A GREAT DEAL of speculation and theorizing has surrounded the question of when and how Spanish horses first came into the possession of theWestern American tribes. The most popular and fanciful theory is that there were "strays" from Francisco Vazquez de Coronado's ambitious 1540 expedition into the North American heartland, and that these hardy specimens mated and thrived in the wilderness. But the roll call of Coronado's company places that theory outside the realm of reasonable possibility, for the careful muster made upon its departure from northern Mexico listed 559 horses, of which only two were mares - all the rest were stallions.

The chances of a solitary pregnant mare even surviving, let alone keeping her colt alive in such an alien and hostile environment, were virtually nil. As noted by historian Frank Gilbert Roe in The Indian and the Horse, the hazards she faced included "human hunters, venomous reptiles, savage carnivores, poisonous vegetation and bad water."

The saga of how the Plains Indians acquired the horse has its roots in ancient Gothic-Moorish Spain. The Moors brought hot-blooded Arab horses into Spain when they invaded that country in 711 AD. In January 1492, after eight centuries, Queen Isabel of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon finally drove the last caliph out of Granada. Christopher Columbus himself took part in the victory procession into that city; 10 months later, he would discover the New World.

Horses accompanied the first group of settlers who reached the island of La Españiola (Hispaniola) in 1493. When the Spanish occupied Cuba in 1511, they brought a few selected Arab stallions and mares by ship. The horses proliferated and thrived in that lush land.

In 1519, a mere 27 years after Columbus' first voyage, Hernán Cortés sailed from Cuba to the east coast of Mexico at the head of 350 loyal soldiers. With them went 16 Cuban-bred horses. As was customary with Spanish explorers, nearly all their mounts were stallions. A year later, on learning that Cortés had discovered the mainland of Mexico and greater riches, a jealous captain landed a rival force of 1,400 men at Veracruz. Cortés defeated them in battle, and they quickly joined him in his fight to topple the Aztec empire. This army also supplied Cortés with 80 more fine Barb horses, each one valued above rubies.

When Mexicans first encountered Spanish horses, they were in awe of the strange and fearsome-looking creatures. But in battle they found them every bit as mortal as their riders. Many horses were slain, and one was even decapitated by a native warrior's razor-sharp obsidian sword. Nevertheless, these precious few horses gave the Spaniards a much-needed advantage over the Aztecs, who vastly outnumbered them. Mexico City fell to the Spaniards in the summer of 1521. Recounting the stupendous events of that conquest in a letter to his monarch, Charles V of Spain, Cortés admitted humbly, "After God, we owed our lives to our horses."

Later, when Cortés was riding his favorite black charger El Morzillo to Honduras, the horse got a long splinter in his hoof. The conquistador was forced to leave El Morzillo behind in the care of a village chief, who showed the spirited stallion much respect. After Cortés departed, the chief and villagers treated El Morzillo like a god, trying to keep him alive with ritual offerings of chickens and fruit. Upon their return, the Spaniards learned the horse had died from a worsening of his original wound, his end no doubt hastened by unintentional starvation.

By the time Coronado set out for Cibola in 1540, two decades had passed since Cortés had overthrown the Aztec empire. Spanish rule was already firmly established in Mexico City, and its first viceroy, the wealthy grandee Don Antonio de Mendoza, had been in office five years. Coronado was a favorite of Mendoza's glittering viceregal court, and the viceroy put up half the money that financed the costly expedition. Mendoza accompanied his protégé as far north as the present state of Jalisco and oversaw the final muster.

But Coronado's bright banners had scarcely vanished from Mendoza's sight when hostile Indians in nearby Guadalajara rose in revolt. This uprising mushroomed into the bitterly fought Mixton War. The viceroy placed himself at the head of a small army and took to the field against the natives. When peace was restored two years later, several prominent Spaniards who had taken part in the fighting stayed on to explore Mexico's uncharted northern frontier, a wilderness known to their Aztec informants only as the Gran Chichimeca.

In 1546 these Spanish explorers discovered rich silver deposits on the site of the present city of Zacatecas. Reports of the strike's magnitude triggered the Great Silver Rush of 1549. But unhappily for all concerned, these valuable mines sat in the very heart of the Gran Chichimeca, the hereditary stronghold of hostile nomadic tribes - Pamés, Otomíes and Zacatecos among them - known collectively as Chichimecas.

These natives wore no clothes, and Spaniards called them "the naked ones." They lived on a monotonous but nutritious diet of tunas, the fruit of the nopal (or prickly pear) cactus that flourished there, and were such ferocious warriors that even the Aztecs, at the height of their power, had never been able to conquer them. Now, just when the siren song of silver was beckoning from afar, the silver miners of Zacatecas found this primitive but tenacious enemy a frustrating human barrier between themselves and the vast wealth they believed lay along Coronado's trail to the north.

Impervious to the perils, miners, merchants, farmers and colonists flocked en masse to the camps, bringing with them cattle, sheep, mules and large herds of Spanish-Arab horses. Overnight the always half-famished Chichimecas developed a ravenous appetite for horse meat, and they began sending a storm of arrows into every vulnerable herd the moment a Spanish night guard dozed off.

Chichimecas began looting Spanish carros - enormous ox-drawn, two-wheeled wooden wagons that hauled food, clothing, machinery and other supplies to the mines from Mexico's large cities in the south. Such tantalizing merchandise as velvet gowns and doublets, lace mantillas, linen shirts, plumed hats, leather boots and shoes inflamed the naked ones' cupidity. They stole cutting tools and weapons of steel, items that dazzled a destitute Stone Age people. As the attacks escalated, hundreds of drivers, merchants and miners lost their lives. Dozens of Spanish women and children were carried off into lifelong captivity or parlayed into bargaining chips for rich ransoms consisting of yet more coveted Spanish goods.

The Chichimecas also brought fire and blood down upon the slow-moving mule trains loaded with silver bound for the Mexico City mint. Infuriated at these outrages, the viceregal government ordered units of heavily armed, mounted soldiers north to convoy the towering carros and silver trains. They also assembled lone travelers and escorted them along the hazardous 363-mile highway between Zacatecas and the capital. These flying cavalry companies attacked the enemy's mountain strongholds as well, rousing the fury of their denizens.

In 1550, push came to shove when this fierce Spanish retaliation set off the full-scale Chichimeca War, a conflict that lasted 40 years - the longest Indian war in the history of the American continent.

By 1550, too, the natives had stopped killing horses solely for meat and had begun stealing them to ride. Utterly fearless on foot, once mounted they appeared invincible. Riding fleet Spanish Barbs, they struck terror into wagon trains and towns, then vanished like cloud shadows into the region's rugged bufas, cliffs and caves.

The war was brought to an end when Franciscan missionaries were at last able to persuade Spanish captains to adopt a more humane and effective method of pacification. Why not simply give the natives the European goods they lusted for and had been stealing for the past four decades and be done with it? War-weary captains agreed, and peace soon reigned over the blood-drenched frontier. The naked ones were settled in their own towns, where government annuities of food, clothing, livestock, tools and plows were distributed among them. They were taught farming and animal husbandry by the missionaries, who, of course, also instructed them in Christian doctrine. For all practical purposes, the Chichimecas actually won the war.

Despite the restrictive, sternly enforced royal order that no Indian ally should ever be allowed to ride a horse, during the long, hard-fought war several desperate Spanish captains had been driven to ignore it. Peaceful sedentary Indians from the south - such as Tarascans and Tlaxcalans - and the once-hostfle Otomíes had come into the orbit of Spanish culture as allies, and a few outstanding leaders were given mounts and taught to ride. Two such notable capitans were Otomí Chief Don Antonio Tapía and his son Don Diego. Tapía led his own people in successful campaigns against the Chichimecas during the early years of the war. Later, Don Diego joined him, being rich enough by then to furnish his own horses and arms. Tapía founded two fortified towns on the embattled Chichimeca frontier, and Don Diego inherited his father's lands. He was further ennobled by having a coat of arms given him by Phillip II of Spain. In 1614 Don Diego died a lordly leader, rich in lands, mines and horses.

The coming of peace removed the Chichimeca barrier to further Spanish exploration of North America, and the first sizable herd of horses to enter the region explored by Coronado 50 years earlier was introduced by Don Juan de Oñate, the wealthy son of one of the original discoverers of Zacatecas silver. He set out from there in 1598 to found a colony in distant New Mexico. With him went 600 settlers, 83 wagons and 7,000 head of livestock - cattle, sheep and, most important to the Indians of the region, Spanish horses.

As early as 1565, other Spanish colonists had taken a small number of horses from Cuba to early settlements in Florida and Georgia, but swampy pastureland and hostile Indians had curtailed their increase, so Oñate's animals constituted the first horse herd to cross into and proliferate in the heartland of North America. It was Oñate's horses that sired the original domestic stock and mustangs that created the foundation of Westem horse culture and would have a profound impact on the culture of the Plains Indians.

Oñate established his first capital in 1603, four years before the English founded Jamestown. It was moved later to Santa Fe, where it still remains. Although Oñate, like Coronado before him, left that claret-colored land and returned empty-handed to Mexico, the missionaries and colonists remained. So, too, did the horses.

The ranches and farms Oñate had planted along the Rio Grande produced a hardy breed of Spanish and Mexican horsemen. These vaqueros were the precursors of our own American cowboys, who would later emulate them in dress, equipment, horsemanship and nomenclature. The Spanish "vah-care-o" was later corrupted by some Plains Indians into "bah-cah-roo," which emerged in English as "buckaroo," an alternate term for cowboy.

Furtively observing these vaqueros breaking horses were male Indians from the surrounding Plains tribes. Those native people watched in fascination as the riders surrounded wild mustangs on the open prairie, corralled them, roped them and "sacked them out" by passing blankets or buffalo robes across their backs, getting them accustomed to the saddle and, finally, to tolerating a man in it.

Having used dogs as pack animals for centuries, American Indians had at first been inclined to see the horse as merely a larger travois dog, or an elk without antlers. For this reason the Blackfeet dubbed the first horse they encountered "great elk dog." Other tribes favored "big dog" or "medicine dog." But soon the "dog" derivatives were dropped. Why waste these magnificent animals as pack dogs for women and children? Like the Chichimeca warriors, the Plains Indian males set their hearts on learning how to master these powerful, proud creatures that could run nearly as fast as antelope and deer.

Beginning in the 17th century, some East Coast Indians and those in the American Southeast stole and traded horses from the English colonies. But their numbers were nominal and their impact on tribal customs and culture miniscule compared to that which New Mexico's horses made on the natives there. Most historians now agree that it was New Mexico's vaqueros who, willingly or under duress, imparted the secrets of horsemanship to the Plains Indians. The Indians soon learned that few men on foot (and virtually no Indians) could walk up to even a gentle Spanish horse on the open plain, much less a wild one, and lead it away. Rounding up mustangs, even on horseback, has never been for the faint of heart. Horses provided a challenge, but also a great opportunity.

By 1630, Apaches may have begun targeting New Mexico's vaqueros and grooms as potential captives. Even simple herders knew enough not to teach hostile Indians to ride, but as captives they could be compelled to do so. Horsemanship now became the powerful "medicine" that turned Indians who fought on foot and hunted using "surrounds" (encircling the animals and driving them over cliffs or into traps for the kill) into arrow-swift warriors and masters of the heart-stopping buffalo chase. The mounted Apaches also began raiding Spanish and Pueblo settlements.

The Pawnees, who had encountered the Spanish during the 16th century, are believed by some historians to have been the leaders in the Plains Indians' conquest of the horse. But whether it was the Apaches or the Pawnees who first made use of horses, it was the Comanches by the mid-18th century who became the unchallenged experts at stealing both Spanish and rival tribes' horses. Masterful horsemen and virtually tireless, they were soon making forays deep into Chihuahua and Sonora. In those horse-rich Mexican provinces, both economic and demographic factors had given rise to great haciendas, vast and rich estates where unprecedented numbers of cattle, mules, sheep and horses roamed seemingly limitless grazing lands.

These haciendas had their origins in the scarcity of pasture land in Mexico's more populous central and southern regions, where sedentary Indians had been farming since Aztec times. These entrenched native farmers had legal recourse to the king whenever the Spaniards' herds damaged their crops. And so in about 1600 Spanish ranchers began moving their great herds to the largely unpopulated north, where livestock in the tens of thousands could graze without their owners being sued by litigious Aztec farmers.

On the dangerous northern frontier a limitless supply of saddle horses of exceptional strength and stamina was absolutely vital to the work of vaqueros and herdsmen handling livestock on the great haciendas. Also, due to the immense distances to be covered, every retainer in an hacendado's personal retinue of armed defenders had to be issued at least six remounts or relay horses for each of the almost continuous punitive campaigns undertaken to deter cattle rustlers and Indian horse thieves. Northern Mexico's productive silver mines also required horses and mules to turn the whims that raised water from the deep shafts. Farther afield, scores of royal provincial cavalry regiments always needed mounts, while large, prosperous cities produced a steady demand for stalwart and stylish carriage horses. By the late 18th century, Mexico City alone was home to more than 2,000 ornately carved and gilded family coaches.

By the early 1800s, American mustangers, like the notorious Kentuckian Philip Nolan, were making illegal forays deep into the Mexican province of Texas because of the vast herds of Spanish horses running wild. Nolan himself creamed off as many as 1,000 head of branded and unbranded horses at a time and drove them back into the States, where he sold them for exorbitant prices. Texas officials protested, but Nolan was a fast-moving target.

Although gentled Spanish horses were favored as war ponies by the Plains tribes, when it came to hunting buffalo, both the Indians and veteran white hunters preferred mustangs. Having grown up grazing alongside buffalo, these mustangs had no fear of the great beasts and could easily be run close enough to a buffalo's right side so a hunter could drive an arrow directly into the vulnerable spot between flank and rib cage. The canny mustang would then instinctively whirl away to avoid being gored by the dying bull or cow.

"Paint" horses were greatly favored by Indian warriors, who routinely decorated even solid-color mounts with their own bright symbols and designs. But American cowboys and U.S. cavalrymen universally regarded pintos as inferior mounts. (My father, who was a working cowboy as early as 1909, shunned them. "I never saw a pinto that didn't have a 'hole' in him," he growled one day after buying a big bay-and-white paint against his better judgment. The first time he tested him for speed and sure-footedness the pinto plunged both front feet into a badger hole. After recovering from his injuries, Father practically gave him away, "just to get that Jonah off my spread!")

Nevertheless, many Westerners still argue that the white horsemen's prejudice against pinto horses has no other basis than a deep-seated anti-Indian bias. I cannot accept that argument, since Indian and white horsemen alike prized buckskins for their exceptional "bottom," or long-range stamina. So if white men agreed with Indians on buckskins, how could their bias against pintos be considered anti-Indian? Curiously, horsemen of both races shared an inexplicable prejudice against solid white horses, agreeing they had less endurance than any other mount, of whatever color.

Between 1630 and 1770, Spanish horses and horse culture spread across the Great Plains. The Plains Indians' passion for stealing horses earned them honor and high adventure. It also fueled intertribal feuds that kept certain tribes locked in bitter retaliatory wars for generations. Since raids sometimes ended in pitched battles, young warriors had ample opportunity to display their courage. In 1833 a party of 40 Southern Cheyennes, bent on stealing Kiowa horses, was surprised by the Kiowas, who then killed, scalped, stripped and laid all 40 of them out on the ground for the wolves.

Among Southern Cheyennes, professional pride decreed that raiding parties should set out on foot, without horses, and travel mostly at night. After infiltrating the enemy's herd, they rode home triumphantly on stolen animals, driving a large horse herd before them. But the journey south to Comanche country was considered too long and dangerous to be made on foot by Indians living farther north than the upper Arkansas River, so a territorial system of theft and trade evolved.

Raiding as they did below the Mexican border, the Comanches and Apaches became noted for the quality of their horse herds. The Southern Cheyennes, living along the Arkansas River, were a mere eight "sleeps" away, so they usually targeted Comanche or Apache pony herds. Sometimes, out of spite, they stole Pawnee horses, because the Pawnees were the Cheyennes' bitterest ancestral foe. (One reason many Pawnees served gladly as U.S. Army scouts in the 19th century was because it gave them an excuse to hit back at their long-time enemies.)

The Northern Cheyemes and Sioux from the Black Hills region either raided the Southern Cheyennes' horse herds or traded peacefully with these near relatives for mounts. Blackfoot, Flathead, Crow, Shoshoni, Ute and Arapaho Indians, along with other northern tribes, usually stole their horses from the Sioux and Northern Cheyennes. Farther west, the Nez Perce obtained horses from Shoshoni herds and eventually became well known for their excellent mounts.

This rage for horses completely transformed the once cautious and ground-tied Plains tribes. From time immemorial they had all hunted on foot, many too frightened of enemy hunters to even venture out onto the buffalo plains. Then suddenly one day it seemed to be raining horses, and pony tracks were everywhere! The speed and exhilaration of riding made horses attractive, but it was more than that. The Plains Indians now needed horses to survive and prosper. Horse theft began to be regarded as high art. Certainly, it could earn young warriors the admiration of their people and the respect of their enemies.

Great honor was gained by the horse raider who could bring in the largest stolen herd. Southern Cheyenne Chief Yellow Wolf, born about 1799, was a master at the game. More than once he glided soundlessly into a sleeping camp and led away an enemy chief's most prized war pony that had been tethered directly before its owner's lodge. When Yellow Wolf came back to camp driving a Comanche herd before him, all branded with the Spanish king's royal "R," it was often the second time these horses had been stolen in a matter of days.

Chief Goes-in-Lodge, an Arapaho born in 1843, was an even more daring raider. When in his 20s, he made a night raid on a Shoshoni village, where he fancied a pony tied outside an enemy chief's lodge. Fearlessly entering the tepee, he found the horse's tie-rope encircling the sleeping chief's wrist, and four more warriors asleep inside. After swiftly and soundlessly dispatching all five men, one by one, with his stone war club, he rode home on the pony. This daring exploit earned him the name Man-Who-Goes-Into-the-Lodge-Alone, or Goes-in-Lodge.

Honor aside, the horse itself was valued above almost everything else - a creature that signified mobility, nobility and largess. To say a man was "rich in horses" was perhaps the supreme compliment, the ultimate status symbol, proving he could be generous with a treasure he had risked his life to obtain. A man showed his good heart by giving away a cherished mount to a friend or former enemy. And when the man died, his favorite horses were slain so he could ride well mounted into the great unknown. With so much courage, skill and honor tied to the raiding, it is small wonder the horse Indians never understood why white men deplored stealing even one horse. (Putting any man afoot in open country was regarded by the whites as a form of premeditated murder.)

On those rare occasions when warring tribes formally reconciled, horses played a significant role in the process. One of the most dramatic of these was the great peace Yellow Wolf negotiated in the summer of 1840 between the allied Kiowas, Comanches and Prairie Apaches and their common enemies, the allied Cheyennes and Arapahos. The ceremonies were held on the north side of the Arkansas River near the original Bent's Fort.

Mountain man "Blackfoot" John Smith later described the arrival of the Kiowas, Comanches and Apaches as "a sight no white man's ever seen before or since." There were 1,000 lodges spread across the grassy plain and 10,000 ponies grazing on the surrounding green hills. Then, wading across the river from the south side, came a human chain of Cheyennes holding hands, every man, woman and child of Yellow Wolf's band. They sat down on the opposite bank, silently facing their former enemies.

White men watching held their breath as Kiowa, Apache and Comanche boys began leading scores of magnificent Spanish horses down from the hills to their chiefs. They in turn presented the prized animals to their Arapaho and Cheyenne counterparts, pledging everlasting peace and friendship. One Comanche chief gave away more than 250 horses that day. Next, YeUow Wolf spread a feast of coveted white man's food on the open prairie for all to enjoy. The Indians called this the "Giving-Gifts-to-Each-Other-Across-the-River" peace.

Ten-thousand Indians participated in this reconciliation, but sadly for both Yellow Wolf, who carried the peace pipe, and those who smoked it with him, it occurred much too late in the great elk dog's day. Only three decades remained until the Plains Indians' stunning but pyrrhic 1876 victory over George Armstrong Custer at the Little Big Horn unleashed the massive retaliation that drove the Indians onto reservations.

Horses had certainly made the Indians elusive during their hard-fought wars with the U.S. Army. The tribal horsemen proved to be the finest light cavalry in the world in the 19th century. Denying the Plains Indians their horses by capturing or killing the animals had become common practice among the commanders in the West. For instance, when the Nez Perces surrendered to Colonel Nelson A. Miles in the Battle of Bear Paw Mountains in Montana Territory in September 1877, Miles took more than 1,000 horses back to Fort Keogh. The Plains Indians' incomparably picturesque horse culture lasted from about 1630 to the close of the 19th century - a fleeting but spectacular 300 years. WW