As the Spanish
horse spread northward over the Llano Estacado and overflowed across the
mountains from the plains of the Cayuse, the Dakota and other tribes found
a new means of conquest over the herds, and entered on a career so facile
that they increased and multiplied despite strife and imported disease.
The horse was acquired by the prairie tribes toward the end of the last
century. Carver (1766-1768) describes the methods of hunting among the
"Naudowessie" without referring to the horse,(35) though he gives their
name for the animal in his vocabulary,(36) and describes their mode of
warfare with "Indians that inhabit still farther to the westward a country
which extends to the South Sea," having "great plenty of horses."(37)
Lewis and Clark (1804-1806) mention that the "Sioux of the Teton tribe ...
frequently make excursions to steal horses" from the Mandan,(38) and make
other references indicating that the horse was in fairly common use among
some of the Siouan tribes, though the animal was "confined principally to
the nations inhabiting the great plains of the Columbia,"(39) and dogs
were still used for burden and draft.(40) Grinnell learned from an aged
Indian that horses came into the hands of the neighboring Piegan
(Algonquian) about 1804-1806.(41) Long's naturalists found the horse, ass,
and mule in use among the Kansa and other tribes,(42) and described the
mode of capture of wild horses by the Osage;(43) yet when, two-thirds of a
century after Carver, Catlin (1832-1839) and Prince Maximilian (1833-34)
visited the Siouan territory, they found the horse established and in
common use in the chase and in war.
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