On the Native American Horse and its survival in Patagonia

In his paper El Grupo Lingüistico Tshon de los territorios magallánicos, Robert LEhmann-Nitsche mentions the name of the Tehuelche natives, and offers different explanations. One is the following, and it involves the pre-Hispanic horse, native to the Américas. (Revista del Museo de La Plata, vol.22, 1913).

I have posted several times about extant native American horses, this is additional proof. Below is the relevant text:

"[these] inducethe belief that tehuel may also be an animal, typical of Patagonia, but, which? The reasonings of Aníbal Cardoso³, in my point of view leave no doubt abouth the fact that the autochthonous Argentine horse (Equus rectidiens) has existed during the period of the conquest [by the Spaniards c.1536] and is still alive, though not with pureblood representatives (the last bands in Southern Patagonia must have disappeared during the past years), but crossbred with the imported horse, originating the creole horse. The native linguistics supports this ...
there is among the Araucanians [Mapuches] the native Word for a wild horse: caitá (this is, according to our investigations, the correct spelling), the word is not found in the old dictionaries, but is commented by Lenz¹.
...
It is on record that the Patagons of the South used the word shäch, to designate wild horse (Equus rectidiens), that was gradually replaced by the Spanish word caballo."

³ Cardoso, Antigüedad del Caballo en el Plata. Anales del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural de Buenos Aires. XII, p.271-439. 1912. Nuevos comprobantes a propóito e la antigüedad del caballo en el Plata, ibidiem, XXIV, p. 445-460. 1913.
¹ Lenz, Los elementos indios del castellano de Chile. Santiago de Chile, 1904, p.160.

Below is a picture (Source) of a Tehuelche native, wrapped in his guanaco fur quillango mounting a rather small horse which, seems to have curly hair!!

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Prehispanic Horses in Patagonia (update)

The established consensus is that the Spaniards reintroduced the domestic horses into North and South America following the discovery by Columbus in 1492. In Southern South America, the first horses on record were those left behind by Pedro de Mendoza's failed first founding of Buenos Aires (1536-1541). A few mares and stallions were left behind (why?) and they roamed free on the Pampas breeding at an astounding rate, wild horses soon populated the vast prairies of Central Argentina. The Indians adopted them and they were taken into Patagonia.

With this in mind, a paper published in 2023 (William Timothy Treal Taylor et al. (2023), Interdisciplinary evidence for early domestic horse exploitation in southern Patagonia. Sci.adv.9,eadk5201(2023).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adk5201). describes the remains of horses found in Patagonia.

The site is located in the south of Santa Cruz province, between Gallegos and Coig Rivers. The remains were dated and this is what the paper states:

" Two of these horse specimens produced dates from the early 18th to mid-20th centuries. More sensitive radiocarbon discrimination between samples from this period is typically impossible due to a plateau in the calibration curve. However, one specimen, a right tibia fragment, confidently predates 1800 CE (ca. 1645–1808 cal. CE, 2 sigma calibrated range, AA114998), while a second, from the tooth row, appears to likely predate 1700 CE (ca. 1515–1800 cal. CE, AA115001). A guanaco bone shaft fragment was also successfully dated to ca. 1522–1800 cal. CE (2 sigma calibrated range, AA115000), and carbonized food residue from a single ceramic sherd was dated to a similar range (ca. 1645–1800 cal. CE, 2 sigma, UCIAMS-280680). When analyzing horse occupation at the site as a Bayesian uniform phase model in OxCal (https://c14.arch.ox.ac.uk/oxcal/OxCal.html) and assuming the date of 1536 (start of the Mendoza expedition) as the earliest possibility date of horse introduction, the posterior modeled probability distribution for the adoption of horses at Chorrillo Grande 1 has a median modeled start date of ca. 1617 cal. CE, with the most likely date for this adoption falling between 1540 and 1650 cal. CE (1 sigma). When all dates from the site, including guanaco and foodcrust dates, are also included, Bayesian uniform phase modeling produces an even narrower posterior distribution for the onset of site activity, with a median modeled start date of ca. 1627 cal. CE and the most likely boundary falling between 1599 and 1653 cal. CE (1 sigma)."

So the dating is based on the assumption that horses were introduced by Mendoza in 1536! But, what if there had been horses, the native American horses, that had survived the megafaunal extinction in Patagonia? Wouldn't these horses mean that the 1536 AD is not valid?

The genetic analysis found that these were specimens of Domestic horse (Equus caballus), but that is what the Megafaunal American horses were. They were genetically identical to modern horses. So this finding does not clarify the origin of these Patagonian horses.

The lower boundary set at 1536 AD. See Supplementary materials

The script used to date the samples (OxCal Analysis) had a Boundary set at 1536 AD (read more here) which establishes a lower boundary meaning that the samples will be dated to a later date than this lower boundary!!

This is like reconfirming a previously established axiomatic assumption. We decide that horses were brought to America after 1536 so all horse remains found will be dated after that date. Bad science!

Even so, the Confidence Interval includes dates prior to 1536 as possible.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Curly-Haired Horses revisited

Back in 2019, I mentioned this type of horse (see post). I have found more information while updating my book for its 2nd edition, and decided to improve my original post.

One unusual trait found in American horses is curly hair. This is extremely odd, and it has only been reported in some isolated regions of Asia and the Americas, but not in Europe. This suggests that it wasn’t introduced into America by the Spanish horses.

Perhaps it originated here among the indigenous American horses?

Felix Manuel de Azara, in his The Natural History of the Quadrupeds of Paraguay and the River La Plata, described a curly-haired horse found in Paraguay, South America:

"I have seen many crisp-haired horses, called in Paraguay Pichaí; their hair is curly, like that of the Negros of Guinea and their hoof as narrow as that of Spanish mules, in which they differ from the common run of horses. I have seen them in various colors, but not piebald or white.

He used the native Guaraní word Pichaí, which means “curly.” Curly-haired horses are not very common, and Azara added that “as they are very ugly, attempts have been made to exterminate them by castration, and even by killing the mares,” so it isn’t surprising that there were not many reports of curly-haired horses in historic records.

Charles Darwin, who was interested in natural oddities, wrote in 1860, that they were only found in three places: Paraguay, mentioning Azara’s text, Russia (“A Russian breed of horses is said to have curled hair”), and the US (“Dr. Canfield informs me that a breed with curly hair was formed by selection at Los Angeles in North America.”).

The curly-haired horse from Russia (actually, from Tajikistan) is known as Lokai. The International Encyclopedia of Horse Breeds, by Bonnie L. Hendricks, mentions that: “This breed was developed by the Uzbek Lokai tribe in the sixteenth century.”

Regarding the Los Angeles variety, there is a printed reference to a “curly horse” in California in 1849. It was captured by Col. Fremont. The article states it had the “general appearance of the horse, with the shaggy hide of the buffalo, and a tail without hair.” The author discussed it with an experienced Mexican rancher from Zacatecas who confirmed that it was a very rare horse, “occasionally seen among the numerous herds of Mexico,”51 where they were known as “Caballos chinos, or curly-haired horses.”

Interestingly, the Mexican word “chino” doesn’t mean “Chinese” as in regular Spanish: it has a pre-Hispanic origin. It comes from a Native American Tewa word Tsini (in Spanish it is pronounced “chini”), these people lived in New Mexico. So, here is a Native American word used to refer to curly animals applied to a curly horse. A positive proof of its ancient indigenous roots.

The current American curly horse breed originated in Eureka, Nevada, when a rancher named John Damele captured a wild colt with curly hair in the early 1900s.

But these curly horses go back even further, to the days before the Europeans arrived in America. A statement by Claire Henderson published in 1991, tells that the Dakota/Lakota native people firmly believe that the aboriginal North American horse did not become extinct after the last Ice Age, and that it was part of their pre-contact culture:

"According to Elders, the aboriginal pony had the following characteristics: It was small, about 13 hands, it had a 'strait' back necessitating a different saddle from that used on European horses, wider nostrils, larger lungs so that its endurance was proverbial. One breed had a long mane, and shaggy (curly) hair, while another had a 'singed mane'."

Argentine Curly-haired Horses

The curly horse was rare but not unknown in the Pampas region of Argentina: It is mentioned by Ricardo Hogg in 1941, who wrote that “the curly haired horse, variety almost extinct nowadays.”

An interesting article published in May 2025 in National Geographic reports that an Argentine veterinarian, Gerardo Rodriguez noticed a stranged horse in the Somuncurá plateau, in Rio Negro province, Patagonia. It had curly hair. A gaucho (name for the Argentine cowboy) told him that these animals were far more "common before the droughts, volcanic eruptions and other factors wiped them out." He bought the horse and, with his wife Andrea Sede worked with this animal and over twenty years later they have built their herd of curly-haired horses, the only one in South America.

They took samples and had their DNA analyzed at the A&M University in Texas, US, which found that they were different from all other curly-haired horses. They have a unique mutation, that is not found anywhere else in the world.

Argentine Curly-haired horse. Credits

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Curly Haired Horses: indigenous to America?

Yesterday's post dealt with horses and mentioned the peculiar gait of some of them, specially the Latin American ones. Today's post looks into curly haired horses.

They are interesting because they have been reported in Asia and in America, but not in Europe. If the mutation that causes it survived in America and did not reach the New World carried by Spanish or European horses, then it means that it survived here in indigenous American horses.

In Paraguay 1800 AD

Felix Manuel de Azara (1742 - 1821) was a Spanish military officer who was stationed in Southern South America from 1771 to 1801. During this period he studied the local natural history and later wrote several books. In onte of them (The Natural History of the Quadrupeds of Paraguay and the River La Plata, Volume 1 pp 42 he described a curly haired horse found in Paraguay, South America:

"I have seen many crisp-haired horses, called in Paraguay Pichaí; their hair is curly, like that of the Negros of Guinea and their hoof as narrow as that of Spanish mules, in which they differ from the common run of horses. I have seen them in various colors, but not piebald nor white".

Note: Piebald are horses whose coat has large black and white patches, and the native Guaraní word "Pichaí" means "curly".

Curly haired horses are not very common and Azara wrote that "...as they are very ugly, attempts have been made to exterminate them by castration, and even by killing the mares", so it isn't surprising that there were not many records of curly haired horses in historic records.

I have not been able to find refrences about them in Spanish or Latin American chronicles during this period, and the only historic reference comes from China, 1,200 years before Azara saw these horses in Paraguay.

In China 600 AD

Li Shimin was the second Emperor of the Tang dynasty, and ruled China as Emperor Taizong of Tang from 626 to 649 AD. He was very fond of his war horses and had his tomb (the Zhaoling Mausoleum) decorated with stone reliefs of them. One of these steeds was Quanmaogua, which is Chinese for "Curly hair horse".

It had a wavy saffron-yellow coat, the relief shows him with nine arrows sticking out of his body, yet he has an arrogant and wound defying attitude. Can you make out the curls in the stone sculpture?

Quanmaogua curly horse China 600 AD. www.penn.museum

Asian and North American curly hair horses

Darwin wrote about these horses in 1860, and mentioned three distinct locations where they could be found (Paraguay, mentioning Azara's text), Russia ("A Russian breed of horses is said to have curled hair" and the US ("Dr. Canfield informs me that a breed with curly hair was formed by selection at Los Angeles in North America.")

Let's look into both geographical locations:

Russia

The curly haired horse from Russia (actually, from Tajikistan) is known as Lokai. The International Encyclopedia of Horse Breeds, by Bonnie L. Hendricks, mentions the Lokai horse as follows:

"This breed was developed by the Uzbek Lokai tribe in the sixteenth century... the surface hairs of the coat are characteristically curly", but it does not seem to have always been so, the breed is recent, but based on wild ponies:

"in the Lokai breed the foundation sire of the curly-coated strain was a golden sorrel named Farfor, found in 1959 in the Kolchoz Lamanov in the Parchar Region... curly fromt the ears to the hooves, with tight curls like a Karakul lamb."

These horses even exhibit Appaloosa color markings according to James Blakely (Horses and Horse Sense: The Practical Science of Horse Husbandry)

America

The American curly haired horse could be related to these Lokai horses: Eduard De Steiguer in Wild Horses of the West: History and Politics of America's Mustangs is categoric: "Mustangs in Nevada's Fish Creek HMA wear the unusual wavy-haired coat of the Lokai Curly, a breed brought from Russia and released on the range by an American horse fancier in 1874". There is no source quoted for this statement. But we do know (Darwin) that someone had bred the curly hair horses in Los Angeles in the 1850s-60s.

However there is an older date mentioning curly haired horses in North America, and this comes from the Lakota people. Pictographs of the North American Indians, by Garrick Mallery mentions the Lakota winter counts. Their year spanned the period between two winters and they drew images on hides as a record of each year: one image per year, recording the most memorable event. The story behind it was then passed on by oral tradition.

The 1803-04 winter count was known as the one where "Blackfeet steals many curly horses from the Assinaboines..." or, according to another native, White-Cow-Killer: "Plenty-wooly-horses winter."

The Lakota were also known as the Teton Sioux, and they lived in the upper Mississippi Region (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas) and later moved by war into the Great Plains. We have depictions of these horses drawn in 1880-81 (Spirit Beings and Sun Dancers Black Hawk's Vision of the Lakota World, Indian Pictures drawn by Black Hawk Chief Medicine Man of the Sioux, by Janet Catherine Berlo:

There is an interesting written document (The Aboriginal North American Horse, Statement of Claire Henderson, History Dept. Batiment de Koninck, Laval University, Quebec, Canada. Feb. 1991), which I will quote below:

"Dakota⁄Lakota people have an extensive "horse vocabulary," and they distinguish between their "own" horses, which among other names they call "sunkdudan," the small legged horse, and the European imported horse which they call the long-legged horse, orthe American Horse.
...
this writer [C. Henderson] used LaVerendrie's maps and diaries, as well as other documentation and interviewed numerous Elders and old ranchers. Eventually the site was located in Wyoming, and all of the people he met and traveled with were found to be Lakotas. But these interviews also lead to a wealth of information about the Indian pony.
According to Elders, the aboriginal pony had the following characteristics: It was small, about 13 hands, it had a "strait" back necessitating a different saddle from that used on European horses, wider nostrils, larger lungs so that its endurance was proverbial. One breed had a long mane, and shaggy (curly) hair, while another had a "singed mane."

So here we have it, one of the Lakota's local (not European) horse breeds had curly hair.

Does this mean that these were indigenous horses? Horses that did not become extinct in America?

Recent horse remains found in the Americas

There is extensive evidence of Prehistoric horses, but most of these remains date back to the end of the last Ice Age, and then American horses seem to have disappeared. Their Eurasian counterparts survived, American ones died out. But is this the case?

A paper published in 2016 (Difusion temprana del caballo en territorio de la Actual Republica Oriental del Uruguay, Bracco D, Bracco R, Fariña R. Temas Americanistas No. 37, p 67-87 Dec. 2016) tells of a domestic horse dated to 1465 - 1635 and 1350 - 1630 AD by C14 and OSL methods. Which is on the fringe of the arrival of Spaniards to the region (after 1516, and with horses after 1536).

More horse remains have been discovered in Carlsbad California, US, where a ritual burial "took place sometime between 1625 and 1705. So these horses died at least 50 years before San Diego Mission de Alcala, the first of the California missions, was founded in 1769.", of course these could have been stray beasts that ran away from the Spanish settlements in New Mexico or even Mexico, colonized after 1520.

American horses would be indistinguishable from European ones and their mtDNA (image is from Cheek tooth morphology and ancient mitochondrial DNA of late Pleistocene horses from the western interior of North America: Implications for the taxonomy of North American Late Pleistocene Equus, Barrón-Ortiz CI, Rodrigues AT, Theodor JM, Kooyman BP, Yang DY, Speller CF (2017) . PLoS ONE 12(8): e0183045. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0183045) show how Prehispanic Argentine horses -blue arrows- mix with those from the Urals and modern domesticated horses from Europe:

What causes curly hair?

There are two mutations that cause wavy hair in horses (An epistatic effect of KRT25 on SP6 is involved in curly coat in horses, Annika Thomer, Maren Gottschalk, Anna Christmann, Fanny Naccache, Klaus Jung, Marion Hewicker-Trautwein, Ottmar Distl & Julia Metzger Scientific Reports volume 8, Article number: 6374 (2018) Published: 23 April 2018):

"we identified two missense variants in KRT25 and SP6 acting independently on the development of a curly coat... Hair fibers from both mutant SP6 or mutant KRT25 horses showed typical curly hair characteristics like a polymorphic shape, restricted medulla and rotated shafts with depressions. These findings, which were also identified in human, rat, mice and cattle curl types, were postulated to be essential properties of curly hair"

And these were found only in American horses, another paper The Genetics of Curly coated horses by Wilkinson M., says: "Two SNP mutations located within the 11th equine chromosome, KRT25 and SP6, have shown to be the causative mutations in two types of North American curly coated horses. The two mutations were not found as causative mutations in equine populations in Asia, South America, and some additional equine populations in North America. This suggests that there are many more causative mutations yet to be isolated."

If this is true, then the story of the Russian horses introduced into Nevada in 1874 would not be possible because they'd have the Asian mutation and not the one found in America.

Patagonia

An online article states that "There are curly coated horses in Argentina. In the wild horse herds of Patagonia, a percentage of the horses have curly coats. Hair samples have been obtained from several of these horses and they do not have the KRT25 mutation. Whether they have one of the undiscovered mutations mentioned in North American curly coated horses will be determined after isolation of other curly genes"

It ads that "In 2013, Andrea and Gerardo Rodriquez contacted Angie Gaines through the Curly Mustang Association Facebook page. The couple stated that they were raising curly coated horses that had been captured from the wild horse herds of Patagonia, Argentina. Their ranch was close to a remote village named Maquinchao" (in Rio Negro province, in the Patagonian steppe) "Hair follicle samples were sent from Argentina to Gus Cothran's lab in Texas. The samples proved not to have the KRT25 mutation". This ranch is the "Yeguada Rodriguez" ranch, but I have found more information on Yeguada Rodriguez which states in Spanish the following (translated by me to English): "Yeguada Rodríguez is the only breeder of Curly American Bashkir in South America... Currently there are just over 4000 bashkir in the world, mainly in the US, and the only one in South America with registered DNA is in Maquinchao." The picture below is from their website:

If they are American Curly Bashkir then they can't be "wild horse herds of Patagonia".

I have tried to find references about curly "bagual" (feral horses in Patagonia) a word derived from the native Mapuche word "Cahual" which in turn comes from the Spanish word for horse (Caballo).

Nobody seems to have written about curly Patagonia bagual horses. But I did find a refrence (Los aborigenes del pais de cuyo, Cap. I PP Cabrera). It describes several people who having been captured by the natives managed to escape and reach the Spanish settlements in Southern Cuyo region in what is now Argentina (Mendoza province), just north of Patagonia.

These events took place in 1658. One of these men remembered a "Corregidor" or Mayor appointed by the King, from Chillán in Chile, who had a "curly horse" (caballo crespo), though he couldn't remember the man's name.

Nowadays there are long-tangled haired ponies in Chiloe (see this photo of a Chilote horse, which in the comments is called a "Chascón", word used in Peru and Chile to name a "curly horse"). This Chilote horse is (source) located on the same branch of the phylogenetic tree that holds all of the gaited Latin American horses mentioned in our previous post).

The curly horse was not unknown in the Pampas region of Argentina: It is mentioned by Ricardo Hogg ( Sobre vacas ñatas y otros temas camperos in La Prensa No.26.176 Nov 9, 1941 Secc. 2, 4e):

"... the curly haired horse, variety almost extinct nowadays".

I will try to find out more on Curly Haired horses in Patagonia.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

Extant Prehispanic Patagonian horses (part IV)

I am updating this thread, which had 3 parts, and which I wrote back in 2013. (part 1, part 2, part 3).

I stumbled across a very interesting blog post [by Maju in his blog "For what they were… we are": Horse genetics (autosomal DNA)] which mentions the following paper: Genetic Diversity in the Modern Horse Illustrated from Genome-Wide SNP Data, Jessica L. Petersen et al, Published: January 30, 2013 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0054997.

The Parsimony tree from this paper is pictured below (from the paper and with Maju's comments):

As you can see the branches closest to the root of the tree are the Latin American breeds from Puerto Rico, Peru and Brazil, followed by the Iberian breeds.

Maju's comment was revealing: "Ignoring by the moment the Latin American breeds, which stem directly from the root of the tree, the oldest division is between the Iberian breeds (Lusitano, Andalusian) and all others, which in turn split in two groups, both scattered in Europe and Asia (different parts of Asia however). This would seem to confirm the dual origins theory.
However there are two more elements to consider: on one side the Northern Iberian breeds (apparently even older than the Southern ones, per Warmuth 2011) are not being considered here.
The other element to ponder is the most strange position of the three Latin American breeds. As there were no horses in America at the arrival of Europeans, the origins of such anomaly must be in the Old World, meaning probably that these breeds retain genetics of even older populations. These could be the already mentioned Northern Iberian breeds but they are said to have some admixture from Berber horses (or Barb) as well and this population (argued to be very old) has not been subject to any genetic study as of now."

The point is that these Latin American breeds appear to be even closer to the asnine root than their alleged Iberian forebearers, that is, they are even "older" than the European breeds that are their ancestors. How come?

A recent paper by Ludovico Orlando et al., (Tracking Five Millennia of Horse Management with Extensive Ancient Genome Time Series Cell, vol 177:6 P1419-1435.E31, May 30, 2019 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2019.03.049) also noticed that there was a very basal Iberian breed, now extinct in the lineage of modern horses:

"We find that two extinct horse lineages existed during early domestication, one at the far western (Iberia) and the other at the far eastern range (Siberia) of Eurasia. None of these contributed significantly to modern diversity."

Below is a tree from Ludovico Orlando's paper. The pink branch at the top is the "ancient" Iberian lineage, followed by the Siberian one in pale blue:

However Orlando's paper does not have the DNA of American horses -logically because his team was studying domesticated horses, and that happened in Eurasia not America.

Could local "native" American horses, of the original American equine stock have mixed with later evolved Iberian horses brought by Portuguese and Spaniards to the Americas?

This would explain their position as more ancestral in the tree.

The interesting point is the "gait" gene. The Spanish and Latin American horses have a special gait.

Horses have gaits, they trot, gallop, canter and walk. But some breeds have another natural gait that is very peculiar (The rider appears motionless in the saddle, and there is no perceptible up and down motion of the horse's back); watch this video with the gait of a Peruvian Paso Fino horse (yes, it is one of those mentioned further up as a Latin American breed).

The Peruvian Paso Fino is one of many gaited horses. This is due to the DMRT3 "gait" gene, which (see source): "...must have diverged from a common ancestral sequence within the last 10,000 years. Thus, the mutation occurred either just before domestication or more likely some time after domestication and then spread across the world as a result of selection on locomotion traits".

Petersen's paper (mentioned further up) also noticed this: "It thus seems that the genetic variant associated with the gait phenotype arose well before the separation of breeds.", and notices that not only Iberian horses and Latin American ones are gaited, so are the Icelandic horses but these, "Instead of clustering with the other gaited breeds, the Icelandic clusters with the Shetland" suggesting a separate origin for this group, a branch that probably split from the original group carrying the mutation.

The gait trait is found all over the world -humans took their horses with them- in almost half the breeds tested and at "a frequency ranging from 1% to 100%" Worldwide frequency distribution of the 'Gait keeper' mutation in the DMRT3 gene, M. Promerova et al., Animal Genetics, vol 45:2 April 2014 P 274-282 DOI: 10.1111/age.12120). Some believe that it has been artificially selected for, by human domestication, as riders prefer this type of gait.

The ancient Asian Przewalski's horse does not carry this mutation, and although some suggest an English origin ca. 800 AD for the mutation, it was present in Spain over 2000 years ago because Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) wrote that horses from what is now Asturias in Northern Spain moved both legs on the same side alternately and did not trot.

In the Americas, apart from the Latin American horses mentioned above, the North American Indian's appaloosa breed also has a particular gate known as the "shuffle" (see appaloosa shuffle video). This horse is better known for its spotted coat, which was favored by the Natives.

A global distribution map of the DMRT3 mutation (from Promerova et al.)

As you can see no Southern South American (i.e. Caballo Criollo Argentino or Chileno) were sampled.

Considering that it originated at least 10 Kya, and is found in America and Eurasia, it is very possible that this mutation arose in the original American horse stock and spread across Eurasia. The Spanish horses brought to America by the conquistadors mixed with native horses that also carried the mutation hence Latin American horses with 100% levels of this gait gene.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2019 by Austin Whittall © 

New input on Extant Prehispanic horses in Patagonia

In 1699, a French explorer who sailed along the coast of South America, Gouin de Beauchesne, reported a strange discovery at Puerto Deseado in what is now Santa Cruz province, Argentina.

Mariners used to stop at that point since it has a fresh water spring - hence its name "Spring Bay". Finding water is quite infrequent along the Patagonian coast, so it was a well known place.

His men disembarqued and explored the surroundings. They found a skeleton of a horse and the animal's hoofs were so strange that they removed a leg and took it back on board with them as a curio.

Beauchesne kept it and later showed it to some "Spaniards who regularly trade horses in Chile, who told [him] that that horse had fed in a sandy region due to the bulge it had on its hoof, which caused it to not go far from where [they] found it." [1]

What strange deformity did the animal have on its hoofs? Or... were its hoofs normal and those of a pre-hispanic native American horse (supposedly extinct at the time)? By the way, do these horses' hoofs differ from those of modern Eurasian ones?

I have written about Hippidions in a post back in 2009 (Extant Prehispanic Horses?), but Goin de Beauchesne's report could be additional proof of their survival until recently.

Sandy terrain hoofs

Wild horses tend to have short heels (which are more comfortable=, the third phalanx and the sole are parallel to the ground. The "white line" has a stronger positition when resting than the third phalanx due to the small angles of the hoof. This configuration bends the leg and cushions impact when the horse trots. See the image below: [2]

What hoofs look like . Copyright © 2014 by Austin Whittall

But what were the hoofs of a Hippidion (the horse, native to America, that is believed to have become extinct just a few millennia before the arrival of European horses (after 1492 AD) like?

Below is the image of a Hippidion hoof (from [3]), it looks quite similar to a wild horse's hoof:

Of course since hippidion was a "wild" horse it is likely that its hoofs, like those of modern wild horses, adopted a characteristic shape due to lack of horse shoes and the rugged Patagonian terrain.

On the other hand the horse remains may have surprised the sailors because of its vestigial phalanxes, which are not so noticeable in modern horses.

It is a pity that there is no drawing or sketch of this horse's leg

Sources

[1] Relation du voyague du Sr. de Beuchesne au Chili dans la du sud de l'Amerique... Manuscript Paris Vicennes library.
[2] www.alexbrollo.com, El Casco.
[3] Maria T. Alberdi, Laura Miotti and Jose L. Prado. Hippidion saldiasi Roth, 1899 (Equidae, Perissodactyla), at thePiedra Museo Site (Santa Cruz, Argentina): Its Implication forthe Regional Economy and Environmental Reconstruction. Journal of Archaeological Science (2001)28, 411–419doi:10.1006/jasc.2000.0647

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

More on Horses in Patagonia in the 1580s

Another post on the possibility of extant megafaunal horses in South America in the 1500s.

This continues my previous post on the subject.

I have found some references (more below) stating that Spanish explorers sighted natives riding horses in the region next to the Strait of Magellan in 1580. I decided to check the original sources and was surprised to find out that it was not so!:

Sarmiento de Gamboa 1580s

The account of the adventures and exploration of the Strait of Magellan can be found in Sarmiento de Gamboa's book [1]. And, there is an interesting part covering the interrogation that Tomé Hernandez faced in Lima, Peru in 1620 (forty years after the events).

Tome had traveled under the command of Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa to settle the Strait of Magellan in 1581. The expedition managed to set up two small villages but the ships with supplies never arrived and this doomed the colonies. The settlers were left to die of starvation and disease. The natives accosted them. And very few were alive two and a half years later when English privateer Thomas Cavendish sailed by and offered to take them to Chile.

All except one refused (they were Catholics, Cavendish an English protestant and enemy of Spain), Tomé.

Many years later, the Spaniards, worried about the intentions of the English regarding Patagonia and, also, wanting to know more about that mysterious area, interrogated him.

The image below highlights the interrogation regarding horses. I will translate it:

When Asked: Do the Indians rode horses and if there are any in that land? He Said: That whenever he saw them, they were on foot and that he saw no horses at all

No horses in 1580. From [1]

Darwin 1830s

However Charles Darwin, in his "Voyage of the Beagle" wrote [2] about the "Indians" by the Strait of Magellan:

"In the time of Sarmiento (1580), these Indians had bows and arrows, now long since disused; they then also possessed some horses.
This is a very curious fact, showing the extraordinarily rapid multiplication of horses in South America. The horse was first landed at Buenos Ayres in 1537, and the colony being then for a time deserted, the horse ran wild;* in 1580, only forty-three years afterwards, we hear of them at the Strait of Magellan! Mr. Low informs me, that a neighbouring tribe of foot-Indians is now changing into horse-Indians: the tribe at Gregory Bay giving them their worn-out horses, and sending in winter a few of their best skilled men to hunt for them. [2]

I went over the text of Gamboa's book and he never mentions horses, only (on page 95 see pdf link below [1]), "deer" and "anta" (that is, tapir... I have posted on tapir in Patagonia elsewhere.)

So, in all fairness, Darwin misinterpreted Sarmiento's text assuming there were horses here. Sarmiento never mentioned horses. Other Spanish authors of the time did, but not Sarmiento.

Sources

[1] xxvii Page Viage al Estrecho de Magallanes por el Capitan Pedro Sarmiento de Gambóa en ... By Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa 1768

[2] Darwin, C. R. 1845. Journal of researches into the natural history and geology of the countries visited during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle round the world, under the Command of Capt. Fitz Roy, R.N. 2d edition. London: John Murray. pp 232

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2013 by Austin Whittall © 

Extant Patagonian Horses Part III

This is our third post on the series about "Extant Native American Megafaunal Horses", and our second part regarding Anibal Cardoso's 1912 essay on the subject [1]

See the previous posts:

Part II
Part I

Cardoso mentions that the natives engraved rocks with American ostrich (Rhea) foot prints and also horse hoof marks. I have posted about this type of rock art in Patagonia ( Read More ).

He then goes on to analyze the Boleadoras. These were made by placing a stone inside a tightly fitting leather pouch, tied to a braided leather cord. They came in different varieties:

Bola perdida, a single stone, used to hit an animal or kill an opponent by smashing them on the head. They could be hurled long distances at running prey, to knock them on the head or body.

The small 2 stone variety. It was used to hunt Rhea (American ostrich) and was guanaco (the animal from which domesticated llama descend, native to Argentina). These were known as Bolas. One stone was larger than the other one (it was held by this one while the other whirled around the head). They were thrown at the neck of the animal because it was difficult to ensnare their legs.

The larger 3 stone variety used exclusively to hunt horses. The stones were considerably larger than the "bolas" type.

Bolas are found where guanaco and Rhea are abundant, from Bolivia to the tip of Patagonia. The 3 stone kind are found in the Pampas and Patagonia: the land of the American horse.

Patagonian horses

Cardoso quotes Alcides Mercerat [2]:

"I will just point out the presence of wild or Bagual horses in the Andes. It is a horse that is slightly shorter than the horse that currently lives in the Pampa, and its hide is invariably of the color known as rosillo. From the Indian traditions it seems that this horse has always existed in the Andes and that therefore this animal has never become extinct in American soil."

Rosillo colored horse.

Rosillo. This color is a mixture of red, black and white, where the first two prevail. See the photograph below.

Bagual. The word used by Mercerat, Bagual or Bawal, is not of Spanish origin. According to Cardoso, when the Spaniards resettled Buenos Aires in 1580, they used the native word for "wild horses" which in Spanish are called "Cimarrón" or "alzado" (feral, wild). They adopted the word used by the Querandí natives: Bagüalada as a collective noun and Bawal or Bagual as singular.

The English pronounciation of Bagual is: "Bag- Wall". Which as we will see below is not at all like the word used for horse.

The name given by the native Puelche in the Pampas, the Tehuelche in Northeast, Central and Southern Patagonia and the Mapuche in Chile and Northwestern Patagonia are all very similar: Kahualk, Kaahuel and Kahuwello (in English it would sound something like: "Cow-L-Oh") yet they derive from Bagual even though they sound similar to the Spanish word Caballo (horse) - it sounds, using English pronunciation as follows: "Cab-Al-E-Oh".

However, the Mapuche had a specific non-Spanish-origin word for mares: Auca and wild colts: Caftá. These were used in Prehispanic days. Only after the Spanish conquest did they adopt the word Kahuello to apply it to domesticated horses.

The maths

Cardoso goes on to do the numbers. He takes the 5 mares that were allegedly left behind when Buenos Aires was abandoned. And calculates their offspring.

Each mare has a life expectancy of 20 years, and produces an offspring each after an 11 month pregnancy, with an 80% survival rate and a 50/50 male to female mix. These in turn would reproduce after the age of 3.

The outcome, between 1537 and 1582 yields only 1,580 horses in total. A figure way below the "vast quantity of animals roaming the prairies from the sea to the Andes".

He does another calculation assuming no ponies dying, that the mix of offspring is 3 mares to 2 colts and that they begin to reproduce when they are 2 1/2 years old. This results in: 23.292 animals.

The only way to get vast quantities of horses is by assuming that they were already there in vast quantities: native horses.

More information

Apart from Cardoso, we have some additional information on these "American" horses.

Charles Darwin and George Musters both wrote that Spanish explorer had seen horses at the Strait of Magellan in 1580 and marvelled at how quickly they had dispersed from the River Plate to the tip of the continent. However Drake, was attacked by natives on foot at Puerto Deseado in Central-East Patagonia in 1586.

If the animals came from the North, from Buenos Aires, why were none seen in Central Patagonia yet they were abundant in Southern Patagonia?

An explanation is that they survived the shipwreck of the fleet of the Bishop of Plasencia, which carried horses. This happened in 1526, and only one ship survived, they did not manage to help the castaways and returned to Spain. The survivors were never seen again. Could these horses have survived in Patagonia?

Sources

[1] Anibal Cardoso (1912), Antigüedad del Caballo En El Plata. Anal. Mus. Nac. Bs. As., Serie III t. xv. Marzo 4, 1912. pp 371+ Read the article.

[2] Alcides Mercerat, Un viaje de exploración en la Patagonia Austral.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2012 by Austin Whittall © 

Extant Native American Horses Part II

I will continue with the Second Part of my Previous Post.

A very deep and well documented paper was written on the possible survival of native American horses in Argentina until the mid sixteenth century. Its title "Antigüedad del Caballo En El Plata" (The Antiquity of the Horse in the River Plate), and its author: Anibal Cardoso. [1]

Cardoso tackles the matter from different angles, which I will summarize in this post:

The Source of the horses

According to the orthodox view, when in May 1541 the Spaniards abandoned the first town that they had established on the River Plate (the first Buenos Aires, founded by Pedro de Mendoza in 1536), they left behind 5 mares and 7 horses. They burned the settlement and moved up the Paraná River to Asunción in Paraguay.

They had decided to leave because there was no food and the natives were hostile. Paraguay was warmer, food was plentiful and the natives were peaceful farmers.

Then, in 1580, the settlers in Asunción needing a port on the coast, returned downstream and built a second town (current Buenos Aires). They saw many horses and mares, tall as mountains all along the coast, for 80 leagues (400 km - 250 mi) and inland, up to the Andes.

So, the official version is this: these 12 European horses bred in freedom, roaming the Pampas and in 40 years filled it with hundreds of thousands of wild ponies.

Cardoso disagrees

This account of the "abandoned" horses was written in 1612 by Ruy Díaz de Guzm&aactute;n. But the official accounts written during the settlement of Buenos Aires and the relocation of its inhabitants do not mention it.

Ulrich Shmidl, a German mercenary who came to Argentina with Pedro de Mendoza in 1536 wrote a detailed account of his life in the first Buenos Aires and later on in Asunción. They literally starved to death, they ate rats, snakes, the corpses of executed prisoners, the soles of their shoes, and of course, their horses. Possibly none survived.

When they left for Asunción in 1541 they burned the town to leave nothing to the bellicose Querandi natives. So any surviving horses which were used in combat, would not have been left behind.

They did leave pigs on an island in the River Plate (San Gabriel), and left specific instructions about them. But not one word was written about horses.

The documents at Asunción do not mention horses until the arrival of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1542. So, none were brought from Buenos Aires. All had been eaten by the starving inhabitants.

Cabeza de Vaca brought 27 horses with him. And they were an expensive item, worth 4,000 gold Reales. A fortune. In 1547 only 26 were still alive. But in 1553, Asunción had 130 horses!. These must have been provided by the natives, in exchange for Spanish goods. The horses were native ones, from the Pampas.

The Horses were local ones

Cardoso says that the Spaniards at Buenos Aires did not see horses in 1536 - 41 because the Querandi hunted horses, so the animals just moved away from the coast, inland. Furthermore, the coastal jungles were home to jaguars which preyed on the horses. This led to very few horses along the coast.

Later, in 1580, the Spaniards returned in force, they repelled the Querandi and advanced inland. That was when the came across the horses, vast quantities of them. Native American horses.

The Spaniards however said that these horses were the offspring of the ones left behind by Mendoza. Why? To avoid paying taxes to the Spanish King.

The Royal Tax Collectors said that the horses belonged to the King as they were part of his domains. But, after going to court, the judge found in 1596 that since they were the descendants of horses brought by Mendoza in 1536, they were not "of the land", but feral horses and therefore exempt of taxation.

The Spaniards knew about the horses from the natives, they knew that they were American horses and not European ones gone wild, they made up the "Mendoza's horses which ran wild" story just to avoid paying taxes.

The natives had never seen a horse and were frightened by them

Not so! says Cardoso. Ulrich Schmidl wrote about a battle between natives and Spaniards. The former used bows and arrows and also Boleadoras, with which they entangled the legs of the horses making them trip and fall.

Boleadoras are basically a rounded stone wrapped in leather to which a long braided cord of leather is tied. The tip of the cord is whirled around the head of the thrower, and released.

One single stone is known as "bola perdida" (lost stone ball) and was used to knock an enemy on the head, killing him. Also to hunt. The stone hit and maimed.

Two or three stones could be tied into a "V" or a "Y" configuration and whirled. The 2 or 3 cords wrapped around the hind quarters of the prey, causing it to fall.

Different stone sizes were used for different prey. Heavy stones were used for large animals, i.e. horses. Light stones for the American rhea (ostrich like) and the guanaco and deer.

The Querandi and the Chilean Araucanian - Mapuche natives fought the Spaniards in bogs, where their horses stuck fast in the mud. They evidently used this technique in the past to hunt native horses; they knew their prey and were not frightened of them.

Physiological similarities between the Argentine Creole horse and the Hippidion

Cardoso cites a Professor Van de Pas, who compared the anatomy of an Argentine Creole breed horse with other modern horses and also prehistoric extinct ones. His findings are surprising:

The Creole horse has its fingers II and IV mor atrophied and the main metatarsals are highly compressed, laterally, and resemble those of the Hippidion which was a South American horse whose fossil remains are found in the Pampas during the megafaunal period.

The image compares the bone structure of a modern European horse, the modern Argentine Creole horse, an ancient Old World fossil horse (Hipparium) and the recent Argentine fossil Hippidion. Notice the similarity between the Creole horse and the Hippidion leg bones and the difference with the European ones! If Creole came from European stock, why would it resemble the native (allegedly extinct) horse?

Comparison of the toes of Modern European horse, Argentine Creole horse and prehistoric horses (Hipparion and Hippidium).

We will carry on with his analysis in our next post.

Sources

[1] Anibal Cardoso (1912), Antigüedad del Caballo En El Plata. Anal. Mus. Nac. Bs. As., Serie III t. xv. Marzo 4, 1912. pp 371+ Read the article.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2013 by Austin Whittall ©