Horse-racing is a sport in which many tribes, especially those of the plains, are past masters. The Pueblos, particularly the Mokis, owing to their sedentary life, have less opportunity to develop in this line, but the Navajos, Sioux, Crows, Blackfeet, and Comanches have little to learn about rough-and-ready racing. It goes without saying that the Eskimo, Aleuts, Tlinkits, Haidas, and other North-west tribes, whose range of life is on and by the sea, have no knowledge of handling horses. They never adopted the horse, because it was as useless to them as an elephant or a hippopotamus. But to the plains tribes this animal came like a gift from the gods, and they appreciated it fully, and horses became their standard of wealth. Some tribes, like the Kaivavits, Uinkarets, and Shevwits Utes of northern Arizona have never possessed many horses because of their poverty, but there were always a goodly number owned, and horse-racing was a great amusement with them, as well as with those tribes which counted their horses by the thousand. Dodge describes an amusing race that took place near Fort Chadbourne, Texas, between a horse of a Comanche chief and three horses of the officers of the garrison, which illustrates the Amerind cleverness in the jockeying line.[294] It took several days of manœuvring to bring the chief to the point, and then a race was arranged with the third best horse of the white men. The distance was four hundred yards, and property to the amount of sixty dollars a side was wagered on the result. “At the appointed time all the Indians and most of the garrison were assembled at the track. The Indians ‘showed’ a miserable sheep of a pony with legs like churns; a three-inch coat of rough hair stuck out all over the body, and a general expression of neglect, helplessness, and patient suffering struck pity into the hearts of all beholders. The rider was a stalwart buck of one hundred and seventy pounds, looking big and strong enough to carry the poor beast on his shoulders. He was armed with a huge club, with which, after the word was given, he belabored the miserable animal from start to finish. To the astonishment of all the whites, the Indian won by a neck. Another race was proposed by the officers and, after much ‘dickering,’ accepted by the Indians, against the next best horse of the garrison. The bets were doubled, and in less than an hour the second race was run by the same pony, with the same apparent exertion and with exactly the same result. The officers, thoroughly disgusted, proposed a third race, and brought to the ground a magnificent Kentucky mare, of the true Lexington blood, and known to beat the best of the others at least forty yards in four hundred. The Indians accepted the race, and not only doubled the bets as before, but piled up everything they could raise, seemingly almost crazed with the excitement of their previous success. The riders mounted; the word was given. Throwing away