A new University of Colorado Boulder study takes a second look at how horses spread throughout North America. It found horses were in the West as much as a century earlier than previously thought.
Researchers looked at archaeological records, DNA evidence and Indigenous oral traditions.
"We had a look at horse remains in museum collections across the western part of the United States to try to understand, are there pieces of that story that might be missed from European historical perspectives?" William Taylor, a co-author on the study, said.
Taylor teaches anthropology and is the curator of archaeology at CU's Museum of Natural History.
"Over the years there's been a growing recognition that the kind of cultural framework of European folks, settlers, colonists—just folks writing things down—might have colored the way that we think about the antiquity of that human-horse relationship," he said.
European records suggest horses didn't enter Indigenous communities until after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Using archaeozoology, radiocarbon dating and DNA sequencing, CU Boulder researchers found that date didn't hold up. In fact, horses were likely part of Indigenous cultures decades earlier.
The study included researchers from 15 countries and multiple Native American groups including the Lakota, Comanche and Pawnee nations.
"It lets us share our side of the story, our version, our perspective, and that's why you need to kind of paint a complete picture," Chance Ward, a researcher and graduate assistant at CU that worked on the study, said.
Ward is a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in South Dakota and a member of the Mnicoujou and Hunkapapa bands of the Lakota Nation. He said the involvement of Native people in the study is meaningful.
"Turns out that archeology often matches up quite well with Indigenous oral stories," Ward said.
The study was published in the journal Science and was funded through the National Science Foundation.
