Читать книгу The Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and Development - John Hankins Wallace - Страница 13

Table of Contents

Hardships of the colonists—First importations of horses—Racing prevalent in the seventeenth century—Exportation and then importations prohibited—Organized horse racing commenced 1677 and became very general—In 1704 there were many wild horses in Virginia and they were hunted as game—The Chincoteague ponies accounted for—Jones on life in Virginia, 1720—Fast early pacers, Galloways and Irish Hobbies—English race horses imported—Moreton’s Traveler probably the first—Quarter racing prevailed on the Carolina border—Average size and habits of action clearly established—The native pacer thrown in the shade by the imported runner—An Englishman’s prejudices.

The colony of Virginia, settled at Jamestown, May 13, 1607, was subjected to a succession of dissensions, privations and disasters extending through a number of years. The elements of which this first plantation was composed were heterogeneous, and many of them wholly unsuited to battle with the hardships and privations of the wilderness. A very large proportion of the adventurers were mere idlers at home, descended from good but impecunious families, and had never done an honest day’s work in their lives. Too proud to labor even if they had known how, hunger and rags soon made them the most unhappy and discontented of mortals. The governmental affairs of the colony fell into confusion, like the people forming it, and we have no official record of what was done for a number of years. All that is known today of what transpired in the early years of the colony has been gleaned from the personal correspondence of actors in the many strifes that came so near destroying them all. These letters are, generally, so strongly imbued with partisan feeling that there seems to be no room left to tell us anything about the industrial growth of the colony, either in planting or breeding. The excerpts, therefore, relating to the early horses of Virginia which I have been able to gather from a great many sources, will fall far short of being complete, but I think they will serve as a basis upon which to form an intelligent estimate of the Virginia horses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and as to the nineteenth, the newspapers will furnish everything what is needed.

It is evident that the fleet of three vessels which took out to Virginia the first adventurers took also some horses and mares with them; for the governor and council, who went out the next year, in reporting the condition of the colonists to the home company, under date of July 7, 1610, use this language:

“Our people, together with the Indians, had, the last winter, destroyed and killed up all our hogs, inasmuch as of five or six hundred, as it is supposed, there was not above one sow that we can hear of left alive, not a hen or a chick in the fort, and our horses and mares they had eaten with the first.”

From a letter written by M. Gabriel Archer, who arrived in Virginia August 31, 1609, we gather the following facts:

“From Woolwich, the fifteenth day of May, 1609, seven sail weighed anchor and came to Plymouth the twentieth day, where George Somers, with two small vessels, consorted with us. There we took into The Blessing, being the ship wherein I went, six mares and two horses, and the fleet layed in some necessaries belonging to the action; in which business we spent time till the 2d of June, and then set sail to sea, but crossed by South West winds, we put into Falmouth, and there stayed until the 8th of June, then gate out.”

Now, as The Blessing was probably about the average size of the rest of the fleet, I think it is reasonable to conclude that each of the other vessels took some horses also. In a report of a voyage to Virginia, dated November 13, 1611, we find the following statement: “They have brought to this colony one hundred cows, two hundred pigs, one hundred goats, and seventeen horses and mares.” In 1614 the Virginians made a raid on Port Royal, in what was then called New France, and carried off to Virginia, among other captures, a number of horses, mares and colts. A second raid in the same quarter seems to have resulted in carrying off wheat, horses, clothing, working tools, etc.

Mr. Harmor, writing in 1614, in his “True Discourse on the Present State of Virginia,” says: “The colony is already furnished with two hundred neat cattle, infinite hogs in herds all over the woods, some mares, horses and colts, poultry, great store, etc.”

In 1894, in the Public Records Office in London, I found that the Virginia Company had sent out four mares, February, 1619, on The Falcon. And further, I found a kind of summary of what the company had done in the past toward populating and supplying the colonists with live stock. It is stated that they had sent twelve ships, taking out one thousand two hundred and sixty-one persons, making the total number in Virginia at that date about two thousand four hundred. The exportations include five hundred cattle, with some horses and goats, and an infinite number of swine. In 1620 the company ordered twenty mares to be sent over, at a cost, delivered, of fifteen pounds each. From the price of horses in England at that day, I would infer that somebody was making money out of the colonists.

In a little work published in London, 1646, entitled “A Perfect Description of Virginia,” the author says that “There are in Virginia, of an excellent raise (race), about two hundred horses and mares.” It is evident that this statement is a mere estimate, and I am disposed to think it a very wild estimate from what follows in a very few years. It is true that horses do not propagate and increase as fast as any other variety of domestic animals, but under the circumstances every effort would be made to increase the stock, and from what follows, I think my criticism will be sustained.

In the legislation of the colony we find no mention of horses, till the year 1657, when the exportation of mares was prohibited. Eleven years after this (1668) this restriction was removed and the exportation of both mares and horses permitted. The very next year, 1669, the importation of more horses was prohibited by legislative enactment. From this it would seem that there were already too many horses in the colony, or possibly some horse breeder had begun to realize that there were better horses in some of the other colonies that were finding a market in Virginia, and they thus sought “protection” for their own stock.

This prohibition could not have been aimed at the mother country, for the prices obtained would not justify the cost and risk of a sea voyage. We must, therefore, conclude that it was intended to shut out the New England colonies, which were already shipping horses to all the settlements on the seaboard, as well as to some of the West India Islands. In this we see at what an early date commenced the interchange of commodities among the colonies. As early as 1647 the Dutch authorities at New Amsterdam authorized Isaac Allerton to sell twenty or twenty-five horses to Virginia.

The court records of Henrico County, Virginia, for the year 1677 contain three distinct trials growing out of horse races for that year. In one case the contest was for three hundred pounds of tobacco; in another the winner was to take both horses; in the third the amount at issue does not appear. From the readiness at sharp practice and from the cunning dodges to get clear of paying a bet it is very evident that the principals and the witnesses were well up in all the tricks of racing as it was practiced at that early day. How long before 1677 racing was practiced in Virginia I have no means of determining, but the next year and the next, continuing to the end of that century, the records of the court speak for themselves. In these trials I find the names of Thomas Jefferson, Jr., grandfather of President Jefferson, and also the name of Benjamin Harrison, the ancestor of two presidents, although they were not principals in any of the cases.

In Beverley’s History of Virginia, published in London, 1705, at section ninety-four, we have the following:

“There is yet another kind of sport, which the young people take great delight in, and that is the hunting of wild horses; which they pursue, sometimes with dogs and sometimes without. You must know they have many horses foaled in the woods of the uplands, that never were in hand and are as shy as any savage creature. These having no mark upon them belong to him that first takes him. However, the captor commonly purchases these horses very dear, by spoiling better in the pursuit, in which case he has little to make himself amends, besides the pleasure of the chase. And very often this is all he has for it, for the wild horses are so swift that ’tis difficult to catch them; and when they are taken ’tis odds but their grease is melted, or else being old they are so sullen that they can’t be tamed.”

In the number of Wallace’s Monthly for September, 1877, p. 684, will be found a very interesting article from the pen of the late Dr. Elwood Harvey, on “The Chincoteague Ponies,” that have from time immemorial occupied, in a wild state, the islands of Chincoteague and Assoteague off the eastern shore of Virginia and Maryland. The traditions relating to their origin are very hazy and improbable, and the most reasonable one, because it is within the range of possibilities, is that a Spanish ship was wrecked off this part of the coast and the original ponies were on board and swam ashore. It is well established that they have occupied the islands for more than a hundred years. They are about thirteen hands high, uniform in shape and resemble each other except in color, for all colors prevail. Some of them pace a little, and they have rather light manes and tails, and no superabundance of hair on the fetlocks. Now, the horses of Virginia, at the period of which Mr. Beverley writes, and of which I will have something further to say as we progress, were but little if any larger than these semi-wild inhabitants of the islands; they were of all colors and many of them paced. As it is well known that the action of the ocean, so unaccountable to all human ken, one year builds up a dike connecting islands with the mainland, and the next year, perhaps, washes it out again, we can thus easily understand how a herd of these semi-wild animals may have been caught and kept there. In this way, it seems to me, the origin of the Chincoteague ponies may be easily and rationally accounted for, without any shadow of violence to the clearest reasoning. Mr. Hugh Jones, who, in many directions, seems to have been a closer observer of the life of the colonists than any of the other tourists whose writings we have examined, wrote a little work entitled “The Present State of Virginia,” which was published in London, 1724, expressing himself as follows, on page 48:

“The common planters, leading easy lives, don’t much admire labor or any manly exercise except horse-racing, nor diversion except cock-fighting, in which some greatly delight. This easy way of living, and the heat of the summers, make some very lazy, who are then said to be climate struck. The saddle horses, although not very large, are hardy, strong, and fleet; and will pace naturally and pleasantly at a prodigious rate. They are such lovers of riding that almost every ordinary person keeps a horse, and I have known some spend the morning in ranging several miles in the woods to find and catch their horses only to ride two or three miles to church, to the courthouse or to a horse race, where they generally appoint to meet on business, and are more certain of finding those they want to speak or deal with than at their home.”

Mr. Jones here places us in close contact with the character and habits of the people of that day, as well as with the character and qualifications of their horses. It is not to be inferred, I think, that all their horses were pacers, but that all their saddle horses were pacers there can be little doubt. This is the first intimation we have from Virginia that some of their pacers were very fast, and when Mr. Jones says “they could pace naturally and pleasantly at a prodigious rate,” he means that the speed was marvelous, wonderful, astonishing. This “prodigious rate,” in a good measure, balances Dr. McSparran’s account of the Narragansett, which he had seen go a mile “in a little over two minutes and a good deal less than three,” and gives strength to the statement of Mr. Lewis, that when a boy he had ridden in pacing matches and return matches between the Rhode Islanders and the Virginians.

In the Virginia Gazette, under date of January 11, 1739, we find the following advertisement, to which we invite special attention, as it brings out some facts which, inferentially, throw a great deal of light upon horse racing, up to that period:

“This is to give notice that there will be run for at Mr. Joseph Seawall’s, in Gloucester County, on the first Tuesday in April next, a Purse of Thirty Pistoles, by any horse, mare or gelding; all sized horses to carry 140 lbs. and Galloways to be allowed weight for inches, to pay one Pistole entrance, if a subscriber, and two if not, and the entrance money to go to the second horse, etc. And on the day following, on the same course, there will be a Saddle, Bridle and Housing, of five pounds value, to be run for by any horse, mare or gelding that never won a prize of that value, four miles, before. Each horse to pay five shillings entrance and that to go to the horse that comes in second. And on the day following there is to be run for, by horses not exceeding thirteen hands, a hunting saddle, bridle and whip. Each horse to pay two shillings and sixpence at entrance, to be given to the horse that comes in second. Happy is he that can get the highest rider.”

The first point suggested by this advertisement is that there were no distinctions made except by size, and that, at this date, 1739, there were no English race horses then in Virginia. The second point is that there was such a thing as “horse size” but what size this was I have not been able to discover. The third point is that Galloways were allowed weight for inches. They were evidently below “horse size.” But they were expected to enter for the big purse of the meeting, and they must, therefore, have ranked as good race horses; but what did they mean by “Galloway?” This is the only instance in which I have met the term in Virginian history, although it is well known in general horse lore. “Galloway” is an old name of a territorial division of Scotland, embracing Wigtonshire, part of Ayrshire, etc., in the southwestern part of that country, and was at one time famous for the excellence of its pacers, and it is probable they were to be found there after the influx of eastern blood had driven the pacer from all other portions of Great Britain. The Irish Hobbie, always undersized, was a famous race horse, as well as a pacer, many generations before the period now under consideration. The name “Galloway” is only known in history and is not to be found on any modern map. I have learned by many experiences that the name is very generally believed to be Irish and is confounded with “Galway,” an Irish county. It is known that an Irish gentleman shipped many cattle to the colony, and it is quite possible that he shipped horses also, and if this reasoning be right, these “Galloways” may have been Irish “Hobbies.” It will be observed, also, that the distance to be run is not definitely stated, but it is fairly to be concluded that the race of the second day was to be four miles, and none of them less than one mile, and that in heats. Races of four-mile heats were very common long before the first English race horse was imported.

We here have a stock of horses that the people of Virginia have bred and ridden and raced for a hundred years, and we know comparatively nothing about them. They seem to have been specially adapted to the saddle, but they could run four miles, or they could run a quarter of a mile, like an arrow from a bow. They were not a breed, although selecting and crossing and interbreeding for a hundred years would make them quite homogeneous. There is a romantic interest attaching to these little horses, for we have reached the middle of the eighteenth century, and all the successive idols of this race-loving people are about to be dethroned by their own act, and their homage transferred to a stranger—a larger and finer animal and faster over a distance of ground. Whatever of glory and honor, to say nothing of money, that was to be achieved from this time forward was to be ascribed to the newly arrived English race horse. But the truth should not be concealed that this old stock furnished half the foundation, in a vast majority of cases, for the triumphs of future generations of the Virginia race horse, and the same may be said of the old English stock upon which the eastern blood was engrafted. About the middle of the eighteenth century the line was drawn, and there was thereafter developed the engrafting of the new upon the old. In 1751-52, Moreton’s imported Traveller was there, and he was the only English race horse advertised that year. There may have been two or three others, but they had not made themselves known to the public, and I very much doubt whether there was any other. A very few years later there were many others, and some of them of great celebrity.

Mr. J. F. D. Smith made an extended tour of the colonies, especially of Virginia, before the Revolutionary war, and he suffered some of the inconveniences growing out of the rising hostility to the mother country. In speaking of quarter racing, he says:

“In the southern part of the colony and in North Carolina, they are much attached to Quarter Racing, which is always a match between two horses to run one quarter of a mile, straight out, being merely an exertion of speed; and they have a breed that perform it with astonishing velocity, beating every other for that distance with great ease, but they have no bottom. However, I am confident that there is not a horse in England, nor perhaps in the whole world, that can excel them in rapid speed; and these likewise make excellent saddle horses for the road.”

It will be observed that Mr. Smith speaks of these heavily muscled horses as a breed, which expression, I suppose, is intended to be used in a restricted sense. In the many generations of horses that would necessarily succeed each other in a century, in the hands of a people so devotedly fond of racing, it is merely an exercise of common sense, among barbarous as well as civilized people all over the world, to “breed to the winner.” In this way, and without any infusion of outside blood, there would be improvement in the strength and fleetness of all animals bred for the quarter path. He remarks further that “these likewise make excellent saddle horses for the road.” In that day nothing was accepted as a “saddle horse” that could not take the pacing gait and its various modifications. This was true of Virginians of that day, and it is still true of their descendants who have built up new States further west.

In the early days, as already intimated, it was the habit of Virginians to brand their horses and then turn out all not in daily use to “hustle” for their own living. As a matter of course these animals would often stray long distances away, and not a few never were found. In due time, legislation provided for the recovery of estrays, embracing all kinds of domestic animals as well as negro slaves. Fortunately this enables me to reach what may be considered “original data,” in determining the size and habits of action of the early Virginian horses. As the field of my examination, I have taken the Virginia Gazette, for the years 1751 and 1752, published at Williamsburgh, and in these volumes I find a great many advertisements of “Strayed or Stolen” animals scattered through the pages; and in the second especially a great many “Taken Up” advertisements appear. In a very large proportion of these notices, perhaps a majority of them, all the description that is given is the color, sex and brand, with occasionally some natural mark. As a matter of course these are of no value for the object in view. In some cases the size is given without the gait, and in others the gait is given without the size, in a few both size and gait are given. The range of size is from one of fifteen hands down to one of twelve hands, with more of thirteen hands than any other size, either above or below. The true average of the whole number is a little over thirteen hands and one inch, and none of them are called ponies. As further evidence of the small size of the colonial Virginia horses we find that in 1686 the legislature of Virginia passed an act providing for the forfeiture of all stallions under thirteen and a half hands high found running at large. It provided that any person might take up such stallion and carry him before a justice of the peace, and if he measured less than thirteen and a half hands, the justice was required to certify to the measurement and the facts, and the horse passed legally to his new owner.

As to the gaits I find just twice as many pacers as trotters. Double-gaited animals, of which there were a few, I have here classed with the pacers. That many of these little fellows were very stout and tough is fully demonstrated by the fact that they could run heats of four miles with a hundred and forty pounds on their backs. This closes the first epoch in the history of the Virginia horse. The fleet and compact little horse of thirteen to fourteen hands had had his day, and he was now about to be overshadowed by a greater in speed and a greater in stature. Much of the blood of the little fellow that could run four miles and pace “at a prodigious rate,” was commingled with the blood of the English race horse, but whatever its triumphs, the lately arrived “foreigner” took the credit. A man would have been pronounced “clean daft” if at that time he had dreamed that one hundred and forty years later the blood of this little pacer would stand at the head of the great trotting interest of the world. The tough little fellow has retained his qualities through all the generations in which he has been neglected, despised and forgotten, until he was taken up twenty odd years ago, and now the names and achievements of the great pacers are as familiar to the whole American people as ever were the name of the greatest running horses. It is not known how long he continued to be a factor in the racing affairs of Virginia, but probably not later than about 1760.

From about 1750 to 1770 seems to have been a period of great prosperity in Virginia and, notwithstanding the general improvidence of the times, many of the large landholders and planters were getting rich from their fine crops of tobacco and their negroes. This prosperity manifested itself strongly in the direction of the popular sport of horse racing and improving the size, quality, and fleetness of the running horse. England had then been selecting, importing Eastern blood, and “breeding to the winner” for a hundred years, with more or less intelligence and success, while the colonists had rested content with the descendants of the first importations from the mother country. Doubtless progress had been made here too, but it was as the progress of a poor man against another with great wealth and backed by the encouragements of royalty. The English horse could then run clear away from the Saracenic horse, his so-called progenitor, and he was very much larger than that “progenitor.” We can understand how the speed might be increased by its development in a series of generations and by always breeding to the fastest, but the increase of size can hardly be accounted for as the result of climatic causes—but we are getting away from the thought before us. When the Virginia planter found he had a handsome balance in London, subject to his draft, he at once ordered his factor to send him over the best racing stallion he could find. The action of one planter stirred up half a dozen others who felt they could not afford to be behind in the matter of improvement, but more especially that they could not afford to be behind in the finish at the fall and spring race meetings of the future. These importations went on continuously for about twelve years, and until they were interrupted by the excited relations and feelings between the colonies and the mother country and the preparations for the War of the Revolution, which was then imminent. After the close of the Revolution a perfect avalanche of race horses was poured upon us, some of which were good, but a great majority of them were never heard of after their arrival, on the race course or elsewhere. But up to the close of the century they had not succeeded in exterminating the pacer—the saddle horse of a hundred generations.

As a specimen of how absurdly a man can talk and even write on subjects of which he knows nothing, I cannot refrain from giving the following from what an Englishman had to say in 1796 about the horses and horsemanship of Virginia:

“The horses in common use in Virginia are all of a light description, chiefly adapted for the saddle; some of them are handsome, but are for the most part spoiled by the false gaits which they are taught. The Virginians are wretched horsemen, as indeed are all the Americans I have met with, excepting some few in the neighborhood of New York. They ride with their toes just under the horse’s nose, and their stirrup straps left extremely long, and the saddle being put three or four inches on the mane. As for the management of the reins, it is what they have no conception of. A trot is odious to them, and they express the utmost astonishment at a person who can like that uneasy gait, as they call it. The favorite gaits which all their horses are taught are a pace and a wrack. In the first the animal moves his two feet on one side at the same time and gets on with a sort of a shuffling motion, being unable to spring from the ground on these two feet, as in a trot. We should call this an unnatural gait, as none of our horses would ever move in that manner without a rider; but the Americans insist upon it that it is otherwise, because many of their colts pace as soon as born. These kind of horses are called “natural pacers” and it is a matter of the utmost difficulty to make them move in any other manner. But it is not one horse in five hundred that would pace without being taught.”

There can hardly be a doubt that our English friend in his “Travels Through the States” noted and wrote down just what he thought he saw, and when he saw anything that he never had seen in England, he was ready to either deny its existence altogether or to insist that there was some mistake about it. Poor man, he could not understand how there could be anything outside of England that could not be found in England. His vision, mental and physical, seems to have been restricted to the shores of his own island home, and he was probably a descendant of a very good man we once heard of. As you sail up the Firth of Clyde you pass an island of three or four miles in extent, called Cumbrae. At the head of ecclesiastical affairs in the island was a very pious man, some generations back, and every Sunday morning he prayed that the Lord would bless the “kingdom of Cumbrae and the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland.” The author of “Travels Through the States” was evidently one of the very numerous descendants of this good man, as they are scattered all over England, and as I am a strong believer in the laws of heredity, I can hardly avoid this conclusion. Indeed, some of the numerous tribe, tracing their genealogy through many generations back to “The kingdom of Cumbrae,” have found their way across the water, and at another place I will pay my respects to them. But to return to our traveler: there can be no doubt about his never having seen a pacer in England, for the last one had disappeared before his day, unless an occasional one might have been found in the old province of Galloway, in the southern part of Scotland. If he had known the history of the horses of his own country he would have known that from the time of King John down to that of James I., the pacer was the most popular and fashionable horse in England, and that the nobility and gentry used no other kind for the saddle. He was always of “a mean stature,” but he was compact, hardy and strong, and could carry his burden a long journey in a day with great ease and comfort to his rider. In the reign of Elizabeth, he was kept separate from others, and bred as a breed on account of his easy, gliding motion, which he transmitted to his progeny. At the time of the plantation of the English colonies in this country the pacers were very numerous, and as they were just the type of horse suited to wilderness life, a very large proportion of those selected were pacers. The pacers our traveler saw in Virginia were the lineal descendants of the original English stock brought over by the adventurers, and the awkward riding charged upon the Virginians, with some evident exaggerations, was wisely and sensibly adapted to the action of the horses they were riding. The criticism of the long stirrups is wholly unjust, as they are just the right length for the “military” seat, and nobody in this country when mounted on a real saddle horse would ever think of taking any other. The Englishman, when mounted on his “bonesetter,” is compelled to have his stirrups short so that he can rise and fall with every revolution the horse makes on the trot to save himself from being shaken to death. This up and down, up and down, tilt-hammer seat, if it can be called “a seat” at all, is one of the most ungraceful things, especially for a lady, that can be conceived of in all the displays of good and bad equestrianism. The English have been compelled to adopt it because they have no trained saddle horses, and a lot of brainless imitators about our American cities have followed them because “it is English, you know.” If the English had pacers and horses trained to the “saddle gaits,” they never would have anything else, and the tilt-hammer “seat” would disappear from Rotten Row and everywhere else.