Exposing the Columbus Myth by following the horse

Originally posted by beforebc
bc] The two horses in the early mist photo on Exposing the Columbus Myth by following the horse are my horses. They are the gentlest of creatures, and can be trained to ride simply by loving them .. then putting a blanket across their back, and finally just laying crosswise on their back, and than a saddle.

No native Indian would be bewildered by this gentle creature.

Okay, here you are falling into a very common fallacy: the idea that because I know about this sort of thing, that everyone else will react to it in the same way that I do. This is not true. When Franz Boas (famous anthropologist) went to visit the Eskimos, he reported that in a number of villages, people would see him coming and would run screaming to the others, "White man! White man!" That they knew the term and knew about white men, but that seeing him would send the children screaming and crying in fear.

We moderns are not afraid of white people. We can't imagine anyone we know in a foreign country, being so terrified that they would cry and tremble at the site of someone like myself. I think that no modern Eskimo would react in the same way that those Eskimos who live 100 years ago did. But the reactions of fear were exactly what happened -- and yes, although your horses are very gentle, to the Indians who had never seen or heard of anything like this, they were frightening.

frayed1 wrote] "Obviously, Indian tribes carried out an active trade in horses, since many were skilled in training and rearing horses prior to contact with non-Indian explorers ..."

bc] I agree with that premise! The Conquistadores [who represented the Crown and the Church] came to destroy and suppress, and IMO, they knew what they'd find and where to go. That requires prior knowledge and cover-up. And part of that cover-up would have been to destroy everything that would suggest that the those in Central America were an advanced civilization.

You've got your time sequence wrong here. The Indians reported there, who were skilled with horses, acquired the animals in the late 1700's - early 1800's, when the animals became numerous on the Great Plains. They learned their skills from tribes that had been in contact with the Whites.

Remember that the Indians would usually have yearly gatherings of many tribes. This is where the tribes that had not seen the white man came into contact with horses, and learned methods of training and writing and breaking them. By the mid-1800's, the horse was well established, and yes they were trading and writing and training them. and remember, that in the mid 1800's, there were still many tribes who had not had contact with the white man.

But this was long after the first horses came over with the Conquistidores in the 1500's.

And two other things that I don't see being considered:

I think that you're presuming that all horses have a similar temperament to yours. This is not true, and in fact, horses have been bred for many purposes -- and they have different temperaments.

I'm not sure what breed you own, but the mustang is the horse that developed from the original escapees. And the originals were, in fact, war horses (as this page on a particular herd of mustangs (and their genetics) shows):
www.sulphurs.com...

(more on the original breed here):
www.conquistador.com...

War horses were, in fact, trained to kill in battle and the Indians would have seen this during the first Conquistador attacks.

Note this quote by one of the Conquistadores, dated 1540:

Horses are the most necessary things in the new country
because they frighten the enemy most, and after God, to them
belongs the victory

Pedro de Castaneda de Najera
Relacion du voyage de Cibola
enterpris en 1540

www.bbhc.org...

A neat page on the vaquero and horse for folks to browse:
www.nmhcpl.com...

(and for everyone's information, Cortez brought with him 11 stallions and 5 mares, and Columbus' second voyage had an equal number of mares and stallions -- and so was obviously planning on breeding from the very first: www.pr.state.az.us... )


The second factor that I don't think you've considered is how the horses were raised. Yours were raised around humans, and were raised in enclosures. Here in the Americas, they were ranched; basically they were turned out in a huge area and allowed to run and breed as they liked. The foals were not put into halters at their births (unlike the horses you own, assuming the one who bred them followed traditional methods) and might not have seen a human up close for the first year of their lives.

I apologize for lack of references here, but I need to get some work done and haven't the time to look them all up. But I do know that animal husbandry practices have changed in 500 years, and I think that this also needs to be considered.

Originally posted by Byrd

Originally posted by beforebc

frayed1 wrote] "Obviously, Indian tribes carried out an active trade in horses, since many were skilled in training and rearing horses prior to contact with non-Indian explorers ..."

bc] I agree with that premise! The Conquistadores [who represented the Crown and the Church] came to destroy and suppress, and IMO, they knew what they'd find and where to go. That requires prior knowledge and cover-up. And part of that cover-up would have been to destroy everything that would suggest that the those in Central America were an advanced civilization.

You've got your time sequence wrong here. The Indians reported there, who were skilled with horses, acquired the animals in the late 1700's - early 1800's, when the animals became numerous on the Great Plains. They learned their skills from tribes that had been in contact with the Whites.

Byrd, if you mean my time sequence......I was quoting directly from the Houghton Mifflin site
on Indian history.....I also pointed out, that site still said that the time line of 'horse aquisision' came after the date of the Spanish explorers.

My point was that the Indians themselves did not say,"We got our horses from the Conquistadores." Rather they told of getting them from other tribes or the great spirit, and that they called the horse a 'elk dog' rather than having a seperate word for horse. ( You would think the name for the startling 'new creature' would have followed it, no?)

As to the temperment of my horse.....he is an Appaloosa.....and supposed to be not so far removed from the actual bloodline of the Nez Perces' horses....and he is not like a Quarterhorse, but more like a mule or a mustang! Not to say he is mean, but he thinks for himself.....you just have to be sure you're right when you try reasoning with him!lol

Let us look at the facts of this.
Native American's didn't have a word for horse, till years after the Europeans had came to American.
There are no tales involving them.
Nor images.
Or artifacts.

After the Europeans had came, this changed.
The Native American tribes began to see them and use words to describe them, synonyms of other creatures they knew existed.
They began to use them as transport.
Began to place them in tales (primarily to do with the Europeans).
They began to paint pictures of them.
They began to use their hair.

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Why would they have not done any of it prior to the Europeans coming if horses existed?

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Native Americans have a long standing oral tradition, where laws, customs, etc, are all passed down from one generation to another (Wendigo for example is an Algonquin myth about eating human meat), this is how knowledge was passed on. Sort of like an education system. Through practical and oral lessons.

None of these existed about horses prior to the Europeans - it is simple fact. Horses died out in the American's and were re-introduced. There isn't proof of them survivng except a few "sites" which are all hoaxs which people still hold on to with hope - for no reason whatsoever.

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As for language of the Tarawan and Kanien'kehá:ka share the same term:
Kana:te
Yet for one group it means purse the other it roughly means to eat.

Native American's, named the horses after beasts they knew (some tribes) who had yet to have contact with the Europeans. Others which did tok more "European" names for the horses, once they had explained to them what they were. Prior to that, they believed their "God" had placed a new beast on the land.

[edit on 30/7/2005 by Odium]

When I read "Columbus Myth", I thought it would be more about how the Vikings first discovered the New World.

I think that Byrd has shown pretty well that the horse was introduced after the Spaniards came.

I've read about Pre-Columbian elephant statues though, so I'm curious as to thoughts on those.

New by the way, what a great site! Lost Civilizations, Cryptos, all in one place!

Originally posted by frayed1
My point was that the Indians themselves did not say,"We got our horses from the Conquistadores."

That's because there weren't any Conquistadors after the 1600's (Spanish yes, Conquistadors, no). Most of the North American horse herds came from English and French breeds; not Spanish.

As to the temperment of my horse.....he is an Appaloosa.....and supposed to be not so far removed from the actual bloodline of the Nez Perces' horses....and he is not like a Quarterhorse, but more like a mule or a mustang! Not to say he is mean, but he thinks for himself.....you just have to be sure you're right when you try reasoning with him!lol

I've found that it's best to let them know who's boss up front.