Life With The Big Dogs

Before the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes anchored along the New World shores with his band of 10 stallions and 6 mares in 1519, modern horse had yet to leave hoofprints on American soil. As Spaniards pushed farther north into what would one day be the American Southwest, they brought their horses with them, exposing the animals to the native people of the American Plains.

Incorrectly - and now forever - dubbed "Indians" by Columbus, these Native Americans were astonished when they first laid eyes on the horses. The only domesticated animals they had seen were the dogs they had used as pack animals. Telling his story to David Thompson, a Hudson's Bay Company man who lived among the Blackfoot Indians, an old warrior recalled seeing his first horse in the 1730s: "He put us in mind of a stag that had lost his horns; and we did not know whan name to give him. But as he was a slave to Man, like the dog, which carried our things, he was name the Big Dog."

This big dog - or god dog, as the Comanche and other tribes later called the species - would completely re-align the culture of the Plains Indians, affecting every aspect of their lives from social structure to survival.

A Plains Indian spent almost his entire life on a horsse, states Benjamin Capps in 'The Indians,' one volume in the Time-Life Book series on the Old West. "When explorers first came upon these mounted tribesmen, they were so impressed by the Plains Indians' horsemanship that they called them horse Indians."

The Spanish were not quick to part with their prized steeds initially, and until vibrant Southwestern trading centers made equine acquisition more readily - and legally - available, the native tribes captured herd strays and raided Spanish settlements to steal mounts. Quite suddenly it seemed, a formerly agricultural people adopted a nomadic existence, following herds of buffalo and moving camp on the backs of sturdy mounts.

The size of their dwellings were enlarged, as the god dogs could carry far mor weight than their much smaller namesakes - and could transport it five times farther in one day's travel. Elder members of a tribe now could ride horses when camp was moved, and an incapacitated person could be moved on a horse-pulled travois. Circles of trade grew exponentially with the arrivale of the horse, allowing, for example, the trade of goods with people located as far away as the Rockies, which were rich with lodgepole timber, unlike the comparatively treeless Plains.

The very social structure of tribes changed when horses were introduced to the community. Freed from their lowly duties of bearing the burden of the tribe's equipment, Plains Indian women had more time for artistry and social life. Class distinction erupted, separating the have-horses from the have-not-horses, and further glorifying the heroic raids and bravado of stealing horses from white settlers and other tribes. "The wealth in horses brought by prowess as a warrior and hunter was a critical measure of social status," wrote Capps, further defining raids as proof of a warrior's manhood.

Although several Plains tribes became accomplished horsemen, none compared in skills to the Comanches. "A Comanche on his feet is out of his element, and comparatively almost as awkward as a monkey on the ground, without limb or branch to cling to," said western artist and explorer George Catlin in 1834. "But the moment he lays his hands upon his horse, his FACE even becomes handsome, and he gracefully flies away like a different being."

The god dog made the Plains Indians conquerors of the American West. It was primarily by immobilizing tribes without their horses and extinguishing their buffalo - with a little help from sticks of thunder - that white settlers finally reigned over the region.

From The Quarter Horse Journal April 1997, by Jenny Wohlfarth.

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Published August 1997 in the North West Breyer Horse Club newsletter. (ma)
© 1997-2026 NW Breyer Horse Club & Refiner of Gold Creations
Equinealities in place since 1997, Section in place 2001, Updated 6/26/2026