Horse Raising in Colonial New England 891 



usefulness of horses to the colonists 



Cattle and horses were of service to the colonists in many ways. The 

 neat Cattle furnished them food, hides for leather, and oxen for draft 

 purposes. Sheep were valued chiefly for wool. Horses served to some 

 extent for draft, but for ploughing and other heavy work they were 

 found less serviceable than oxen. Their most important use was to 

 furnish means of rapid transportation from place to place. In the 

 earliest days of the settlements most of this travel was on foot or in 

 small boats (6), but by 1652 a New England writer (7) could boast 

 of the " wild and uncouth woods filled with frequented ways and 

 rivers overlaid with bridges passable for both horse and foot." This 

 indicates in a general way the transition that soon took place, so that 

 horses became of steadily increasing importance as the settlement of 

 the country proceeded and the towns became more numerous and widely 

 separated. 



In the difficulties with the Indians, horses were of especial advantage 

 to the colonists. Not only was this true in the case of offensive operations 

 against the savages, but in the frontier troubles which were always 

 imminent the possession of horses enabled the settlers to bring aid 

 quickly to one another when attacked and thus saved many an isolated 

 settlement from extinction. That the colonists realized this advantage 

 is apparent from the pains which they took to prevent any horses 

 from coming into the hands of the natives. In Plymouth (8), in 

 Massachusetts Bay (9), and in Connecticut (10), laws were passed to 

 prevent the selling of any horses to the natives, and even as late as 1665 

 it was only after considerable debate that the Plymouth court allowed 

 one such sale to be made to a friendly Indian for purposes of 

 " husbandry " (11). 



Lastly, it is interesting to note that horse racing was not unknown 

 even in the early days of the Puritan settlement in the Massachusetts 

 Bay colony, where the court vents its dire condemnation on " certain 

 euill and disordered persons " who engaged in such a breach of public 

 decorum (12). At a later date, however, such racing came to be a 

 recognized sport in Boston (13), and especially in Rhode Island, where 

 races ivere very common and often for high stakes (14). These prac- 

 tices were not frequent in the early days, however, and came to be 



