WI Horses left by the Norse in North America spread to natives all-over?

[Mitchell Hundred]

The development of the Native horse-tribes iotl came about really fast, related to horses abandoned or stolen from the Spanish, to where you had some of the best riders in world where they had no horses at all only a century or so earlier.

What if horses left by the Norse proliferated all over the continent whereby you'd have over 5 centuries of horse based development and culture by the time European colonization ever begins?

 

[SwampTiger]

Most likely the natives eat them. The Norse had very little contact with the natives. Norse skills of horse tending and riding would not have been transferred in OTL.

However...if the Norse develop a longer lasting colony, which extended to the mainland, and developed a trading relationship with the natives, you could see a northern variant of the Yakutian culture spread westwards.

 

[jycee]

AFAIK the Norse did not leave any horses behind, but let's say they did leave a few, it probably wouldn't be more than a dozen (and that number is likely stretching it). By the time the horses reach the great plains, where they would be of most use, this would likely be a highly inbred population. This could possibly lead to shorter lifespans for these alt-American breeds along with high numbers of infertility, but the effects on their usability as a beast of burden is a toss-up.

More importantly, though, the Norse settled a very isolated corner of North America. First, you'd need this handful of horses to survive a series of rough winters then breed without being hunted, and finally for the natives, who have no experience in the domestication of a large animal, to catch on to the idea recapture and re-domesticate these beasts after just seeing the Norse ride them once or twice. The Southwest and Plains tribes that did adopt the horse with such success in OTL had constant contact with Europeans, which the Newfoundland tribes don't. And even if they do adopt the idea, we don't know exactly how wide the territory of the local tribes was at the time and who they were trading with or willing to trade a horse too. Again this is a very isolated corner in the continent.

 

[twovultures]

Assuming that the Norse leave behind a castaway who teaches some tribes how to ride and make saddles, reigns, etc.

The spread of the Domestic horse was lightning fast in the West IOTL-less than 150 years between the first Spanish conquest of the Pueblo and the spread of domestic horses to Montana. However, the Plains are ideal horse territory, and the bison-hunting cultures already indigenous to the area lent themselves well to horsemanship. The northeast is much more hostile to horses, and maize growing people who farm by hoeing will probably not become defined by horses to the extent that the Plains Indians were.

Nonetheless, the usefulness of the horse has a pack animal and the mobility it gives will see it adopted, though they will be liable to be used as much as for food and hide as animals to ride. From the northeast it will spread slowly, but once it hits the southern shores of the Great Lakes, they come into traveling distance to the grasslands of southern Ohio/Kentucky, which is good horse country and at the time would have a healthy buffalo and deer population which could be hunted from horseback. From there, the horse is linked into the Mississippian cultural spheres, and trade will probably see them diffuse pretty rapidly as far south as the Gulf and east onto the plains, where I think we can expect similar migrations and disruptions as seen IOTL when the horse cultures rose. In the east though, the presence of a large beaver population and the wetlands they create means that cavalry is not quite so useful as it was in, say, OTL's Civil War era. Past the Rockies, the hunter-gatherer peoples there will probably be pretty hesitant to adopt horses as this will require too great a change in their lifestyle (which made them hesitant to adopt horses IOTL-while the Comanche were raising hell on the Southern Plains, their cousins in California mainly interacted with horses by stealing and eating them). There are a few potential drivers that could change this: cavalry raids from settled peoples to the east, ecological disruption from feral horses that consume edible wild plants, and in the Northwest where hierarchical societies existed, the bragging rights for owning an exotic creature.

I don't know if domestic horses could diffuse across the Mexican deserts in this 500 years. Yes, the Ancient Pueblo did trade with Mesoamerica, but the Ancient Pueblo society will probably be in the middle of its collapse when horses finally diffuse to them (if this is not sped up by hostile peoples now on horseback). Supposedly Moctezuma had a pet bison, so perhaps elite Mesoamericans could acquire horses as curiosities but in this scenario I don't think there's a lot of time for the horse to become an ingrained part of their culture-and at this point in time, the founder effect would mean that the Mesoamerican horses would be pretty inbred, as other posters have stated.

Peter Michell's "Horse Nations" is a good resource if you want to pursue this idea further.

 

[markus meecham]

All a matter of creativity on the writer's part, i'd say

 

[Wolttaire]

Assuming that the Norse leave behind a castaway who teaches some tribes how to ride and make saddles, reigns, etc.

The spread of the Domestic horse was lightning fast in the West IOTL-less than 150 years between the first Spanish conquest of the Pueblo and the spread of domestic horses to Montana. However, the Plains are ideal horse territory, and the bison-hunting cultures already indigenous to the area lent themselves well to horsemanship. The northeast is much more hostile to horses, and maize growing people who farm by hoeing will probably not become defined by horses to the extent that the Plains Indians were.

Nonetheless, the usefulness of the horse has a pack animal and the mobility it gives will see it adopted, though they will be liable to be used as much as for food and hide as animals to ride. From the northeast it will spread slowly, but once it hits the southern shores of the Great Lakes, they come into traveling distance to the grasslands of southern Ohio/Kentucky, which is good horse country and at the time would have a healthy buffalo and deer population which could be hunted from horseback. From there, the horse is linked into the Mississippian cultural spheres, and trade will probably see them diffuse pretty rapidly as far south as the Gulf and east onto the plains, where I think we can expect similar migrations and disruptions as seen IOTL when the horse cultures rose. In the east though, the presence of a large beaver population and the wetlands they create means that cavalry is not quite so useful as it was in, say, OTL's Civil War era. Past the Rockies, the hunter-gatherer peoples there will probably be pretty hesitant to adopt horses as this will require too great a change in their lifestyle (which made them hesitant to adopt horses IOTL-while the Comanche were raising hell on the Southern Plains, their cousins in California mainly interacted with horses by stealing and eating them). There are a few potential drivers that could change this: cavalry raids from settled peoples to the east, ecological disruption from feral horses that consume edible wild plants, and in the Northwest where hierarchical societies existed, the bragging rights for owning an exotic creature.

I don't know if domestic horses could diffuse across the Mexican deserts in this 500 years. Yes, the Ancient Pueblo did trade with Mesoamerica, but the Ancient Pueblo society will probably be in the middle of its collapse when horses finally diffuse to them (if this is not sped up by hostile peoples now on horseback). Supposedly Moctezuma had a pet bison, so perhaps elite Mesoamericans could acquire horses as curiosities but in this scenario I don't think there's a lot of time for the horse to become an ingrained part of their culture-and at this point in time, the founder effect would mean that the Mesoamerican horses would be pretty inbred, as other posters have stated.

Peter Michell's "Horse Nations" is a good resource if you want to pursue this idea further.

Horse nation... link pls

 

[Prince de Pringondani]

I love this idea of early horse-riding tribes they could invade Mexico like Eurasian Horse riders did in Asia and Eorope raiding and invading

 

[Alex Zetsu]

AFAIK the Norse did not leave any horses behind, but let's say they did leave a few, it probably wouldn't be more than a dozen (and that number is likely stretching it). By the time the horses reach the great plains, where they would be of most use, this would likely be a highly inbred population. This could possibly lead to shorter lifespans for these alt-American breeds along with high numbers of infertility, but the effects on their usability as a beast of burden is a toss-up.

There are stories of inbred populations that survive. Genetic analysis shows that Cheetahs once went a bottleneck of... 1 mating pair a millennia ago. They are not extinct. The Tasmanian Devil dog under went a super-bottleneck. they are as inbred as if at one point there was 1 mating pair for three generations (not that there was literally one mating pair, just that the genetic diversity is equivalent to as if at one point in the past for 3 generations there was one breeding pair and everyone descending from those). The Kihansi spray toad had around 3000 BC 3 males fertilizing all ancestors of today's population and it was a viable species with thousands of toads as recent as 2000. None of these three species died out due to genetic diseases. inbreeding does not crate bad alleles, it just increase homozygotecity (I don't know the right noun). If the founders have no alleles that are too debilitating for the founding envrionment, the population is OK in the founding environment

 

[Alex Zetsu]

Oh, as a riding animal, it is very hard to ride a horse any faster than a man can walk without a saddle, so there is certainly the possibility that no one is going to figure it out how to get on the damn thing.

Once the horses people feral (incorrectly called wild sometimes), the descendants resist being rode on. They have to be re-domesticated, and Eurasians and Africans know the techniques which the locals will not. The method to allow them to let you get on them is kind of specific. A horse-pet or something to drag a cart is much easier than as something you can ride on. A pack-horse might be possible since you can try trying the cargo instead of being thrown off (don't tie yourself to a horse, this is a bad idea)