, 10-12,000 years ago, and then they died out.

It took the joint actions of Christopher Columbus and Hernando Cortez, to bring horses back to North America. In 1493, Christopher Columbus brought horses from Spain to the West Indies, during his second voyage to the Americas. In 1519, the Spanish conquistador Cortez brought horses to the mainland, as the captain of the third Spanish expedition.

Horses arrived in North America, by way of Mexico and Florida, as a tool of the Spanish conquistadors and were used to great effect by Cortez in the defeat of the Aztec empire.

Many horses went wild after their riders were killed. Other horses escaped from their corrals, and many more horses were integrated into Native American societies. Within just a few decades, horses had migrated from Mexico and Florida and entered into the North American interior.

The History of American Horse Breeds

Nearly all of the horses currently running wild in the ranges of the Western United States hailed from the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, in a region defined by modern day Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Gibraltar.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations suggests that there are 17 individual horse breeds that can be defined as “Iberian horses”. Three of the breeds hail from Portugal and the remaining 14 originated in Spain. Most of the Iberian horse breeds are considered to be Baroque horses, comprised mostly of horses of Andalusian, Arabian and Barb ancestry.

Many of the Native American tribes became master horse breeders, most importantly, the Comanche, the Shoshoni, and the Nez Perce nations. Through selective breeding by the Native American tribes, the first truly American horse breed was the Appaloosa.

The wild horses of the Western United States are actually more accurately referred to as horses that have gone “feral”, or horses that were once domesticated and now are wild. Just as there is a huge population of feral dogs near the big cities of America, most notably near Miami, Florida, there is also a substantial population of feral horses in America.

Free-Roaming Horses Eventually Required Protection From Congress

In 1900, it was estimated that there were as many as two million free-roaming horses in the United States. During the early years of the twentieth century, the free-roaming horse population was severely diminished through a combination of factors including the capture of horses for use in the military, and more revoltingly, by companies who killed the horses to make dog food.

By the 1970′s, the plight of wild horses in the United States had attracted the attention of the U.S. Federal Government. This newly focused attention eventually led to the passage of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971.

In recent years, it has been estimated by the U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management that there are as many as 29,000 feral horses and burros on BLM-managed lands in ten western states. The ten Western U.S. states that have feral horses running wild includes: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming.

It is estimated that more than half of the wild horse population resides in Nevada, and Montana and Oregon are the other states with significant wild horse population numbers. There is another few hundred head of wild horses free-roaming in Alberta and British Columbia, in Canada.

Through the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, the Bureau of Land Management has the responsibility of managing the numbers of wild horses and burros, to ensure that healthy herds thrive on healthy rangelands. Within the mandate of the BLM, they are responsible to manage the herd numbers of wild horses and burros that roam the American West.

The BLM Wild Horse and Burro Adoption and Sale Program

Wild horses left to their own wits can literally double their population within four short years, provided that drought and wildfires do not diminish their numbers naturally. Horses do not have natural predators within the rangelands of North America, so their numbers will generally run unchecked without BLM intervention.

The beauty of the 1971 law is that as the BLM culls horses and burros from the wild population, those horses and burros will become available for adoption and sale through the BLM program to individuals and groups willing and able to provide humane, long-term care to these beautiful animals.

To learn more about the adoption of purchase of horses or burros, you can visit the Bureau of Land Management website at: blm.gov or give them a call at: (866) 4MUSTANGS. You can actually adopt and purchase feral horses through the BLM program in states on both sides of the Mississippi River. Sales are held yearly throughout the South, the West and even in Illinois.

Author: Philip Wiskell
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Cellphone news