LIVE STOCK ON THE RANGE 97 



lost by the infusion of Short-horn blood, showing in 

 the "brockle" faces of the young stock. 



Early Horses of the Plains. When the early Ameri- 

 can explorers first saw the western plains they found 

 besides the buffalo and game animals great herds of wild 

 horses. Capt. Zebulon Pike, the bold American officer 

 who in 1806 toiled up the banks of the Arkansas River 

 clear to its source, writes of their presence on the great 

 plains, and other explorers before him also tell of them. 

 When Coronado, the Spanish explorer, worked his way 

 eastward in 1545 onto the grassy prairies of eastern New 

 Mexico, western Kansas and the Texas Panhandle, he 

 found the Indians using dogs for moving their camp 

 plunder. The dogs were packed with burdens and also 

 dragged loads swung between poles, as in later days the 

 ponies did with the lodge poles. There were no horses 

 there then. 



Later on in 1716 another Spanish expedition swung 

 east across the plains from near Santa Fe, N. M., going 

 clear to the Missouri. They took numbers of horses 

 with them and their reports of the trip tell of the won- 

 der of the Indians at the animals, showing that they 

 knew nothing of them at that time. However, as the 

 Spaniards had with them both mares and stallions and 

 were constantly losing them from various causes there 

 is little reason to doubt that the original stock from 

 which the great herds of wild horses (mustangs) came, 

 was brought by these Spanish expeditions. The few 

 that were lost bred rapidly under unusually good con- 

 ditions and in a comparatively few years they could be 

 found everywhere on the plains. 



Stockmen's Horses. The stockmen brought many 

 horses with them which they turned out on the ranges 



