Those who call for the brutal and systemic removal of wild horses and burros (donkeys) from US public lands are generally under the impression that they are an introduced species. This long-standing piece of misinformation is central to how these animals are treated, as they are not offered the protections they might receive if they were to be recognized as the native species to this continent that they are. Evolutionary biology has shown that all branches of the horse family (Equidae) originated in, and co-evolved with, the native flora and fauna of the Americas around 53 million years ago. Within this family, the genus Equus, which includes horses, asses, and zebras, first evolved in North America around 4 million years ago. There are few other mammalian families that can lay as much claim to native status and belonging on this continent. 

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In contrast to another common belief, namely that horses became extinct in the US during the last Ice Age, after they crossed the Bering land bridge to Eurasia, recent discoveries in molecular biology via the extraction of mitochondrial DNA in the melting permafrost shows that horses existed in North America at least as late as around 5000 years ago. This research dovetails with Native sources who speak about the Indigenous Horse of the Americas, aka the Pre-Columbian Horse, a native horse that survived the Ice-Age and co-existed with Native Peoples long before the European explorers arrived in the late 1400s. Some of these sources document how the horses that were brought over by the Spanish and either escaped or were released into the wild sometime later, went on to interbreed with the Indigenous horses that were still living on their ancestral lands. Those who carry this ancient DNA are said to be identifiable by the presence of primitive markings such as a dorsal stripe, leg bars, light guard hairs and/or curly hair.

 

Another myth that is often used to justify the ongoing mistreatment of wild horses and burros, is that these animals are"feral" rather than "wild", despite this word having little scientific basis from a biological viewpoint. In fact, regardless of modern domestication, their innate biology, and the hardwiring of millions of years of evolution, remains intact, as with other wild animals that have been domesticated. This explains how the equines that were re-introduced by European explorers and settlers, and either escaped or were released into the wild, reverted so quickly and thoroughly to their ancient behavioral patterns, surviving and thriving in the extreme climates and wild habitats where their ancestors evolved, without the need for hoof care, dental work, or human intervention of any kind. Furthermore, recent science has revealed that the modern horse, Equus caballus, the most recent species known to have existed in the Americas, is the exact genetic equivalent to all extant equines. In other words, all equines that exist today, whether wild or domesticated, are descended from an unbroken genetic line that can be traced back to their original wild ancestors on this continent. 

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The original Eurocentric theory, that no horses were to be found in the Americas prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus, was forced to change in the 1830’s when zoologist and paleontologist Joseph Leidy discovered horse skeletons embedded in US soil. At that time these fossilized horse bones were the oldest of any to be found in the world. Despite this new evidence of the origins of Equus, Western scientists, who had been taught that the horse had originated in Europe, expressed outrage at Leidy's discovery. They were relying on a narrative that had been used and documented by the colonizers of the Old World to justify their conquest of these ancestral lands, namely that, as the Native peoples were "savage" and "uncivilized", and the horse represented all things noble, powerful, and civilized in the Spanish court at that time, this animal must belong to Europe. Initially, the scientific community refused to accept Leidy's discovery, most likely due to the cognitive dissonance that prevents ground-breaking information from being welcomed when it threatens a group's sense of superior status and identity. Ultimately, however Leidy's findings that Equus had lived and thrived on this continent long before the arrival of Europeans has become widely accepted. 

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Even the narrative around how the dispersal of European-born equines has been forced to change in recent years. In 2020, when Emily Lena Jones radiocarbon-dated some unearthed horse bones from a site called Paa’ko on the outskirts of Albuquerque in New Mexico, settled by Puebloan people from 1525, she was surprised to find that they were at least 400 years old, which far predated the establishment of the first known Spanish settlement in New Mexico in 1598. As journalist Andrew Curry writes in Horse Nations, from the May 2023 edition of Science magazine, this change in the historical records as to when European-born equids first appeared in the Americas, “opens up a wide range of cultural change happening outside of European view”. It shows how the settlers who were responsible for chronicling history at that time had failed to take any of the Native oral histories into account. It is possible that this was due to the dispersal of horses into Native hands happening mostly out of sight of European chroniclers, or perhaps it was because the records were deliberately written in such a way that the role of the Spanish and later settlers was emphasized to claim historical ownership of the horse. 

 

Dr. Ross MacPhee, a curator of the American Museum of Natural History, pursuing DNA research into the origins of the equid species, states the following: 

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"Equidae, which includes all living horses, zebras, and asses, plus all of their extinct relatives, originated in North America approximately 53 million years ago. Since that time, equids have continuously evolved, producing numerous lineages. All of these are extinct except for the remaining species within genus Equus. The horse traveled over the Bering Land Bridge over millions of years as part of a migratory journey, along with many other mammals, many now extinct. Fossil evidence had long supported the idea that horses, once leaving the Americas, evolved into a new species, and so the horses which Spanish explorers brought to the New World were unfamiliar to this land. Advances in molecular genetics have proven otherwise: the horse completed its last adaptation in North America before its absence (for what was ostensibly a short-term blip in geologic time scales), so when the Spanish and early European settlers brought horses to his new land, these horses, Equus caballus, were, in fact, returning home.”

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Given the most recent findings among archaeologists, scientists, and scholars, and a resurgence in Native voices speaking out about the genealogy of their equine relatives; the history of both the origin and evolution of Equus, and the cultural significance of the horse within Indigenous culture on this continent is still being reviewed.

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A study from March 2023 that looked at the genetics of horses across the Old and New Worlds, through archaeological samples, revealed that the horse was deeply integrated into Indigenous societies through herd management, ceremonial practices, and culture long before the arrival of 18th-century European observers. For example, one fossilized horse included in the study had been shown to have sustained a skull fracture at some point in its life which was unrelated to its later death, an injury that would have almost certainly required supportive care for the horse to survive. This is both a testament to how resilient these early horses must have been, as well as an example of how well the Indigenous communities cared for these animals and valued their lives. Another example is of the teeth of a horse found on the banks of the Kansas River in northeastern Kansas, dated pre-1600's, that showed evidence that this horse had been fed corn, a wintertime staple for Plains people. Archaeologist William Taylor of the University of Colorado, who was one of the co-authors of this particular study, remarked that this was "an incredible snapshot of an animal that was deeply integrated into Indigenous culture”.

 

In her 2019 dissertation, Yvette Running Horse Collin, scholar and enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Nation (Oglala Sioux Tribe), argues that the horse survived the Ice Age and that the Native Peoples of these continents had a relationship with the horse from Pleistocene times all the way to the time of so-called "first contact." In her work, Collin has presented fresh archaeological evidence, radiocarbon dating, isotope analysis, and ancient DNA to back up her research, and conducted interviews from seven First Nation tribes, all of which reported that horses had been an integral part of their culture prior to European arrival. Each of these Indigenous communities shared their traditional creation stories describing the sacred place of the horse within their tribal societies, and, despite speaking different languages and living in different geographical areas, each of these Native oral histories are in complete alignment around the story of the horse. As one Blackfoot (Nitsitapi) participant in Collin’s doctoral study states, “We have calmly known we've always had the horse, way before the settlers came. The Spanish never came through our area, so there's no way they could have introduced them to us."