Colonial Spanish

Colonial Spanish is not one breed. It is a group of closely related strains descended from the horses Spain brought to the Americas, starting with Columbus in 1493 and continuing with Cortes in the early 1500s. There were Spanish horses in Florida and South America by the middle of that century, and for the next three hundred years they were simply what a horse was across the Southeast and everywhere west of the Mississippi.

Between 1750 and 1850 they were everywhere. By 1950 the pure Spanish horse was nearly gone in North America, crossed into or replaced by Thoroughbreds, other riding breeds and drafts. What survived did so in three places: traditional ranches, Native American tribes, and isolated free-ranging herds nobody had reached.

Conservation programs were built from those remnants, and the surviving strains each carry their own name and history. This catalogue lists several separately, including the Banker, the Marsh Tacky and the Florida Cracker horse, alongside the Baca-Chica, Choctaw, Santa Cruz, Sulphur and Wilbur-Cruce lines.

That matters when you buy. Ask which strain an animal belongs to and who registers it, because "Colonial Spanish" on its own does not tell you much.