So, you can domesticate the Moose, and make some cool things like as pack and labor animal, though my question is, could be possible (in anyway) the use of the Moose as cavalry?
What are your thoughts?
What are your thoughts?
Moose Cavalry is possible?
- Thread starter Talus I of Dixie
- Start date
I think that if the PNW had been populated by more warlike natives, it could happen.
It is at this point I say I have practically no knowledge of the history of my corner of the US until Louis and Clark. And that my father and I have long wondered why the north had no real empires outside the great lakes. Thus far our best answer is that the trade routes in the eventual lower 48 simply didn't see a spread of ideas like the trade routes of early afroeurasia.
It is at this point I say I have practically no knowledge of the history of my corner of the US until Louis and Clark. And that my father and I have long wondered why the north had no real empires outside the great lakes. Thus far our best answer is that the trade routes in the eventual lower 48 simply didn't see a spread of ideas like the trade routes of early afroeurasia.
Everything I've read suggests tamed/domesticated moose are best used as pack animals. They tend to be solitary and instinctively panic/flee when they notice the blood of their own species. So you could have them tow cannons or other siege implements but not really charge people down with them. However, it does appear that moose can be intoxicated which as in humans, suppresses their instincts so they might be able to be used as cavalry then. But it seems to me more akin to war elephants (but probably with even less control) in which you point them at the enemy and hope for the best.
That's probably not a good tactic since moose are expensive to raise due to their specialised diet. This isn't insurpassable, but raising moose is best done in combination with forest management which emphasises the amount of good plants for the moose to browse to create a sort of silvopasture. Getting experts on this in the premodern age is expensive. But if done right you could have a very sustainable system producing lots of wood, edible herbs, seeds, and mushrooms, and of course a breeding stock of moose for industry and the military.
Horses have their disadvantages compared to moose, but in terms of cavalry a northern nation like Sweden or Russia would have no reason to go for a long-term moose raising strategy. Other hypothetical moose domestication events (in North America, amongst Siberians, etc.) would have no concept of cavalry to begin with or find the use of moose in that way too unpredictable and of questionable utility relative to an animal clearly valuable for many other purposes.
That said, moose can be fairly tame and maybe an early encounter with European (Asian?) horses and then a lengthy interruption might spur some idea there (OTL they innovated their own sails from mats of reeds based on European sails). But I doubt it would go any further than a more efficient way to hunt moose. Not much need for a pack animal when there's lots of rivers and the ocean for canoes to sail on.
That's probably not a good tactic since moose are expensive to raise due to their specialised diet. This isn't insurpassable, but raising moose is best done in combination with forest management which emphasises the amount of good plants for the moose to browse to create a sort of silvopasture. Getting experts on this in the premodern age is expensive. But if done right you could have a very sustainable system producing lots of wood, edible herbs, seeds, and mushrooms, and of course a breeding stock of moose for industry and the military.
Horses have their disadvantages compared to moose, but in terms of cavalry a northern nation like Sweden or Russia would have no reason to go for a long-term moose raising strategy. Other hypothetical moose domestication events (in North America, amongst Siberians, etc.) would have no concept of cavalry to begin with or find the use of moose in that way too unpredictable and of questionable utility relative to an animal clearly valuable for many other purposes.
They were plenty warlike (the Haida and Wakashan groups were notorious long-distance raiders) yet had no need for moose OTL since their primary food source was fishing and gathering roots in areas near their villages.
That said, moose can be fairly tame and maybe an early encounter with European (Asian?) horses and then a lengthy interruption might spur some idea there (OTL they innovated their own sails from mats of reeds based on European sails). But I doubt it would go any further than a more efficient way to hunt moose. Not much need for a pack animal when there's lots of rivers and the ocean for canoes to sail on.
And I've never even been to the PNW yet I have a wealth of knowledge on its indigenous past thanks to writing a TL about it. Go figure.
It's been considered, or at least talked about. As @metalinvader665 mentioned, there are considerable problems with implementing it. If you really wanted moose cavalry, I think New England/Upstate NY would be a far better bet than the PNW. The region had an agricultural economy, which lends itself to pack/labor animals more than a fishing-based economy, and unlike Eurasia, there'd be no competition from domestic horses until European contact. Behavioral and dietary issues would still be a problem though.
Of course they could be, with enough time and energy of course.
Something that irks me in the discussion of possible domesticates is generally people look at the current wild form and only project what it could/would look like a few generations after taming/domestication.
Would someone be taken seriously if they were to say: Could wolves be a realistic ratter (as in preying on rats to protect homes and grain stores)? Most people would laugh but they are, look at the multitude of terriers and other breeds bred for the same thing, biological they are the same species as a wolf (sort of).
So, much like the horse, which began as a "whimpy" meat animal, small in stature, was bred to be the battle hardened breeds of knights and hussars, so too, over countless generations, the moose could be bred to become a cavalry animal. Might need a thousand years, and this domesticated moose might look almost completely different from its wild counterparts, but that is the goal of good and proper domestication.
Something that irks me in the discussion of possible domesticates is generally people look at the current wild form and only project what it could/would look like a few generations after taming/domestication.
Would someone be taken seriously if they were to say: Could wolves be a realistic ratter (as in preying on rats to protect homes and grain stores)? Most people would laugh but they are, look at the multitude of terriers and other breeds bred for the same thing, biological they are the same species as a wolf (sort of).
So, much like the horse, which began as a "whimpy" meat animal, small in stature, was bred to be the battle hardened breeds of knights and hussars, so too, over countless generations, the moose could be bred to become a cavalry animal. Might need a thousand years, and this domesticated moose might look almost completely different from its wild counterparts, but that is the goal of good and proper domestication.
A multitude of problems have plagued historic efforts at taming/domesticating (leans heavily to the former due to lack of selective breeding specialization) of moose for cavalry by such people as the Swedish Empire and the Soviet Union, but the three biggest ones are: temperament, diet, and physique.
In terms of temperament, moose are far more similar to wild bovids than to other wild cervids (deer), or any other animals generally used as mounts if tamed/domesticated. They are prey animals, but not nearly as flighty as horses - instead they fight if provoked in the wrong way. Given the fact early people somehow tamed aurochs this isn't insurmountable by itself, however the other two factors make moose taming hard to sell for early people.
First would be their diet, which is rather specialized for animals of their size: they are obligate browsers, and while they will at times eat water plants, grasses, and forbs, they prefer twigs of a rather specific range of diameters as their day-to-day diet. They are incapable of digesting conventional forms of hay as well, therefore meaning that they would need to be ranged or pastured with enough trees around to allow them to continually eat fresh, living plant material. Contrast horses and donkeys, which being grazers can make do with some form of plant matter nearly anywhere their rider takes them, and camels, which eat nearly anything they can process. Again - not insurmountable, but it puts a boundary as to the potential ways and ranges moose could be applied to as a domesticate.
Finally there is physique, which really boils down to a single aspect: actually controlling moose while mounting them is extremely difficult. The Soviets tested several means of getting stimulus through their thick skins, up to and including shock collars, but none had consistently good effects. You would therefore need to rely on leading moose on while they were tied/secured to something, or luring them forward with appropriate food.
All in all, moose as cavalry don't seem to be fated to be. It might be possible to use them as niche draft stock, but doing so would generally only be justified if you were in an environment lacking other, more easily-worked alternatives.
How do riders control mounted elephants? I was under the impression that they have thicker skins than moose.
I've seen pictures of Africans riding African cattle (longhorns) by poking a stick through their noses sideways and using a rope tied to the stick ends for a bridle. You'd cut off their antlers and ride them squatting on their backs like with camels or use them to pull chariots, travois, carts.
Perhaps reindeer would be a better choice, but they would have to be selectively bred to be larger.
Finnish tribes unite early and take the place of Russia, but with Reindeer cavalry. The Mongols will never see it coming. Perkele!
This can be fixed with selective breeding. More vulnerable moose die, less vulnerable moose reproduce, so tickborne illness is less of a threat to tamed moose.
That said, the recent issue with ticks and parasites is (in the US/Canada) largely caused by the northward spread of white tailed deer which isn't entirely due to climate change but also forestry practices and the general overpopulation of deer in the US. This can be averted by having the moose herders hunt down deer and cause local extirpations.
I agree it's easier and more likely, but moose have nice features reindeer do not. Number one, moose are larger. Number two, moose are naturally better in swamps and other bodies of water, which is why I think moose are a better fit for an aquacultural civilisation than anything else. Number three, an enraged (or intoxicated) moose can actually function as a cavalry animal, kind of. Reindeer are more likely to run away or refuse to charge.
Yes, you can breed reindeer to be larger, but this is a lengthier process than an animal which has all this "off the shelf".
In either case I don't think either animal makes good cavalry. That said, they're good for battlefield logistics, a role reindeer performed in WWII for both Finland and the USSR.
Not unless you have a POD over 10,000 years ago to stop them from going extinct.
Moose are quite suitable as mounts, though difficult to tame. So in theory, that would be possible (assuming you have the resources to spare). but in practice I assume it would need a very early POD with successful domestication. Historical time is not likely deep enough to allow for that, gien the competition of horses that are already domesticated and readily available.
There is an ongiong domestication effort, but it hasn't got anywhere near useful mounts (nor is that the plan, though).
en.wikipedia.org
There is an ongiong domestication effort, but it hasn't got anywhere near useful mounts (nor is that the plan, though).
Kostroma Moose Farm - Wikipedia
However, reindeer has been domesticated for quite some time, so that is a huge head start. It just needs someone to have a bright idea to start selectively breed them early on.
They were in the 18th-19th century, but in part this is because they had great access to Euroamerican weapons/trade which helped them smash the groups further south (mostly Coast Salish) who were put on the defensive. Archaeology and ethnohistory shows that warfare was on a more even footing before Euroamerican weaponry/trade advantages arrived and even after the Coast Salish could make powerful reprisals on Wakashan (i.e. Euclataws/Ligwilda'xw) or Haida raiders.
Fortifications are seen many centuries before the contact period, so warfare was rather endemic in this region. But it's hard to say who was more or less warlike in the precontact period.
Technically not. Reindeer is classified as "semi-domesticated" and has only been this way for a few centuries in Sami country and maybe 1,500 years in Siberia/Kamchatka (I might be off by a little bit). There's still a lot of overlap with wild reindeer, and the Sami and other reindeer herders to their east throughout Siberia haven't really felt the need to go further. While it was probably impossible given the lifestyle of the Sami compared to others, the larger Finnish forest reindeer would be a better subspecies to have been domesticated than the mountain reindeer they did OTL. Some groups in Siberia do have larger reindeer however.
The biggest wasted opportunity was the rather late era at which reindeer herding emerged. Had it been earlier in Siberia, then perhaps the ancestors of Na-Dene groups like the Tlingits and Athabaskans would have picked up on it and brought a few reindeer with them to Alaska, then crossed over their already sizable stock with the large woodland caribou of Alaska and western Canada. TTL would have a much greater and earlier Athabaskan expansion south and they'd probably thoroughly displace/absorb/destroy the ancestors of many OTL Amerindian groups in the Pacific Northwest (and probably the High Plains/Canadian Shield too) barring some sort of adaption on their part (IIRC by the mid-1st millennia AD the Coast Salish and Wakashans already were building forts and might be capable of fending off an invasion enough to get reindeer of their own). Intermarriage and kinship would go a long way in transferring things.
I'm going a bit off-topic (it's very closely linked to my TL after all and PNW natives were brought up several times ), so I'll say in this scenario, you still wouldn't have reindeer cavalry, but instead reindeer as a prestige animal (since horseback riding is a rather complex thing). You probably wouldn't have moose domestication either without an additional thing thrown in like aquaculture developing. This area was largely fishing cultures but I don't think moose would be more advantageous than the reindeer the people already have. Not unless they develop aquaculture. The wapato harvest was important, sure, but wading into marshes and uprooting the plant doesn't need moose. So for the Amerindian example you'd likely have moose shunted to a secondary role, a more minor domesticate like the water buffalo compared to the more important reindeer. There's a strong potential of no cavalry at all, since neither animal makes a good war animal and intoxicated moose charges too costly/risky to make a regular tactic.