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. 



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 



