History of the Horse in Western America

Horses, and their cousin the mule, played a major role in my frontier, historical trilogy, The Iron Horse Chronicles. Will Braddock, the young protagonist, rides a Morgan horse. Will’s sidekick, Homer Garcon, owns a mule named Ruby. Lone Eagle, Will’s Cheyenne friend, rides Indian ponies. Will’s army friend, Lieutenant Luey Moretti, rides typical cavalry horses. 

When doing research for my books, set at the time of the building of the first transcontinental railroad in the late 1860s, I wanted to ensure I wrote factually about the animals. Henderson Libraries, in Henderson, Nevada, where I live, has numerous books that provided the answers to my questions. I found studying the history of the horse in the development of the American West allowed me to better understand what my fictional characters faced during their involvement with “Manifest Destiny.”

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Horse Breeds by Susan McBane, although not written specifically for middle-grade students, provides “a comprehensive visual directory of the officially recognized world horse breeds.” The book is coffee-table size, but will be easily understood by younger readers.  Fossils of Eohippus, the earliest ancestor of the horse, have been found in the Wind River basin in Wyoming. That, coincidentally, is the setting for much of Bear Claws, the second book in my trilogy. Eohippus existed about fifty million years ago, and it and later ancestors had died out and disappeared entirely from the North American continent long before the first Native Americans are believed to have immigrated from Asia across the Bering Straits. The horse, as we know it today, did not appear in the Western Hemisphere until the Spanish arrived to exploit the “new world” following Columbus’s “discovery” of America.

A excellent book covering all aspects of horses that is specifically written for middle-grade students is Horse Crazy by Jessie Haas. The book is divided into four parts, with the first part being “In the Know: Essential Equine Education for the Truly Obsessed.” This part includes a good chapter on prehistoric horses, pointing out that Eohippus stood only fourteen inches high, the size of a fox. The book discusses the development of the current-day horse for use by cavalry. The author informs us that the American Indians created their pony from horses abandoned by or stolen from the Spanish Conquistadors. This volume also includes recommendations for several historical novels featuring horses.

Another fine book for middle-grade students is Pocket Genius: Horses compiled by DK Editors. This book is described as a pocket-size encyclopedia featuring more than 125 individual breeds of horses, ponies, and their cousins — zebras, mules, and donkeys. The anatomy and behavior of each of the breeds is concisely presented, along with information on coloring and markings. This compact volume provides an excellent introduction to the equine world for younger readers.

Since I was particularly interested in the Morgan horse, I was pleased to discover Sarah Maass’s small volume entitled The Morgan Horse. It is one of fifteen Edge Books devoted to horses, each book pertaining to a single breed. The Morgan is one of the horse world’s newer breeds. About 1791 the first of this famous breed appeared in Vermont. Although rather small in size, the Morgan soon developed a reputation for its strength. During the Civil War and the long-running battles with the Indians on the western plains, the Morgan was favored by the U.S. Cavalry. That was a primary reason for me selecting this breed to be the horse ridden by Will Braddock in The Iron Horse Chronicles.

There are dozens more interesting books about the history of horses that will appeal to middle-grade readers. I present here some that were helpful to me during my writing.