Selection of Studs
There was little or no effort to mate certain stallions with selected mares. The studs were permitted to mate with any mare in a man’s herd. However, the most successful breeders were careful in the choice of their stallions. A man who desired to raise colts of a certain color chose a stallion of that color for a stud. If he wished for large colts he selected a stallion of greater than average size. If he wanted fast animals above all else, he employed a stallion of demonstrated swiftness. Generally men with small herds possessed a single stallion. Owners of large herds kept four or more stallions. Usually all other males were castrated. The Blackfoot recognized that some stallions were poor breeders. If, after a period of trial, a stallion failed to produce colts in the number or quality desired, a man who could afford to do so replaced that stud with another one.
Three Calf, whose father owned a fine herd of 40 pinto horses, said his father had but one stallion, a large, black pinto, bred from his own herd. Many Horses owned a number of stallions, pintos of several varieties, which he used for no other purpose than breeding and on which he lavished great care. His stallions were never broken to the saddle. Stingy, who bred for size, used a large horse for a stud. He rode it, and kept it picketed at night in the spring breeding season to prevent other Indians from making use of it. When colts dropped, he herded them with the mares and colts. The Piegan sometimes called Stingy “White Man,” because he raised such large horses. Other breeders selected their stallions for swiftness regardless of their size or coloring. All careful breeders took pains to obtain the best horses they could get of the type they most desired for studs. However, most men were too poor or too careless to devote much thought to stallion selection. They were happy just to possess a stallion. “That is why there were so many scrub, no good horses around.”
If a man owned one or more mares but no stallion he might go to his neighbor’s herd at night and “borrow” his stud to mate with his own mare, without the knowledge of the stallion’s owner. This is said to have been a rather common practice.
Careful breeders also took pains to prevent old, broken-down stallions of their neighbors from mingling with their mares. Where so many horse herds were pastured in the neighborhood of a camp this was a difficult task. However, boys caring for the herds of cautious owners were instructed to keep their herds separate in breeding season and to drive away undesirable stallions that came near them. If a poor old stallion was found bothering their mares, the boys caught him, threw him down, and tied a large buffalo rib or hip bone to his forelock. The frightened animal left on the run. If a stray stallion persisted in bothering a man’s herd, the herd owner told the stallion’s owner to take better care of his horses thereafter.
Maintenance of Color Lines
Some men tried to build up herds of a single color. Three Calf said that after his father possessed 40 pintos he made no attempt to add to his herd except by breeding. He gave away any horses given him, and disposed of any colts bred to his herd that were not pintos. Many-White-Horses, so named because all the horses in his herd were whites or grays, traded any dark-colored horses he obtained for white ones. Nevertheless, his horses were said to have been of rather poor quality. They were small, tender-hoofed animals. When the Government furnished large stallions to Piegan owners, Many-White-Horses refused to accept them. He feared the stallions would injure his small mares. So he continued to raise large numbers of little horses. They had more prestige than practical value.
Joseph Sherburne recalled that when he traveled the Blackfeet Reservation (in the first decade of the twentieth century) making collections for his father’s store, some Indian owners of large herds still specialized in horses of a particular color or conformation. He learned to recognize the peculiarities of the horses of different owners so that he could tell from a distance the ownership of many range horses by their appearance. There were 10 or 12 owners on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana at that time whose horses were readily distinguishable by their physical appearance. Mr. Sherburne said the uniformity of these herds was maintained both by selection of studs and by swapping of horses which failed to exhibit the desired characteristics.
George Catlin, “Wild Horses at Play”
This 1830s painting by George Catlin (Figure 2.2) depicts a herd of wild horses on the Great Plains. It might be perceived as an illustration of raw, frontier nature. But how does the environmental history of the horse shape your understanding of this image? A painting that at first seems to suggest untouched American nature at some level portrays Eurasian organisms transforming their adopted homeland. Are these wild horses in some measure the side effects of colonialism? Or is the image even more complicated? Some of these animals may have escaped from Indian camps. Might their physical characteristics, their coloring, and even their size have been shaped by the influence of Indian horse breeders? Is the nature in this image, the Great Plains and its horses, more Eurasian or more American? Both? Neither?
Figure 2.2 Wild horses at play.
Source: From George Catlin, Wild Horses at Play (1834–7), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Public Domain.
3 Colonial Natures Marketing the Countryside
The far-reaching environmental changes of the colonial period owe their origins in part to the organisms described in Chapter 2, but they also stem from the very distinctive goals Europeans had in their relations with nature. William Cronon, in an excerpt from his prize-winning book Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, reveals how many of the most significant changes resulting from the arrival of European colonists in the Americas came about because the colonists sought to sell products of American ecosystems as commodities in the transatlantic market. Among the pre-eminent commodities of the colonial economy was livestock. Settlers raised domesticated animals partly to make money. The spread of livestock across New England thus reflected the expansion of the market economy. It brought profound social and environmental developments, including wholesale shifts in property relations (suggested by the proliferation of the fence, a device for controlling livestock) and New England ecology. As you read this selection, keep your eye on the ways that market demand for livestock encouraged their propagation and attendant environmental changes.
A World of Fields and Fences
William Cronon
(Excerpt from Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill & Wang, 1983.)
One must not exaggerate the differences between English and Indian agricultures. The two in many ways resembled each other in the annual cycles by which they tracked the seasons of the year. Although English fields, unlike Indian ones, were cultivated by men as well as women and contained a variety of European grains and garden plants which were segregated into single-species plots, their most important crop was the same maize grown by Indians. Like the Indians, the English began working their fields when the land thawed and cleared of snow sometime in March. They too planted in late March, April, and May, and weeded and hilled their corn – if rather more carelessly than the Indians – a month or two later. Summer saw colonists as well as Indians turning to a wide range of different food sources as they became available: fish, shellfish, migratory birds, foraging mammals, and New England’s many wild berries. August through October was the season of harvest when corn was gathered, husked, and stored, and other crops were made ready for the winter months. November and December saw the killing of large mammals – albeit of different species than the Indians had hunted – from the New England woods, the meat and hides of which were then processed for use in