The Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and DevelopmentWallace, John Hankins
History
The Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and Development
Wallace, John Hankins
Horse breeds -- History; Horses -- Breeding -- United States; Horses -- United States -- History
While it might be forcibly, if not conclusively, argued that the native
English horse had in him all the elements necessary to the development of
a breed of race horses as great as the breed of our own day, there is one
fact ever present to the senses which goes to show that the influence of
exotic blood was very wide and very powerful in controlling the action of
the race horse. The popular and prevailing pacing action of the Hobbies,
the Galloways, and other hunting, racing and saddle tribes was completely
wiped out more than a hundred years ago. Any attempt to account for this
revolution in the gait of the English horse as a fancy of fashion, or on
the introduction of wheeled vehicles, fails to satisfy the understanding.
In the first half of the seventeenth century pacers were popular,
common, and abounded everywhere. In the second half of the eighteenth
century not one could be found in all Britain, “from Land’s End to John
O’Groat’s House.” Of all the facts that are known and established in the
history of the English horse, the wiping out of the pacer is the most
striking and significant. This exterminating process was not limited
to the families that were intended for hunting or racing purposes, but
extended to all types and breeds of English horses. The little English
pacers that had been the favorites of kings and princes and nobles for
so many centuries were submerged in the streams of Saracenic blood
that flowed in upon them, and their only legitimate descendants left
upon the face of the earth found homes in the American colonies. Their
blood is one of the principal elements in the foundation of the English
race horse, but the “lateral action” in his progeny was esteemed a
bar-sinister on the escutcheon of the stallion, and it was sought to
be covered up with something more fashionable in name. The old saddle
horses of England were not all pacers, although that habit of action was
very general among them, and in some families it was more uniform and
confirmed than in others, and my authority for this conclusion will be
found in the detailed account of the horses brought from England to the
American colonies early in the seventeenth century. It is evident that
from the day the blood of the Saracenic horse was brought in contact
with that of the indigenous saddle horse, they were antagonistic, if
in nothing more, certainly in the habit of action. The one never moved
in the lateral action and the other very generally adopted that form of
progression because it was his inheritance. What might have been the
result if left to the laws of “natural selection,” it would be impossible
to decide; but with the dictates of profit to the master, the mandates of
fashion, and above all the accepted teachings of the Duke of Newcastle,
the little pacer had no “friends at court,” and all he could do was to
get out of the way, with his lateral action. In our own country and
under the observation of everybody the pacer shows great tenacity to his
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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