348 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



company with Governor Spotswood, and the party was given an escort 

 of 12 young Indians under an old chief. Fontaine writes: 



They were all afoot, so the Governor to compliment the head man of the 

 Indians lent him his led-horse. After we had ridden about a mile, we came 

 to a ford of Meherrin River, and being mistaken in our water-mark, we were 

 sometimes obliged to make our horses swim, but we got over safe. The Indian 

 Chief seeing how it was, unsaddled his horse, and stript himself all to his belt, 

 and forded the river, leading his horse after him ; the fancy of the Indian made 

 us merry for a while. The day being warm, and he not accustomed to ride, 

 the horse threw him before he had gone two miles, but he had courage to mount 

 again. By the time we had got a mile further, he was so terribly galled that 

 he was forced to dismount, and desired the Governor to take his horse, for he 

 could not imagine what good they were for, if it was not to cripple Indians. 

 (Maury, 1907, p. 280.) 



Although St. Augustine was settled in 1565, it would seem as though 

 the Florida Indians adopted horses from their Spanish neighbors very 

 slowly, possibly owing to the fact that they were in the habit of 

 traveling almost everywhere by canoe. Adoption of horses from the 

 settlers of South Carolina also seems to have been slow. 



Of the horses he saw in Florida, William Bartram says : 



They are the most beautiful and sprightly species of that noble creature, per- 

 haps any where to be seen ; but are of a small breed, and as delicately formed as 

 the American roe-buck. A horse in the Creek or Muscogulge tongue is echoclucco, 

 that is the great deer (echo is deer, and clucco is big). The Siminole horses are 

 said to descend originally from the Andalusian breed, brought here by the Span- 

 iards when they first established the colony of East Florida. From the forehead 

 to their nose is a little arched or aquiline, and so are the fine Chactaw horses 

 among the Upper Creeks [i. e., the Creeks], which are said to have been brought 

 thither from New-Mexico across Mississippi, by those nations of Indians who 

 emigrated from the West, beyond the river. These horses are every where like 

 the Siminole breed, only large, and perhaps not so lively and capricious. 

 (Bartram, 1792, pp. 213-214.) 



As the Seminole Nation did not exist until well along in the eight- 

 eenth century, this does not mean a high antiquity for the Seminole 

 horse unless these horses had previously been used by the Timucua 

 and Apalachee and such use does not appear to have been very exten- 

 sive. At any rate, Bartram implies that the horses of the Creeks, 

 called by him "Upper Creeks," were of Spanish Mexican origin. Tlie 

 idea that they had been brought along by the Indians themselves when 

 they entered the country is, of course, quite erroneous. That the 

 Lower Creeks had not begun using horses till after the opening of the 

 eighteenth century is shown by the anonymous French writer, who 

 says that about that time the chief of the CoAveta Indians was mounted 

 upon a horse by some whites who wished to honor him, but that he 

 was in mortal terror of the animal. 



About this time the French brought horses to Louisiana, but it is 

 probable that the Chickasaw had already begun to receive them from 



