Sw.vNxoN] INIDIAN'S OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED ST'ATES 347 



De Soto spent the winter of 1540-41, Kan j el states that the Indians 

 "burned and captured 59 horses," and it has been supposed by some 

 writers that the hxter famous Chickasaw breed originated from 

 some of these, but both Biedma and the Fidalgo of Elvas state that 

 the horses were killed (Bourne, 1904, vol. 1, p. 106; vol. 2, p. 23). 

 In 1543, when they were ready to embark for Mexico, the Spaniards 

 killed all of their remaining horses except four or five, and these 

 terrified the Indians so much that they were probably destroyed soon 

 afterward (Robertson, 1933, p. 283). In 1560 the Coosa Indians 

 were evidently as unfamiliar with these animals as though they had 

 never seen one before, since, in the war which they and the Spaniards 

 waged jointly against the Napochies, the Spanish captain mounted 

 the chief of the Coosa Indians on a horse, but had to detail a negro 

 to lead it. 



The cagique went or rather rode in the rear guard, not less flattered by the 

 obsequiousness of the captain than afraid of his riding feat. (Davila Padilla, 

 1625, pp. 208-209; Swanton, 1922, p. 233.) 



It is true that the Indians, after they had obtained horses in the 

 eighteenth century, mounted on the opposite side from the English, 

 but this could equally well have been learned from the Spaniards of 

 Mexico through the western tribes from whom their horses probably 

 did come, and none of the Spaniards belonging to De Soto's force is 

 reported to have been taken alive by the Chickasaw or any of their 

 immediate neighbors. Outside of the Floridian Peninsula there is 

 no evidence of the use of horses among our Gulf Indians until the 

 beginning of the eighteenth century. In 1674 the treatment of Gabriel 

 Arthur's horse by the inhabitants of a Yuchi town on the headwa- 

 ters of the Tennessee shows how little they understood the require- 

 ments of the animal. "A stake was sett up in ye middle of ye towne 

 to fasten ye horse to, and aboundance of corne and all manner of pulse 

 with fish, flesh and beares oyle for ye horse to feed upon" (Alvord, 

 1912, pp. 212-213). By 1700 some of the eastern Siouan tribes were 

 getting horses from Virginia, but Lawson says, after describing the 

 harsh treatment accorded dogs: 



They are of a quite contrary disposition to horses. Some of their kings hav- 

 ing gotten by great chance, a jade, stolen by some neighbouring Indian, and 

 transported farther into the country and sold, or bought sometimes of a christian 

 that trades amongst them, these creatures they continually cram and feed 

 with maize, and what the horse will eat, till he is as fat as a hog — never making 

 any farther use of him than to fetch a deer home, that is killed somewhere 

 near the Indian's plantation. (Lawson, 1860, p. 68.) 



In some places nearer the settlements horses were still strange an- 

 imals until much later times. In April 1716, John Fontaine visited 

 the Saponi town at Fort Christanna. On the 9th he left the fort in 



