Throwback: Goodbye Horses!

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Indigenous people of the Americas and the Horse 

Every once in a while, we see a story posted on social media claiming that horses never went extinct in the Americas and that Indigenous people had the horse long before the arrival of Europeans. If you spend any time on Indigenous social media, you probably know what we are talking about. Supporters of this claim seek to dispel what they view as a Eurocentric myth. A myth that, in their eyes, buries the true history of the horse in the Americas by discounting Indigenous oral traditions and ignoring archaeological evidence that would reshape our understanding of history.

But do these claims stand up to scrutiny? Did the horse really go extinct in the Americas? And what does all of this have to do with a religious zealot from the 1800s? Well dear listeners, hold on tight because it’s going to be a bumpy ride as we explore:

Your Hosts:

Kurly Tlapoyawa is an archaeologist, ethnohistorian, and filmmaker. His research covers Mesoamerica, the American Southwest, and the historical connections between the two regions. He is the author of numerous books and has presented lectures at the University of New Mexico, Harvard University, Yale University, San Diego State University, and numerous others. He most recently released his documentary short film "Guardians of the Purple Kingdom," and is a cultural consultant for Nickelodeon Animation Studios.
@kurlytlapoyawa

Ruben Arellano Tlakatekatl is a scholar, activist, and professor of history. His research explores Chicana/Chicano indigeneity, Mexican indigenist nationalism, and Coahuiltecan identity resurgence. Other areas of research include Aztlan (US Southwest), Anawak (Mesoamerica), and Native North America. He has presented and published widely on these topics and has taught courses at various institutions. He currently teaches history at Dallas College – Mountain View Campus.

Cited in this podcast: 
Pleistocene Megafauna in Beringia
Archaeological Fantasies
Pseudoarchaeological Claims of Horses in the Americas
New Research Rewrites the History of American Horses
Early dispersal of domestic horses into the Great Plains and northern Rockies
Pratt Cave

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

This episode is sponsored by Archeo Gato Tours. Want to dig deeper into Mexico's indigenous past and present? Allow Archeogato Tours to customize your Yucatan adventure. Archeo Gato works hand in hand with local indigenous guides to provide a tour that is entertaining, educational, and beneficial to the local community. For an adventure like no other, check out Archeogato.com. That's A-R-K E O G A T O dot com. Or just follow the link in the show notes. Now, on with the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

You must excuse me.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Greetings, dear listeners, and welcome to yet another episode of Tales from Ostlantis. We are your hosts, Curly Tlapoyawa. And Rubenaniano Tla Kataka. So what's going on, man?

SPEAKER_05 1:31

Not much. How you been? Been pretty good. Can't complain.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Nice. School's going well. All the little students are eagerly soaking up the knowledge that you're kicking up.

SPEAKER_05 1:44

Soaking it up, yeah. Eager. Eager beavers.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

So I I went to the uh the SAAs recently. That was pretty pretty awesome. Met a lot of cool people. Yeah. And um for those that don't know, the SAAs is the Society of American Archaeology. We had our national conference in Portland, Oregon. And I'd never been to the Pacific Northwest, so that was really cool. Michelle was able to come out with me, so we rented a car, went to the coast. It was a lot of fun. Nice, nice. Yeah, I've never been up to the Pacific Northwest either. I highly recommend it. I really liked it. I but I like the kind of weather. Like okay. Like it really green and lush, but it was always kind of overcast and and you know, intermittent rain. And I don't know, man. It just I really enjoyed myself. Cool, cool. It spoke to my nature. But the cool, well, like a really cool thing that happened there was um I saw David Stewart, Dr. David Stewart. Oh wow, like walking off in the distance, and I'm like, oh shit, I want to introduce myself to him and take a picture with him, right? This guy's like, you know, it's a pretty big deal. And so uh I walk up and he's what he's got his back turned to me, and I say, Dr. Stewart. And he turns around and he smiles and he goes, Oh, hey, Curly, how are you? And he reached his hand out, what shook his hand, and uh we spoke for a little bit, and he's like, You know what? Um, because I said, Well, I'm a fan of your work, and he said, Well, I'm a fan of your work. Uh, I listened to the podcast, and nice shot I use your uh your your Nahuatl videos in my class to help with pronunciation. So had you met him before? No, never. Like we've texted or uh Twittered, you know.

SPEAKER_05 3:30

Yeah, so he recognized you from social media, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Okay, and uh then he uses the the videos so he knew what I looked like.

SPEAKER_05 3:38

Oh, yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

But uh shout out to uh David Stewart for listening, and he wants to come on the show, so well we have to have him on the show then, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 3:48

Now that we've said it out loud, we better make it happen. Make it happen. Yeah, I don't have any anything new to report as far as um my ons and goings, uh just uh just hanging in there just doing my stuff. Yeah. Um I do want to make uh shout out to the Mexican-American Museum of Texas, which is a newly created nonprofit that I am a founding member of. Uh we founded it um last summer, and we had our very first exhibit um in December. It was called the Tamalada exhibit, where we showcased um the various regions of Texas. There's seven official regions, and we so we solicited essays and pictures from families from the seven regions, and that was our first exhibit at uh City Hall, Dallas, downtown. And that was very you know well received, and and so now we are on our second exhibit uh called Tehanas at the Alamo Conduits of Remembrance, and um that's an exhibit that is currently being shown at um the Hall of State at the State Fair of Texas. So if any of you are interested, uh it's running through May the 8th, and uh it's basically you know bringing attention to and and highlighting the women who were present uh during the siege of the Alamo, during the battle between Santana and the Mexican forces, and the Texian troops that were being headed by David Crockett and James Bowie and you know that yeah, that that history there. And so this this uh exhibit is showcasing the descendants, and and we have essays printed out of the descendants of these women who were there, who were one of the few survivors uh of that that battle, and uh they they're very proud of that that tradition, that history, and uh they we solicited essays from them, and some of them actually came to speak during the uh reception. And um, so it was very nice, very also very well received, and we don't have an actual brick and mortar uh place yet, but we are you know doing whatever it takes, uh talking to the appropriate uh uh people and going through the right channels to try to get uh eventually uh a place of our own, because right now we're just basically um exhibiting wherever we can find space. Yeah. So just wanted to. That sounds like a dope ass event, man. Yeah, yeah. So if you're in town or you're gonna be in Dallas uh between uh whenever you're listening to this in 2023 through the month of May, 8th. Uh 8th of May, uh, you're welcome to it's free and open to the public Monday through Friday, and I believe they're also open on Saturday, and uh the closes um depending on the day that you go, it's either five o'clock or seven o'clock, but um it's uh it's there for you, it's for the community. Come check it out. I did the introductory essay to it, uh, did a little history and I put it into context. And so uh if you do go out there and you know, just don't don't hesitate to reach out and and and let me know what you thought of the exhibit. And we have another one that we're planning for late summer of uh 2023. Um I'll make an announcement once it's official. Awesome. That sounds great, man.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Yeah, congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. So today we're going to be talking about the horse. Of course. El Quaco. Every once in a while, I see a story posted on social media claiming that horses never went extinct in the Americas, and that indigenous people had the horse long before the arrival of Europeans. And if you've spent any time on indigenous social media, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. Supporters of this claim seek to dispel what they view as a Eurocentric myth, a myth that, in their eyes, buries the true history of the horse in the Americas by discounting indigenous oral traditions and ignoring archaeological evidence that would reshape our understanding of history. But do these claims stand up to scrutiny? Did the horse really go extinct in the Americas? And what does all of this have to do with a certain religious zealot from the 1800s? Well, dear listeners, hold on tight, because it's going to be a bumpy ride as we explore indigenous people of the Americas and the horse. So let's start by giving a brief overview of what is currently known about the evolution of the horse. Listeners should know that for this episode, I drew from multiple books, articles, oral traditions, as well as episode number 786 of the Skeptoid Podcast, which deals with the same topic. Links to the sources will be included in the show notes. Shout out. So, over a span of 50 million years, the horse, a mammal belonging to the Equidae family, underwent a remarkable evolutionary journey that transformed the Eohippus, a small forest-dwelling creature the size of a dog, into the majestic modern horse. Among all animals, paleozoologists have been able to reconstruct the evolutionary lineage of the horse with the highest level of precision. Most of this evolutionary process occurred in North America, where horses originated but eventually went extinct about 11 to 13,000 years ago during the end of the Pleistocene. In fact, this era saw the extinction of some 32 genera of megafauna in the Americas. This included horses, camels, cave bears, the giant sloth, mammoth, giant beaver, and saber-toothed cats, just to name a few. Man, that's a lot. That is a lot. Of the the Pleistocene Extinction or the Pleistocene Megafauna Extinction. That's a really cool uh cool name, too. The current prevailing evidence helps explain how horses evolved in the Americas and crossed back and forth across Beringia throughout their evolutionary history. The horses that remained in the Americas went through multiple extinctions, but the population was continuously renewed as horses crossed back and forth in the age prior to their disappearance. However, by the time the last extinction occurred, the Beringian landbridge no longer existed. This meant that repopulation was no longer a possibility, and the horse, along with the other megafawny, megafawny, megafauna that we previously mentioned, went extinct in the Americas for the last time. Mega megafaunny. Mega megafaunny. So basically, the horses were crossing back and forth across Beringia. It wasn't until the arrival of Christopher Columbus that horses returned to the Americas. These horses were of Iberian origin and were first brought to Hispaniola and later introduced to Panama, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, and later to Florida in 1538. The first horses to set foot on the mainland were those brought by Hernán Cortes. Subsequent explorers like Coronado and De Soto brought even more horses, which were either sourced from Spain or breeding locations established in the Caribbean. Over time, as Spanish missions were constructed on the mainland, horses were often lost or stolen and eventually proliferated into large herds of feral horses, whom the Spaniards called mesteños or mustangs. Despite Spanish efforts to keep the horse out of indigenous hands, native people saw the value of the horse and acquired them through various means. The largest transfer of horses to indigenous people occurred after the 1680 Pueblo Revolt in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This indigenous uprising resulted in the expulsion of Spanish forces, including their Mesoamerican auxiliaries, from New Mexico and the release of approximately 1,500 Spanish horses. These horses were traded with other indigenous groups and quickly spread across North America.

SPEAKER_05 12:58

Goodbye, horses.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Oh no, sir. I must say you're wrong. Therein lies the conundrum. While there is no material evidence of horses in the Americas between their last extinction almost 11,000 years ago, to the arrival of Europeans on the American mainland roughly 500 years ago, there are groups who claim that the horse never went extinct in the Americas. By extension, proponents of this claim also advance the notion that indigenous people have a long, unbroken historical relationship with the horse, which predates Spanish arrival. Unfortunately, the evidence presented, and you'll notice in the script that I put little quotations on the screen. Yeah, the scare quotes for evidence. The evidence presented relies almost entirely on deliberate misrepresentations of actual studies. These dubious sources are then baked with the work of known pseudo-scholars and Mormon propagandists, and what emerges is a veritable stew of fiction, fantasy, and wishful thinking. Unfortunately for them, these half-baked claims are without merit and fall flat upon scrutiny. The following are the three main camps which advocate the never-extinct American horse hypothesis.

SPEAKER_05 14:35

Number one, individuals from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormons, who notoriously promote pseudo-history in an effort to present the Book of Mormon as a factually based historical document rather than simply as a religious text, which is what it is, really, if you think about it. Conservationists who are working to get wild horses granted the status of a threatened or endangered species.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

So the first group, the Mormons, promote the idea that horses never went extinct in the Americas because this would support claims made in the Book of Mormon. You see, the Book of Mormon was written by an individual who didn't know that there were no horses in the Americas during the time period that the Book of Mormon is set in. To make the book historically accurate, an alternative and counterfactual history needs to be created by the modern Mormon Church, because the Book of Mormon mentions horses multiple times, stating that they were known and used by the Jaredites and the people of Lehi.

SPEAKER_05 16:01

One Nephi 1825. Wait, is that how you say that? How do you say that?

SPEAKER_00 16:06

I assume. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 16:09

Is it one Nephi verse 18? No, chapter 18, verse 25. Is that how that goes?

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Maybe. Okay. If they're following like the Bible. Alright, so let's try again.

SPEAKER_05 16:20

One Nephi. Chapter 18, verse 25. Quote. And it came to pass that we did find upon the land of promise as we journeyed in the wilderness that there were beasts in the forest of every kind, both the cow and the ox, and the ass, and the horse, and the goat, and the wild goat, and all manner of wild animals, which were for the use of men. And we did find all manner of ore, both of gold and of silver, and of copper. And Alma chapter 18, verse 9. Quote And they said unto him, Behold, he's feeding thy horses. Now the king had commanded his servants, previous to the time of the watering of the flocks, that they should prepare his horses and chariots and conduct him forth to the land of Nephi, for there had been a great feast appointed at the land of Nephi by the father of Limoni, who was king all over the land.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

That's right. You want to see my horses? Of course, the Book of Mormon is a religious text and not a source of historical, archaeological, genetic, or linguistic evidence. And considering the origins of this particular text, I can state with confidence that we shouldn't be using the Book of Mormon to prove anything other than the salesmanship of one Joseph Smith. The second group, the wild horse conservationists, want to get wild horses granted the status of a threatened or endangered species. However, this status is only granted to native species original to the continent since the first contact period between Europe and America. A species that went extinct and was later reintroduced, such as the horse, doesn't usually qualify for this protected status. This has led some conservationists to embrace and actively promote the narrative that horses never went extinct in the Americas to further their cause.

SPEAKER_05 18:41

For example, one conservationist website states, it had been thought that they mysteriously went extinct in the hemisphere almost 12,000 years ago. However, recent scientific research and archaeological digs have provided a considerable body of evidence that some remnant horses did survive and continued to endure up to the time of the colonization of the Americas by Europeans.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Don't you just hate having your favorite podcast interrupted by ads like this? Well, dear listener, you're in luck. Because starting at just three bucks a month, you can support independent Chicano Media and receive ad-free episodes, premium episodes, bonus content, and access to our Discord server. Just visit talesfromastlantis.com and click Go Premium or follow the link in the show notes. And now, on with the show. While I'm sympathetic to the cause of protecting the wild horse, I don't think we need to rewrite history in order to do so. There are currently no known archaeological sites that support the claims made in that website. Now, for what it's worth, I think the fact that horses evolved in the Americas and eventually went extinct here is a strong enough argument that wild horses are a native species, as they all descend from that original group of horses. Horses came from here. It's a fact. Promoting the pseudo-historical claim that horses were always here does our ancestors a disservice. And this brings us to the third and final group, which is comprised of some, but not all, indigenous groups who see the history of the horse as intrinsically intertwined with their own, and who maintain through oral tradition that the horse has always been here and never went extinct in the Americas. Now, let me be clear, I have great respect for oral tradition, but I think we make a mistake when we promote oral traditions as literal retellings of the past instead of malleable stories whose narratives can shift and evolve to better suit the cultural needs of the time. I think treating oral traditions as some sort of immutable truth robs our ancestors of their basic humanity by painting them as these romanticized, infallible beings. To put it bluntly, people make stuff up all the time, and it's not always for a bad reason. Now, these three groups tend to rely on the same bits of evidence to support their claims. I'm not going to go into a deep analysis of all of them, but I wanted to include one particular example the Pratt Cave site near El Paso. Texas. Of the handful of archaeological sites used to bolster the claim that horses were always here, I find Pratt Cave to be a perfect example of how actual archaeological research is often deliberately misrepresented in the service of pseudo-history and conspiracy. The Pratt Cave site is presented as evidence in the article Were There Horses in the Americas Before Columbus? But yeah, there were. Like that's the wrong question to be asking, right? Like, we know there were. By Dr. Stephen E. Jones. So who's Dr. Stephen E. Jones? Well, from the website Archie Fantasies. Dr.

SPEAKER_05 22:44

Jones is a retired physicist from Brigham Young University, known for his 9-11 truther theories and his ideas about cold nuclear fusion. He's active on several websites involved in proving the Book of Mormon as factually true and has chosen American horses as his evidence.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

In his article for Ancient American magazine, a well-known source of pseudohistory and conspiracism, Dr. Jones states.

SPEAKER_05 23:15

The first of these found in Pratt Cave near El Paso, Texas, by Professor Ernest Lendelius of Texas AM University. Professor Lindelius responded to my inquiries and provided a horse bone from Pratt Cave, which he dated to BCE 6020 through 5890. This date is well since the last ice age, into the time frame when all American horses should have been absent according to the prevailing paradigm.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Well, on its face, the argument appears pretty solid, right? Dr. Lindelius, a professor from Texas AM, conducted research at Pratt Cave and excavated a human occupation site there. Horse bones were found associated with the site, thus proving that horses existed in the Americas long after they should have gone extinct. But is that really what happened? Well, not exactly. Once again, from Archifantasies.

SPEAKER_05 24:18

Pratt Cave is roundly accepted to be a Holocene starting roughly about 11,700 years ago site, and within the collection of artifacts associated with that time period, no extinct species are found. And this is from the site Harris 2013. I'm not sure who that is. Do you know who that is? Harris 2013? I do not. This means that there are no horse bones found that are related to the actual findings for the cave assemblage. Lindelius did indeed find two specimens of Equus in the cave, again from Harris 2013. These two bones were found on or very near the surface, not in the associate artifact assemblage of Pratt Cave.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

So I read Dr. Lindelius' report, and he clearly states that the horse bones represent modern, feral, or domesticated horses. So one wonders why Dr. Jones chose to ignore that particular tidbit, right?

SPEAKER_05 25:20

Especially since it's talking about the key word here being, or the operative word being what? Modern. Modern. How convenient that they leave that out, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Exactly. So basically, when you excavate a site, you know, you dig down. And in archaeology, we have what's called the uh the law of superposition. And the law of superposition states that generally the stuff that's deeper in the ground is older than the stuff that's near the surface.

SPEAKER_05 25:51

You don't say.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

And you know, there are exceptions to this. We, you know, natural disasters, what we call bioturbation of animals getting in there and mixing stuff around. But basically, what happened is Lindelius uh excavated this human occupation site and encountered a human occupation site, but further up near the surface were some horse bones, which were modern horsebones. So they were not even in direct association with the actual artifact assemblage that he was studying.

SPEAKER_04 26:24

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

So if you're using that as your evidence, that's a huge swing and a miss in my opinion. Recent research. The horses never went extinct claim was recently given new life thanks to social media and the misinterpretation of the paper, the early dispersal of domestic horses into the Great Plains and Northern Rockies, recently published in the journal Science. After examining archaeological remains of horses, research researchers suggest indigenous peoples spread the animals through the American West by the first half of the 1600s, before they encountered Europeans.

SPEAKER_05 27:12

As stated in Smithsonian magazine, three of the horses with remains from Wyoming, Kansas, and New Mexico date to before the Pueblo Revolt. And rather than simply roaming the countryside on their own, the horses appear to have been part of Native American culture. Dental damage on one horse and bony growth on the skull of another suggest people had put bridles on the animals. Per science news Bruce Bauer. Certain chemical elements in the creature's teeth signaled they ate maize and indigenous crop. And another horse had a healed facial fracture, meaning it might have been given veterinary attention, per life science. The researchers compared the ancient horses' DNA with that of modern horses, and found that the centuries-old equines had largely Spanish ancestry. Together, the findings suggest horses spread from Spanish settlements in the American Southwest to the northern Rockies and Central Great Plains by the first half of the 17th century, per the paper.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

Now, don't get me wrong, it's a really cool paper and really cool research, and it places horses in indigenous hands about a hundred years earlier than previously thought. Basically, after the arrival of the Spanish, some of their horses ran away or were stolen and then incorporated into native cultures. Fascinating stuff for sure, and an example of science in action. But what the paper does not claim is that horses were always here. In fact, the paper says the exact opposite.

SPEAKER_05 29:05

Taylor et al. They found no evidence for direct Pleistocene ancestry of North American horses. But they did find that horses of European descent had been integrated into indigenous cultures across Western North America long before the arrival of Europeans in that region. That's the operative phrase there. In that region.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

Exactly. Yep. So the problem is nobody on social media is bothering to actually read the paper. No. Instead, shocking, right? You don't say. Instead, they read the headlines and then they associate the paper with the claims of, you know, the horses were always here, crowd. You then copy, share, and repeat, and now you have a whole new wave of people thinking that there was a scientific paper proving that horses never went extinct in the Americas.

SPEAKER_05 30:14

You know, what's funny is that when Origin came out, Jennifer Raff's book, a lot of people were also assuming that she was making the claim that humans had always been in the Americas. It was weird they didn't read the book. Yeah, because they didn't read the book. Yeah. Strange.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

So yeah, and I'm seeing this. I'm seeing this online that people are sharing uh you know links to this story, to this paper, thinking that it supports the claim that horses were always here and they're not actually reading the the paper.

SPEAKER_05 30:55

Checkmate.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

Yeah, right. And honestly, I think some of the media outlets reporting on the paper share some of the blame. For example, check out these ambiguous and somewhat sensationalistic headlines.

SPEAKER_05 31:11

New research rewrites the history of American horses. Smithsonian magazine. Native Americans used horses far earlier than historians had believed.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

The hill. Right? So if all you read are those, right, it kind of sounds and you're already predisposed to think that the horses were always here, and you see those headlines.

SPEAKER_05 31:32

I told you science is finally catching up to indigenous ways of knowing. Oh my goodness. Did you read, did you read the paper?

SPEAKER_00 31:44

So, yeah, and and if you never bothered to read the actual paper or the stories associated with the paper, you can be convinced that the latest research confirms the idea that horses were always here. Fortunately, not all media outlets had such terrible headlines.

SPEAKER_05 32:01

For example, horses came to American West by early 1600s, study finds. This is the AP. Native Americans corralled Spanish horses decades before Europeans arrived by Science News. So those headlines are way better. Yeah, I think they they do a much better service to the actual story than the previous ones.

SPEAKER_00 32:26

Yeah, I mean, they're actually conveying the information that's presented in the paper, right? Within the confines of a headline, which you don't have a lot of room to work with anyway. And as we know, people like to just read headlines and then share.

SPEAKER_05 32:39

They're still too long. I'm I'm of the opinion that your head that your line, your headline, your title should be short and sweet. I mean, in history, we have a habit of doing like these super long um titles, but that's because it's a history paper. But for like a blog post or a little news story, like your headlines shouldn't take up no more than one line on a page. If it's more than half of a line of a page, you've there's too many words in there.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

Yeah, yeah. Editing is key.

SPEAKER_05 33:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

You know, but I I especially like the AP headline.

SPEAKER_05 33:10

Yeah, that one was short and sweet, and it's to the point, and it doesn't sensationalize, and it's uh it leaves it open for you to like, hmm, let me find out what is this paper actually saying.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

Exactly. Now, look, I know that a lot of our people have an inherent distrust of science and academia, some of which is absolutely deserved. We need to acknowledge the biases that many non-native researchers have, but the answer isn't to be blinded by our own biases, along with the outright dismissal of the quote-unquote white man's science. Rather, we need indigenous archaeologists, indigenous historians, indigenous geneticists, etc., to tell our own stories. Science does not belong to any one particular ethnic group or race, and we do ourselves a disservice when we act like it does. You wanna see my horses? And and here's the thing, right? I'm not even against the idea that that you ask that somebody would ask the question, you know, is it possible that horses did not go extinct during the Pleistocene? That's like a a valid hypothesis to me. But it's a hypothesis that you can test. Right? You can test it using the tools of science.

SPEAKER_05 34:37

Well, you know, uh as a historian, I'm gonna just make it even simpler than that. I'm gonna I'm gonna throw this out there and see what you think. Um, if it had been the case that horses never went extinct, and when the Spanish first arrived on the American mainland, I mean, you would think that the horse would have made it throughout most, at least most of North America, which includes Mexico and what we call Central America. They would have seen horses everywhere. So there would have been horses in Mexico as well. It's not like the border all you know that exists today, all of a sudden, like back then the horse is like, well, we can't go south of the river, south of the Rio Grande, and south of that line that's gonna exist uh, you know, 300 years from now. And so those people down there don't know of our existence, but we do up here. You know, the people up here do, but down there they don't. Like it just doesn't make sense, even if you're looking at it from a historical perspective. The horse would have been so ubiquitous, it would have been everywhere. The mexica, the aztec, the washotzinka, the tlatelop, everyone who encountered the Spanish would have seen the horse and they would have said, Yeah, we got horses too, and Ike, right? Like that wouldn't have been such a big deal.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

Well, and not only that, but these are these are civilizations that built monumental architecture and built massive temples. If they had had beasts of burden, like a horse, yep, yep, they would have the empire building. Imagine like the Meshika, yeah, right. They especially would have had horses everywhere because they would have been such a valuable tool.

SPEAKER_05 36:16

They would have been like the Mongol Empire, essentially. It would have overrun most of North America, at least well into the plains, if they'd had the horse. Absolutely. I mean, look at look at the Comanche example, right? The Cheyenne and the Lakota, who, you know, the cultures that pride themselves, you know, because of the the the horse culture that that that evolved after it was introduced. Now I imagine that same kind of mentality with the Mexica and the uh and the Aztecs. Right? I mean, there's just no way that the horse only existed in certain pockets of North America and it didn't in other places, especially in places where you have these, like you were saying, these um societies and these civilizations, these cultures that were able to erect monumental structures. You would think that even just by trade, because we know that trade existed between Mesoamerica and what is now called the Southwest, and from the Southwest to other parts of the plains and up into the Pacific Northwest, and well into there's evidence of trade networks connecting central Mexico as far as you know, east and and northeast as you know the Great Lakes, and into even you know the uh Hadunoshane uh areas, right? So even just by word of mouth, even if the the horse by itself didn't exist in central Mexico for whatever reason, right? They would have at least known of its existence by the sheer of uh uh information that was traded during these various expeditions that the Mexica Este did with the Posteca going into these various places.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

Yeah, and and not only that, but these trade networks would have been even more robust had they had horses. Because imagine how much stuff they could have carried instead of these burden baskets that they were carrying on their backs, with you know, they traded macaw, they traded chocolate, you know, cacao, but they wouldn't have you know traded horses. Yeah, and they wouldn't, and if they had a horse, they wouldn't have ridden horses to do this trade. Right. And the amount of trade goods that would be here would be uh astronomical if they had horses to transport goods.

SPEAKER_05 38:33

It would have been a it would have been a completely different scenario had the horse actually existed in the Americas when the Spanish arrived, the story would have been completely different from what we know it today. Yeah. I mean, just the outcome of those two cultures meeting themselves head to head. I mean, the mexica had the upper hand. If it wasn't for the diseases that basically did them in, the mexica would have uh overpowered the the Spanish and their allies. And in fact, the Spanish wouldn't have had the opportunity to recruit so many indigenous allies in the thousands if it were not for the fact that the Mexica were seen as becoming weak because of the diseases that were doing them in, not because they were weak inherently, right? It was because the diseases were were basically depopulating the major urban centers, especially Tenochtitlan. And that's when all these city-states that were allied with the Mexica Azteca decided to jump ship and say, well, maybe we need to get on board with these other guys, you know, because if yeah, if the mexica are gonna fall, then at least we could the times are changing. Times are changing, let's get into the good graces here. And if it had not been for the fact that they didn't have the horse, that would have changed everything had they had it. Uh the battle would have been more eye to eye than it ended up being, and the outcome of that would have been completely different than what we know it when we understand it today. So just even, I mean, that just basing it on that as a historian, right? That's what I'm looking at when I hear these things, I'm saying it just doesn't make any sense. It just doesn't make any sense that the horse would only exist in one part of North America and not in other parts of North America, unless you just kind of think that it magically it only existed in one space.

SPEAKER_00 40:18

Yeah, which is highly unrealistic because even knowing what we know about the Pueblo Revolt, right? With those 1,500 horses that the Pueblo people acquired after they kicked out the Spanish, there was this massive trading of those horses. Exactly. So just with that small example, we know if there had been horses, they would have been everywhere because everybody, like, how do you not use something as valuable as a horse?

SPEAKER_05 40:48

And how do you even contain it, right? I mean, the the sheer fact that the Spanish lost so many horses, you know, that became the Mustang, which I looked into the word mesteño, where the word mustang comes from, mesteño. It comes from the old Latin, and it basically means mixed, mixed. Yeah, it comes from mixto mesteño, and that's the evolution of the word. And the reason why they use the word mesteño, the Spanish, is because um they viewed that the wild horses to not be pure, they were intermixing in the wild. So they were they were it's kind of like calling them mestizos almost. Yeah, that's that's what the word mesteño means.

SPEAKER_00 41:27

Yeah, mustangs are the the Mexicans of the horse, right?

SPEAKER_05 41:31

That would have been the experience of of these people, uh, unless they had they had uh the ability to to corral them all, which I doubt. There's always uh you know a few that get away and and they create their own uh feral herds, right? But even if they had had the ability, had the horse existed, to be able to domesticate it and corral it and and you know, and um you know be able to ride it and and use it for hunting and for warfare. I mean, just the history would have been so much different, even if you're not even looking at the science behind it, just the history itself.

SPEAKER_00 42:12

Yeah, would have been different. Uh, you know, members pottery, we've got pottery, we've got petroglyphs of traitors that have been interpreted as people who are traders or pochtecas, we call them in Nahuatl, carrying goods on their backs. On their back.

SPEAKER_05 42:29

Isn't that what the coco peli is also purported to alleged to be a pushback?

SPEAKER_00 42:36

Yeah. I've heard that. I don't know. I've you know that's one of the claims that are made. One of the claims, right? But regardless, you know, why would they be sending people on foot on foot if they had horses? If they had horses, and the other thing is is you know, claiming that, oh no, we always had horses, uh horses were always here, you know, it it really discounts indigenous ingenuity, you know. The people who could like going back to the Mexica, to these individuals who built this monumental architecture, the fact that they were able to do this without a horse, without the horse, exactly.

SPEAKER_05 43:14

But it was aliens.

SPEAKER_00 43:15

I thought you knew that. So this is amazing. Like we have this amazing history that didn't need the horse of all these, you know, trade networks and civilizations that were built. And then even after the horse was brought, you have uh like the Nez Pierce, right? They they created the breed of the uh the Appaloosa. And it's like robbing from them, too, to be like, ah, we always had horses.

SPEAKER_05 43:41

Do they claim that that that that breed of horse has always existed? Is that something that I think that was?

SPEAKER_00 43:47

That is a good question. I don't know. If anybody out there does know, uh hit us up on the social medias because I would like to know the answer to that question. I do know because I um I spoke to uh Some Lakota people and they're like, Well, according to our oral traditions, we didn't have the horse. Okay. So you know, there's also that. And then they're saying, like, no, we did not have horses until you know white people showed up.

SPEAKER_05 44:15

And so and so to be clear, the indigenous people who are making these claims about the the horse always existing in the Americas, never the never gone extinct horse uh hypothesis or whatever I called it earlier. Um that's a minority. Yeah, yeah. This is a very, very small minority of people who for some reason now can we be more specific as to what kind of minority this? I mean, these aren't people in the community saying this stuff, right? Who are these people? More I mean, the ones that you the the that are the more vocal within within this this group of people who are indigenous and who are advancing this claim, right?

SPEAKER_00 44:57

Who they they they tend to be um you know, I hate to rail on it again, but they tend to be uh ethnic studies uh people um in universities, um, and you know, social uh activists and um who really when you read their writings, they really have a chip on their shoulder. So they're like, you know, we need to, you know, our history is written with all these biases of of white people and that needs to be done away with, but then they come at it with their own biases, right? Like and they let it known right off the bat.

SPEAKER_05 45:35

It's not it's not like it's it's a it's I don't know if this is a good uh parallel or or uh but um it's almost like the black omic, right? It's like you take it to the extreme, right? Like your history has been, you know, told a certain way and your people have been treated a certain way, and now that you're in those circles where you have a voice and where you can, you know, uh influence others, you take it to the extreme and then make these. Yeah, now it's your turn to say crazy shit without evidence or or cherry picking the evidence to to fit the argument that that you're trying to advance and discounting that evidence which does not support it. And and this is problematic, you know, people might say, well, yeah, if if it's a minority of folks, then you know who cares, whatever, let them have their say. Maybe eventually one day they'll they'll uh reconsider and and you know change their mind and and and and that's great to to think about, but when you consider that in history textbooks, and there's one in particular that I know of personally because I've used it in my classes, when we're looking at the very first chapter where we're introducing indigenous societies and cultures that existed prior to the arrival of Europeans. Um there's um there's a textbook that actually I'm not sure if it's the Pratt Cave, the one that that we discuss just now, or if it's a different one, but they show almost like a um like a petroglyph or some kind of rock, and they use that as a reference to suggest they're not like saying directly, yes, we know for a fact, but they're implying that there's a question out there and that's being debated, almost kind of like the whole climate change thing where you try to both sides it when there's really no two sides to that. Yeah, you just kind of they're mudding the waters, they're trying to almost like both sides it when in fact there really is no evidence. And like you were saying earlier, with the with the Pratt Cave, it could be one of those things where maybe the rock shows signs of their of it being carved uh in in in you know thousands of years ago before the the arrival of the Spanish, and then all of a sudden maybe someone came along at a later date after the horse was introduced and then carved something that resembles a horse. I mean that could be it. Well right that could be it.

SPEAKER_00 48:05

Yeah, I'll tell you from personal experience. I've done uh survey work on uh certain reservations, I don't want to say which one, but on this reservation I had to do some rockfall mitigation, and there were uh pictographs and petroglyphs that needed to be protected during the uh the blasting that was going to take place to to mitigate this rockfall. And while I was up there, there were numerous, you know, what they call quote unquote, you know, uh pre-contact, prehistoric uh petroglyphs that were recognizable and the motifs, you recognize the motifs, and you know, in association with artifacts, you can kind of gauge like, oh well, it must have been this timeline when when these petroglyphs were were drawn, and then not you know, three meters away, there's another petroglyph of a horse. And it it was huge. And you know, nobody on that reservation is looking at those at those petroglyph panels and being like, oh, this must mean that our ancestors had horses because they know the history of their region, they know the history of their own, of their own land, and they're like, oh yeah, these are horses that were drawn this probably in the 1800s. Uh somebody drew this petroglyph of of a horse and etched it onto the same rock as these other because it's our freaking rock. You know, we could draw whatever we want on it. And nobody's saying, well, there's look, you know, prehistoric petroglyph, and then there's a horse. Obviously, horses are prehistoric and we're known by these people. It that's like such a uh uh bizarre leap in logic to me to look at that and think that you know, a lot of this comes from this postmodern way of looking at the world where they're just like, look, this is a story that makes me feel good. And so this is a story I'm going to believe. You know, despite any uh evidence to the contrary, it makes me feel good, therefore I'm going to lay claim to it and promote it as you know as a fact. And I think this is a dangerous way to approach history. And uh you know, I mean, and we're seeing stuff like we're seeing the results of this play out in real time where we saw an actual historical event like the storming of the capital being rewritten in real time by people who are just coming up with these weird narratives that are like, nope, that's actually not what happened, and they're rewriting it. And so we're seeing for ourselves, you know, how history can be distorted and just because it makes them feel good, because it it it conforms to the narrative of how they see the world, they're pushing this alternate view of history, and so we could see now this is dangerous when we do this, it's not harmless, like ah, well, what's the harm, right? They're gonna think whatever they want and just let it go because that's how it starts, and then it evolves to well, now the olmecs were black, or you know, now uh solutrians, white people came and and civilized the Americas. You know, it it could start off innocuous in in to some people, but there's it always the the end point is never good, is I guess what I'm trying to say.

SPEAKER_05 51:24

Yeah, that's uh it's part of our our current existence today where academia, scholarship, people who are deemed to be elites, uh are perceived to be uh you know, sometimes the enemy, or sometimes people who don't have communities' best interests at heart. You know, they they are just looking out for themselves, they're they're trying to advance their own careers at the expense of people's, you know, personal beliefs, cultures, uh, etc. And uh I guess you know, if if we're going to um paint this uh in in a positive light uh in of any sort, the people who are indigenous and who are advancing these kinds of arguments in their scholarship, mainly it's really people who are in academia or adjacent to academia in some way who are making these points uh by and large, um, you know, they could they could say, well, you know, for the longest time, as you were saying earlier, Clearly, the you know, history and you know, white people have told our history a certain way, full of misconceptions, full of uh lies, full of um stereotypes and and racist tropes, etc. So now it's our turn to flip it on its head. If nothing matters anymore, if if if uh if the facts be damned in the all you know corners of of our existence, of our life today, then you know why can't we also be a part of that? Why can't we also turn these traditional narratives on their head and try to advance our position as long as it advances our people in a certain in a positive way? And and what I hear you saying is that the the while that may be true, maybe in in the immediate effect, it might be true that it's it's making things uh more positive for those communities, the long-term effects of advancing pseudo history and pseudoscience and um narratives that are not based on on facts and evidence and and and and truth, you know, that those could end up hurting the communities in the long run because they're based on on something that is inaccurate and false.

SPEAKER_00 53:38

Yeah, yeah, it would be detrimental in in the long run because it's it's based on a false foundation. And I'm all about the truth, man. You know what I say about the truth. What do you say, Curly? The truth? Well, it's like medicine. It doesn't always taste good, but it is always good for you. Horses, horses, horses.

SPEAKER_02 56:08

Pero todo pescar los viuvenir, los biopach, dices todo en la noche pasa y dijo, o no tu estás muy equivocado. Me podías sentir decir que estás muy equivocado. O no me vas a escuchar, dijiste, lo he visto todo ya. Estuve ahí, viví mis sueños y esperanzas de rompar, el cielo vi, empezar a caer, dices todo él. La noche pasa y dijo, o no tu estás muy equivocado. Debo disentir decir que estás muy equivocado. O no me vas a escuchar.

unknown 58:47

Adiós, caballa.

SPEAKER_03 58:52

Abuelo sobre ti, adiós, caballa, abre, adiós, cabello, y si pala, adiós, caballa. Adiós, bueno, yes.