PRESENTATION OUTLINE
HORSE INFLUENCE ON CHEROKEE, PUEBLO, AND CHEROKEE INDIANS
Cherokee Indians
Until Europeans came along, traveling down rivers in canoes and walked down the river for a source of food. By 1740, Cherokee Indians used horses as daily use of transportation to get to places faster. They would often steal horses from the white man and grow their population more.
Pueblo Indians
In the 1600s there were a lot of Spanish missions and settlers in New Mexico just to the west of Texas. This is where the Pueblo and Navaho Indians live.The Spanish had a law that made it a crime for an Indian to own a horse or a gun. Still these Indians learned how to train a horse and they learned how to ride a horse. They also learned how to use horses to carry packs.
Comanche Indians
Most everyone knows about Comanches and horses. Comanches were the most famous equestrians on the continent, and, according to earliest European observers, the greatest horsemen in the world. Virtual acrobats, they were. Comanches had first observed the military personnel of Spain, as the armies ventured into the southwest plains. But, once the Comanche saw the horse, he took it over from there. Word has it that the Comanche initially availed themselves of mesteños (mustangs), or the wild strays of the original Spanish settlements. These were a breed of Arabian and something else. These were smaller animals, but well able to endure the dry plains- much more efficiently then the large Justin Morgans of the later US military.
