CHAPTER IV.. The Conquest of the Horse.

THE CONQUEST OF THE HORSE.

We have now some vague idea of the ancient horse; so it is well we should know what manner of man was the savage who caught and tamed him.

Living a great deal, and travelling much alone among savages I have been more or less tolerated; and the savage has told me what he thinks of the white man. He looks upon the scientist as an amateurish unpractical sort of person who cannot ride or cook. The missionary can be profitably humbugged. The tourist is a source of revenue but apt to be intrusive and ill-mannered. As to the cinema folk, one tribe of savages refused to play any more because they were defeated in every film. They were granted one massacre of the whites to cheer them up.

So the scientific men, the missionary, the cinema people and many others bring home impressions which would amuse the savage. {96} Our people are so badly informed that they suppose the savage to be dirty, ferocious, immoral and uncouth as the Sydney larrakin, the cockney rough, the New York tough and other poor degenerates of our race. It is true that the Fuegans were dirty, but we should not speak ill of the dead. Some South Sea island tribes are cheerfully ferocious, and make much of the white man at table although he does taste salty. The Pathan, if one calls him a savage, takes a delight in immorality. But uncouth? The commonality of the English-speaking nations have a deliberate preference for ugly costume and decorations, foul speech is usual among men, vulgarity is a privilege of both sexes, and awkwardness of bearing is almost universal. Who are we to call the savage uncouth? Compared with a white man, the savage is a gentleman anyway and usually sets us an example in purity of speech, often in cleanliness, chastity, and good faith. He differs from the healthier types of white men in having slightly less energy and vitality, in lack of sustained purpose and in being never quite grown up. Except in Africa, our microbes and not our valour conquered him, and his failure to rival us in material progress was due to lack of material rather than want of {97} brains. The ferocious savage of fiction could not have tamed the horse.

It is quite likely that men killed and ate ponies for ages before it occurred to our ancestors that the creatures would be a deal more useful alive. But how was Four-feet overtaken and killed by Two-feet? Science has nothing to say on that point. We are not told.

Science has discovered that in Western Europe there were various phases of culture which are called (1), the Eolithic, when men used natural stones for weapons, (2) the old Stone Age, when flints were flaked to make spear and arrow points, (3) and the new Stone Age, when stones for weapon heads were ground and polished, (4) the Bronze Age, (5) and the Iron Age. It is true that flaking flints for flint-lock guns continues in England in face of all theories of the Neolithic, because a flaked flint will make sparks, whereas a ground flint won't. It is also true that Europe is the only part of the world with flints for flaking. The general application of the theory is also a little difficult on the Western American range, where there are fine silicate stones; but, in defiance of the Neolithic culture, the savages persist in flaking them for spear and arrow points while they {98} deliberately grind stones for club heads, axe heads, and mortars. Still worse, the debauched Eskimo grind and carve stone lamps, but in their heathen blindness use bone and ivory for the heads of harpoons and bird darts. The savages I have known belonged to the Old Bone Age.

How then with his slow feet and poor weapons was the hunter to surprise the alert sentries of a pony herd, get within range before they fled like the wind, or drive a bone-tipped spear through the shaggy hair?

It seems to me that man, like other hunting animals, despairing of getting meat from a pony herd on the range, would lie in ambush near the watering places, and where the ponies had to string out on a narrow trail they were caught at a disadvantage. There spear and arrow could earn abundant meat. Outside the bush, too, the valley or cañon walls had caves and defensible places where a tribe could lodge within easy reach of game, water and fuel.

In the South-western desert of America I have seen hundreds of cave and cliff villages, some even occupied by surviving tribes whose methods of hunting and location and defence would correspond with those of the more {99} primitive pony hunters of prehistoric France. It seems, too, that those hairy aborigines who split pony bones for marrow may possibly have known the daintiest dish of Red Indian cookery, Crow entrail, more politely known as Absaroka Sausage.

In savage tribes there is a rule that a man of the Smith sept may not marry among the Smiths, but seeks his bride among the Browns or Robinsons. But the septs are usually called after some animal, so that for Smith we may read Pony, for Brown we may read Eagle, for Robinson say Wolf. Moreover, the children play a game of two sides in which Master Wolf impersonates a wolf with cries and dances, and if the rival side laughs they pay forfeit. So Miss Pony plays at pony, and Master Eagle plays at being an Eagle. Out of this game perhaps comes a play of the grown-ups; in which I have seen a candidate for the secret society of the Healers impersonate his tribal Bear or Beaver before the Doctors of the order who admitted him to their circle. This play may be the origin of a mystic rite known as Calling the Game. For certain Doctors can wear a wolf skin, and give so beautiful an imitation of a wolf that all the deer and bison are deceived. His job is to excite their {100} curiosity so that, as he draws slowly away, the herds will follow him. The nearer animals draw back with misgiving, but those in the rear press on to get a view until, as the wolf-man gathers speed, the moving herd runs hard. It is then that they find themselves running between converging lines of stone piles, and women jump up from behind these cairns waving their robes and yelling. The herd stampedes to the edges of a sheer cliff, too late to check their pace after the leaders have seen the peril ahead. The rush of the herd drives onward into space, and hundreds, even thousands of great beasts fall headlong to lie dead or mangled in heaps on the rocks below. So the tribe assembles for great feasting, and heavy labour.

The hides were needed for clothing, shields, tents, and rope; the brains for dressing skins; the sinews and guts for bow-strings, lashings and thread; the hoofs and horns for weapon points, hafts, handles, spoons, cups, window lights, and glue, which mixed with oil made a dressing for leather; the gall for cleansing; the hair for felting or weaving; the fat for lamp oil and candles. The meat in large flakes was sun-dried for storage. The dried meat, pounded, mixed with berries and filled {101} with melted fat made pemmican, the best of winter foods.

Where there were no cliffs over which a herd could be driven, the practice of calling the game was just the same, but the narrowing avenue of stone heaps led to the gate of a ring fence into which the big game were penned for slaughter.

This ring fence has many countries, many names, being the pound or corrall of North America, jaral of Mexico, kraal of Africa, keddah of India, circus of Rome, bull-ring of Spain and old England. With the advancing ages the perching of spectators on the fence became the Auditorium of the circus, Stadium, and Colosseum, and the baiting of beasts and men, the wild beast fights, the mimic battles, and martyrdom of saints, varied the savage programme with racing, tournaments, and athletic sports.

So far as our subject is concerned, however, one need only note that herds of wild animals, the fighting males, the mothers and their young of many species much too swift for men to run down in the open, were captured alive and unhurt. Among these were ponies with their mares and foals.

The pity for young animals and the love of {102} pets are native traits in human character, and universal among savages.

The savage hunter brought kittens and puppies into camp to be the playthings of his wife and children, and from these pets descend the whole of our cats and dogs. And in the tribal captures at the corralls were all sorts of young animals claimed by the women and children because they were not worth killing. These ponies, cattle, deer, sheep, goats and antelope grew up with human kind, glad to get shelter from the wolves at night, allowed to graze in safety outside the camp by day. If they proved useful the men were tolerant. The useful kinds were even protected at grass by boys told off as herders, to run them into camp at the first sign of danger.

The mother who ran dry of milk, saw foals getting milk from the mares, and would have mare's milk for her child. The mares who gave most milk were preferred to others. From this came the natural idea of breeding from good milch mares to improve the strain, and get a larger yield. And thus the use and value grew of mare's milk with its many preparations as a staple food for children, then of grown-ups, until the practice of herding tame horse stock became general among the hordes {103} of Asia. Since then it has been found that cows gave more and better milk than mares.

As the wild game migrated between their high summer range and their lowland wintering grounds the savage tribes followed in search of meat. With the beginning of the pastoral age the need was urgent of moving the flocks and herds between the summer and the winter pastures. But as yet there were no beasts of draught or burden to carry the tribal camp. That meant the keeping of two camp equipments, or maybe a camp upon the highlands to supplement the village in the lowlands; and it was doubtful policy to leave valuable tents as a prey for marauding rivals. A larger and a bitter need arose when the tribe must move, and old folk who lacked the strength to travel must be left behind. There is nothing so terrible in savage life as the necessity of leaving old men and women exposed upon a hilltop after the tribe has moved. The poor old thing is provided with warm robes, a fire, fuel, water and some food, but as the days pass the last cinders, carefully raked together, sink to dust, and the cautious wolves close in for the final rush. Savages love as we do, think as we do, and their life which has for us some glamour of romance is full for them of sordid realism. So {104} we may reckon well that some good matron grudged the loss, at moving time, of tent poles, the cutting of which had cost her heavy labour, done as it was without steel tools like ours.

She saw the tent poles left behind when the milch-pony herd moved off. She told the herders to lash a pair of her poles, one on either side of each pony's neck with the ends trailing astern. The next idea was to lash a couple of cross bars across the trailing poles behind the pony's hocks, and that was enough to keep them at a proper angle. It was easy then to lash a skin robe in position between the trailing poles and the two cross bars, making a sort of basket, something to carry the old mother, who must otherwise be left behind to perish. Here then was transport which enabled the tribe to march with its tent poles, old folk and baggage. One can imagine how the medicine men protested against so shocking a violation of the laws of nature, which decree that the aged shall be left as a meal for our hunting companions, the range wolves. But here the priests would find themselves opposed by the common sense of every man and woman; so they would doubtless yield with an ill grace, after enacting a law that this new means of transport was a special privilege for aged {105} clergymen. The travois came into general use for transport.

The next step was less obvious, an idea which would appeal to men of inventive minds; and I have noticed that it is only in civilisation that the inventor is treated as a public enemy. The savage actually admires a man with new ideas. The travois frame was a heavy drag, and the draught pony was apt to delay the march. Why not have a round log as a roller under the trailing ends of the poles? Too heavy. Cut away the bulk of the roller, fining it down to a mere axle bar, with a disc at either end to roll along the ground. The larger the disc the better it rolled, so disc wheels were built, with a hole in the middle into which the ends of the axle bar were bolted.

As one may see in the many countries where disc wheels are used by farmers, the first idea of lightening the disc was to cut out four large holes, leaving the timber shaped like a rough cross with a rim. But that cross was too weak to carry weight, so its arms had to be strengthened with four spokes, lashed on with raw-hide; next the four spokes replaced the arms of the cross, and a rim was built enclosed in a raw-hide tyre. The raw hide, put on wet, and shrinking as it dried, made a quite serviceable tyre. So {106} was the wheel invented, and the first four-spoke pattern gave place to the six and eight-spoke methods of strengthening the rim. The whole process from roller to four-spoke wheel would easily occur to one inventor in his experiments.

Meanwhile the skin basket in the travois frame was changed to a floor of raw-hide lacing, on which a man could stand with bent knees driving. He needed shelter, so a dashboard was made of oiled bull-hide, quite translucent but proof against spears, arrows and pony kicks. As a curved surface made weapons glance when they hit, this dash-board was rounded at the front, and carried along the sides enclosing the driver's stand.

So far a one-horse vehicle, a sort of sulky, had been invented; and it may be worth noting that the creaky old Red River cart of Manitoba, although made with steel tools, contains no trace of metal. Its gait is a walk. But it was obvious that by using a pole instead of a pair of shafts, two ponies could be driven, and trotting became quite possible so far as the grass extended. Still one hesitates to use the stately name of chariot for a vehicle on three-foot wheels, drawn by shaggy ponies from the milch herd. Yet it had use in war because the machine could be driven by a charioteer, leaving {107} the warrior free to use his weapons. At least it brought the warrior, after a long march, at a decent speed fresh into action; and, although he fought afoot, he had the chariot to rally upon, for cover and a position when hard pressed. The British warrior ran along the shaft to the attack, retreated behind the dashboard for defence.

THE RIDDEN HORSE. Many a time have I seen the pony herd drift out to pasture, or trail down of an evening to the water hole; but I do not remember a herder going afoot. For boys to ride on herd was only natural, and I have no doubt that ponies were both ridden and packed from very early times. We may find guidance here from Red Indian practice.

The Blackfoot nation were a woodland people, and, as first known to the white men, lived on the head waters of the North Saskatchewan at the southern edge of the Great Northern Forest. In the earliest years of the nineteenth century some Kootenays crossed the Rocky Mountains from the west, and arrived in the Blackfoot hunting grounds with the first ponies ever seen there. They made a good sale to the Blackfeet, which started a steady trade. Moreover, the Blackfeet made no bones about taming and riding these feral {108} ponies, and holding them on herd. For better hunting and convenience in herding, they moved about three hundred miles to the southward out on the open prairies, but well within sight of the Rocky Mountains, which made a stronghold in the event of disaster, a hunting-ground in seasons of scarcity. They took to bison hunting for a livelihood.

The daily bathing, winter and summer, in a very brisk climate, the sweat baths which preceded all religious rites, the freedom from vermin, the chastity of the women, the valour of the men, the purity and spirituality of their life, their wonderful psychic development, and hypnotic medical practice distinguished the Blackfeet even among the glorious tribes of that region. In grace and endurance as horsemen they have not been equalled in our time. Young warriors were trained in the ordeal of fasting and prayer in solitude until they had contact with the unseen; next in the ordeal by torture; and last in the ordeal of war. A warrior assembled a party of young men, and after they had been purified and blessed, they took the war path, mounted, or more often afoot into the territory of some neighbouring tribe, such as the Gros Ventre, Absaroka, Sioux or Crees. Their mission was to enter {109} the hostile camp at night, loose and drive off the war horses tied at the lodge doors, or stampede the tribal herd, and drive straight for home. These little excursions, practised by all the tribes, led to occasional unpleasantness between them, and engagements were fought when one side could lure the other into an ambush, cut off a hunting or war party of the enemy, or surprise a hostile camp. Fighting mounted with lance or bow and arrows, the Blackfeet developed forty thousand cavalry within twenty-five years from the day they first saw a pony. Shock action was unusual, and the tactics were generally those of cavalry in reconnaissance. A raw-hide string round the pony's lower jaw, and a robe tied on the back with a surcingle completed the equipment; but the warrior, whose costume was a breech clout, would usually be attended by a pack pony to carry his war kit and face paint for use on occasions of high ceremonial, or a full dress battle.

It is a superstition of running and jumping horsemanship that a big horse and a little man are the right combination for travel. The Red Indian of the Plains would average five foot ten, and his pony say thirteen hands, a big man on a very little mount. The United States cavalry were on the average smaller {110} men on very much larger horses. They sometimes intercepted Indians on the march, but rarely overtook them. Closely pursued, Chief Joseph commanding the Nez Percé tribe, marched with his women and children fourteen hundred miles, before the United States forces succeeded in intercepting their flight. In the case of the Blackfoot outlaw Charcoal, up to a hundred-and-sixty Mounted Police were engaged for four months catching him. So on the whole the primitive savage, once he had a pony, was not deficient in mobility. And given the pony, he became the Mounted Barbarian whose Hordes played havoc with the elder civilizations. At the very dawn of History three hundred thousand head of Turanean chariotry romped down on the Persian Empire. They are said to have been very haughty and oppressive to the poor Persians.

The fact that range men travelling are usually attended by a herd, change ponies at every halt, and so ride fresh mounts two or three times a day, gives them a mobility with even the smallest ponies which has never been matched by one-horse cavalry. It was not the foray, but shock action which had to wait, until the crossing of stocks produced the war horse.

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