I know the Blackfeet Indians had a reputation as fierce warriros and excellent horsemen. But did they develop a particular breed of horse?

--Submitted by John L. Answer: The Blackfoot Buffalo Horse is a descendant of the Spanish Mustang. The popular opinion is that all Indian horses descended from animals brought to the Americas by Columbus, and Cortez in the early 1500s, and Ponce de Leon and other later explorers and immigrants. However some Indian tribes say they had horses before Europeans came. The Blackfoot tribes have their own legends about how the blackfoot aquired the horse. Alexander Culbertson, and other white men who had known these Indians since the 1830's, stated that "the Blackfeet had possessed horses as far back as their traditions extended but never in considerable numbers in early times, and even as late as 1833 they were poorly mounted." He estimated that "about the year 1830 the Piegan owned an average of 10 horses per lodge, while the Blood and North Blackfoot averaged but 5 horses per lodge". While archaeologists generally believe the ancestors of the modern horse first originated in the Americas, ...  more