Note 176 — AN ACCOUNT OF THE KATAHBA, CHEERAKE, MUSKOHGE, CHOKTAH, AND CHIKKASAH NATIONS: (continued 3)

The Chickasaws’ horses were favorites throughout the South. Barton in his New View says: “It is a well established fact that the Chickasaws brought with them from the West those beautiful horses called Chickasaw breed.” Major Robert Rogers in his Concise Account of North America, says that the Chickasaws are supposed to have introduced the horse, and had large droves of them in 1762. But others attribute the origin to De Soto’s visit among them. Hugh Williamson (Observations, 80) in 1811 said: “Those Indians were originally furnished by De Soto with a breed of Spanish horses. The Indians, towards the middle of the last century, discovered that their horses were a valuable article of commerce.... The traders in all cases bought their largest horses.” Smyth (1774) in North Carolina “purchased a beautiful Chickasaw horse, named so from a nation of Indians who are very careful of preserving a fine breed of Spanish horses they have long preserved, unmixed with any other.” A Tour, I, 139. In 1785 Henry Laurens, Jr., of Charleston, wrote of being “informed by a Friend of his expectations of a string of five and forty horses from the Chickasaws which are generally esteemed as good horses as any in America.” So. Car. Hist. Mag., XXIV, 11. The horse, it seems, was not introduced among the Cherokees until the beginning of the seventeenth century, and then probably from the Chickasaws. Byrd says that the Indians “were utter strangers to all our beasts of carriage before the slothful Europeans came amongst them.” The Seminoles of Florida also had horses of Andalusian breed, brought over by the Spaniards. Bartram, Travels, 213. The Chickasaw breed was in high repute in East Tennessee in the last decade of the eighteenth century. A celebrated sire “Piomingo,” named for the great chief, was advertised as “a fine Spanish horse raised in the Chickasaw nation.” Knoxville Gazette, Mar. 24, 1792.