Horses have been an important component of American life and culture since before the founding of the nation. In 2023, there were an estimated 6.65 million horses in the United States, with 1.5 million horse owners, 25 million citizens that participate in horse related activities, 12 million citizens that spectate at horse events, and 4.6 million citizens involved in businesses related to horses. There are an estimated 82,000 feral horses that roam freely in the wild in certain parts of the country, mostly in the Western United States. While genus Equus, of which the horse is a member, originally evolved in North America, these horse relatives became extinct on the continent approximately 8,000–12,000 years ago. In 1493, on Christopher Columbus' second voyage to the Americas, Spanish horses, representing E. caballus, were brought back to North America, first to the Virgin Islands; they were introduced to the continental mainland by Hernán Cortés in 1519. From early Spanish imports to Mexico and Florida, horses moved north, supplemented by later imports to the east and west coasts brought by British, French, and other European colonists. Native peoples of the Americas quickly obtained horses and developed their own horse culture. Horses remained an integral part of American rural and urban life until the 20th century, when the widespread emergence of mechanization caused their use for industrial, economic, and transportation purposes to decline. Modern use of the horse in the United States is primarily for recreation and entertainment, though some horses are still used for specialized tasks.
History
Evolution
Fossils of the earliest direct ancestor to the modern horse, Eohippus, have been found in the Eocene layers of North American strata, mainly in the Wind River basin in Wyoming. Fossils found at the Hagerman Fossil Beds in Idaho, called the Hagerman horse or Equus simplicidens are from the Pliocene, dating to about 3.5 million years ago (mya). Paleontologists determined the fossils represented the oldest remains of the genus Equus. The genus Equus, which includes all extant equines, was plentiful in North America and spread into the Old World by about 2.5 mya.
A 2005 genetic study of fossils found evidence for three genetically divergent equid lineages in Pleistocene North and South America. A 2008 study suggested that all North American fossils of caballine-type horses, including both the domesticated horse and Przewalski's horse, belong to the same species: E. ferus. Remains attributed to a variety of species and lumped as New World stilt-legged horses belong to a second species that was endemic to North America, now called Haringtonhippus francisci. Digs in western Canada have unearthed clear evidence horses existed in North America as recently as 12,000 years ago. Other studies produced evidence that horses in the Americas existed until 8,000–10,000 years ago.
Extinction and return Equidae in North America ultimately became extinct, along with most of the other New World megafauna during the Quaternary extinction event during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. The causes of this extinction have been debated. Given the suddenness of the event and because these mammals had been flourishing for millions of years previously, something unusual must have happened. The first main hypothesis attributes extinction to climate change. For example, in Alaska, beginning approximately 12,500 years ago, the grasses characteristic of a steppe ecosystem gave way to shrub tundra, which was covered with unpalatable plants. However, it has also been proposed that the steppe-tundra vegetation transition in Beringia may have been a consequence, rather than a cause, of the extinction of megafaunal grazers. The other hypothesis suggests extinction was linked to overexploitation of native prey by newly arrived humans. The extinctions were roughly simultaneous with the end of the most recent glacial advance and the appearance of the big game-hunting Clovis culture. Several studies have indicated humans probably arrived in Alaska at the same time or shortly before the local extinction of horses. Horses returned to the Americas thousands of years later, well after domestication of the horse, beginning with Christopher Columbus in 1493. These were Iberian horses first brought to Hispaniola and later to Panama, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, and, in 1538, Florida. The first horses to return to the main continent were 16 specifically identified horses brought by Hernán Cortés in 1519. Subsequent explorers, such as Coronado and De Soto brought ever-larger numbers, some from Spain and others from breeding establishments set up by the Spanish in the Caribbean. These domesticated horses were the ancestral stock of the group of breeds or strains known today as the Colonial Spanish Horse. They predominated through the southeast and western United States (then New Spain) from 16th century until about 1850, when crossbreeding with larger horse breeds changed the phenotype and diluted the Spanish genetic features. Some horses became strayed, lost or stolen, and proliferated into large herds of feral horses that became known as mustangs. Modern domesticated horses that retain Colonial Spanish type include the Spanish Mustang, Choctaw horse, Florida Cracker horse, and the Marsh Tacky.
Historic period
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