The study found that horses came to the American West in the early 17th century

The horse is a symbol of the American West, but when and how domesticated horses first arrived in the region has long been a matter of historical debate.

A new analysis of horse bones collected from museums across the Great Plains and Northern Rockies has revealed that horses were present in grasslands by the early 17th century, well before many written dates.

The timing is significant because it matches the oral histories of the multiple indigenous groups that recount that their peoples owned Hispanic horses before Europeans physically arrived in their homelands, possibly through trade networks.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Sciencesfeaturing more than 80 co-authors—including archaeologists and geneticists, as well as historians and scholars from the Lakota, Comanche, and Pawnee nations.

Previous genetic research has shown that horse ancestors first evolved in North America millions of years ago, before making their way to the central plains of Europe and Asia, where they were domesticated. But these early ancestors of horses disappeared from the American archaeological record about 6,000 years ago.

In the new study, scientists examined about two dozen groups of equine remains from locations ranging from New Mexico to Idaho to Kansas to establish that horses had been bred by indigenous groups by the early 17th century.

“Every aspect of the human-horse relationship manifests itself in the skeleton in some way,” said University of Colorado archaeologist William Taylor, an author of the study.

The study found that horses were present in the American West and Southwest several decades before the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 — when allied indigenous groups drove Spanish colonists from New Mexico.

The retreating armies left behind thousands of horses and cattle, and many historical accounts have inaccurately identified this moment as the introduction of the horse into the cultures of the indigenous groups of North America.

“Now we can bid farewell to the Pueblo Revolt as an explanation for the spread of the horse in the American West,” said Oxford University archaeologist Peter Mitchell, who was not involved in the study.

But indigenous groups have long disputed this chronology, with the oral histories of many groups telling us that they encountered horses before they met Europeans.

Instead of receiving horses directly from retreating Spanish armies, many oral accounts indicate that indigenous groups first encountered horses that escaped from Spanish encampments, or were traded through tribal networks, said Jamie Arterberry, study author, Comanche tribesman and historian of medicine. Park, Oklahoma.

“We’ve always known and said we encountered horses before we encountered Spaniards,” he said.

The findings show that indigenous peoples’ oral traditions, which have often been neglected by outside historians, have value, said Yvette Running Horse Collin, study author who is an evolutionary geneticist at the Center for Anthropology and Genomics in Toulouse in France and a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation. Unique to understand the past.

“Our cultures have been misrepresented for too long,” she said. “History is often told around us, without us.”

The ambitious research collaboration, initiated by Lakota scholars, is one step in mending the long-simmering mistrust between indigenous groups and archaeologists, who in the early and mid-20th century raided cemeteries and ceremonial sites for cultural artifacts without consent.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 – which created a process for museums and other institutions that receive federal funding to collaborate with tribes in Return stolen sacred objectsIt was a major early step in establishing some measure of trust and communication, said Carlton Shield Schiff Gover, a study author who is a native of the Pawnee Nation and an archaeologist at Indiana University.

“We hope that seeing new research like this will lead to more Indigenous peoples developing their archaeological and anthropological expertise,” he said.

The study also showed that over time, the genes of North American horses shifted from being primarily Hispanic to being a mixture of British and Spanish, reflecting the rise of different empires.

“This means that the shift from a Spanish colonial power to a dominant British colonial power can be seen even in the genome of the horse itself,” said Ludovic Orlando, an author of the study and an evolutionary geneticist at the Center for Anthropology and Genomics in Toulouse.

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