THE HORSES WHO SETTLED AMERICA

Creaking harness, straining muscles, and galloping hooves were the strength and might behind the spirit of the American pioneer. From the first settlements on the east coast to the taming of the wild, rugged West, the American frontier was conquered on the backs and behind the rumps of sweating horses. There is no doubt horses played a vital role in the settlement of our great land.

Plodding thousands of miles across mountains, deserts, and rivers, toiling teams pulled wagons filled with settlers' belongings. They endured weather extremes, injuries, hunger and thirst just as their drivers did. At the end of the trail, these powerful draft horses wrested pioneer homesteads from the unyielding wilderness. They uprooted stubborn stumps, cleared away boulders, and dragged logs to homesites for cabins, barns, and fences. Sweating horses labored in fields, pulling heavy plows through the deeply embedded prairie grass roots. They provided the horsepower for all farm equipment that would feed a budding nation. It was also the versatile horse who made the cattle drives so successful. They, indeed, deserved the cool stream waters into which they plunged their muzzles at the end of a day.

In early settlements, neighbors were few and far between. It was the horse who, many times, carried a rider for miles, at top speed, to fetch help for an ailing family member or for the birth of a young 'un. It was the horse who transported many a child to the little one-room school and many an isolated family to a social gathering. In those days, owning a sleek, prancing team of buggy horses was as prestigious as owning a shiny, new sports car today.

The Erie Canal could not have opened in 1825, had it not been for the strong horses and men who labored eight years to build the waterway that stretched nearly 400 miles from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. Horses transported fortune seekers to California during the famous Gold Rush, and fast teams, hitched to stagecoaches, braved harsh weather, brutal terrain, and Indian attacks to carry passengers, supplies, and mail into the untamed West. The year 1860 saw the billowing dust trails of the Pony Express. Pounding pony hooves averaged 10 miles per hour and delivered mail from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California in about 10 days. Changing mounts every 10 to 15 miles, they ran day and night, through all seasons and weather from April 1860 to October 1861. It was on the back of a pony, with flared nostrils and flying mane, that news of Lincoln's election and the outbreak of the Civil War was carried. When the steam-belching "iron horse", made its debut on the prairie it was not without the brute strength of draft horses to drag and lay massive railroad ties and tracks.

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