"The Twenty-Third of May, 1493. Archive of the Indies. The King and
the Queen :
Fernando Zarpa, our Secretary. We command that certain vessels be prepared
to the Islands and to the Mainland which has been newly discovered in the
ocean sea in
that part of the Indies, and to prepare these vessels for the Admiral Don
Columbus...and among the other people we are commanding to go in these vessels
there will be sent twenty lancers with horses...and five of them shall take
each, and these two horses which they take shall be mares."
This is likely our only record of the first Iberian horses to be sent
to the New World. Since the Spanish habitually rode stallions, Columbus
knew that stallions would arrive with every contingent of soldiers; he also
knew it was imperative, in order to begin horse breeding to provide mounts
for the soldier/explorers, that mares be brought to the Indies.
1494 Columbus sent a message to the king and queen stressing that "...each
time there is sent here any type of boat there should be included some...brood
1495 On April 9, 1495, four caravels were dispatched with six mares on
1495 On April 23, 1497, fourteen mares were sent. In addition, records
show that a group of merchants were given special permission to ship 106
more mares from Seville, San Lucar, and Heulva.
1498 On his third voyage, Columbus was allowed to carry forty horsemen
and their horses to the island of Hispaniola.
1500 In less than ten years from the initial voyage of Columbus, large
horse breeding ranches had opened in the Indies. By 1500, the Crown had
one Hispaniola ranch that boasted sixty brood mares.
1501 The records say that in 1501, Don Nicolas de Ovando brought over
18 of the best horses available.
(*The island ranchers became an aristocracy of unlimited wealth. With
this wealth, they bought the finest horses and cattle of Spain and brought
them to their island ranches. Suddenly realizing that the best Spanish horses
were being exported to the New World, on March 30, 1520, the Emperor declared
an embargo on the export of horses from Spain.)
1520-25 Lucas Vasques de Ayllon, a Hispaniolan
civil official originally from Toledo, Spain, "educated as a lawyer,
wealthy and virtuous", sent three expeditions to the coast of what
is now the Carolinas. These Spaniards explored the land that the native
Indians called Chicora. Various accounts place that land between the present-day Cape Fear River and Jamestown Island. Old Spanish maps call a large
area of the east coast (containing present day North Carolina and Virginia)
"Tierra de Ayllon"...the "Land of Ayllon".
1526 In mid-July, de Ayllon himself came to the river he called
the Rio Jordan, with six ships bringing 500 men, women and slaves, three
Franciscan friars, and eighty-nine horses. The colony failed within the
year, due to inept leadership, disease, and Indian hostilities. De Ayllon
died of a fever, and only 150 survivors managed to catch a passing ship
back to Hispaniola. Though de Ayllon's wife wanted to return, we have found
no record that any further attempts were made by the Spanish to re-settle
the area, or to reclaim the horses left behind. References sometimes state
that de Ayllon's settlement was in the vicinity of Cape Feare. The Cape
Fear River, with which we are familiar today, is south of here near Wilmington.
However, historic maps show an old name for Cape Lookout was "Cape
1570s By this time, Spanish reconnaissance voyages had explored the east
coast as far north as Chesapeake Bay.
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II. ENGLISH EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION.
1584 Sir Walter Raleigh, an Englishman, sent a small expeditionary
force to the New World. It was led by 19-year old Philip Amadas of Plymouth,
and piloted by a Portuguese sailor named Simon Fernandes. On or about 13
July, they arrived at the coast of present-day North Carolina and found
an entrance in the Outer Banks about midway between Cape Hatteras and present
day Cape Lookout. In 1584, North Carolina was part of the area called "Virginia"
by the Englishmen, in honor of Elizabeth I.
1585 Raleigh's second expedition, led by Sir Richard Grenville, sailed
on 9 April 1585. They stopped along the South side of Puerto Rico at Mosquito
Bay. One of John White's drawings of Mosquito Bay depicts Grenville on horseback,
and two "captured" horses inside the fort. Leaving there, Grenville
engaged in successful trade with the Spanish, and the flagship Tiger's shipboard
life was enlivened by hogs, cattle and horses purchased for the colonists
at Roanoke. On 29 May 1585, the fleet headed for the north coast of Hispaniola,
and weighed anchor at Puerto de Plata's Isabela Harbor. Here, they acquired
more horses; these with saddles and bridles. Working their way up the coast,
they ran into shoals probably at Cape Fear on 23 June. On the 24th they
anchored and fished, apparently at Lookout, then sailed north until they
reached an opening in the Banks called Wococon probably near the middle
of present-day Portsmouth Island. When the pilot attempted to enter the
sound with the flagship Tiger, she grounded and lay in the surf for two
hours. The crew feared that her back would be broken, because she received
some eighty-nine buffets. Finally free, beached and careened for repairs,
she sailed on to Roanoke. This was a devastating loss, however, since her
load of supplies was soaked in salt water. It is at this point, many historians
believe, that the animals on deck were shoved overboard either at her grounding,
in order to lighten her load and float her, or when she was careened (rolled
on her side) on the beach to have her bottom repaired.
1585 On 3 Sept, Ralph Lane ended a letter to England:
if Virginia [which included North Carolina] had but horses and kine in some
reasonable proportion, I dare assure my selfe being inhabited with English,
no realme in Christendome were comparable to it."
1620 Another early reference to the horses in the initially explored
areas of the still "New World" came in June of 1620, when the
Council of Virginia issued a glowing report on the state of the colony which
said that "The horses also [are] more beautiful, and fuller of courage
than those of the breeds from which they came."
1650-1690In The First Americans, author Wertenbarker wrote about hunting in Virginia "...more interesting was the hunting of wild horses, which in the last decades of the century abounded in the woods. These animals, as they were unmarked, belonged to anyone who could capture them. But to do this was no easy matter, for they were so fleet and so difficult to follow through the woods that one was more apt to ruin an old mount that to than to gain a new."
1701 John Lawson, an Englishman who traveled through North Carolina said
the horses are excellent drudges and will travel incredible journeys. He
also reported how well the horses taken inland were treated by the Indians.
" They fattened them with corn, and never made use of them unless to
fetch home a deer".
1856 Edmund Ruffin, famous as an agriculture authority and editor, and
also credited as firing the first shot of the Civil War at Fort Sumter,
in his "Sketches of Lower North Carolina", described "horse-penning"
twice a year on Core Banks. Ruffin described the horses as all of a small
size with rough and shaggy coats and long manes, "capable of great
endurance of labor and hardship". (This would indicate that Ruffin
did not see the horses in summer, when they shed to sleek and glossy coats,
and their finer features are revealed.) The horses fed, he wrote, "entirely
on the coarse salt grass of the marshes. .. There are some hundreds of horses
of the dwarfish native breed, on this part of the reef between Portsmouth
and Beaufort harbor--ranging at large and wild. ...The race of course, was
originally derived from a superior kind of breed stock; but long acclimation
and subjection for many generations to this peculiar mode of living, has
fixed on the breed the peculiar characteristics of form, size, and qualities
which distinguish the 'banks' ponies." Ruffin went on to say, "It
would be the reverse of improvement to introduce horses of more noble race
and less fitted to endure the great hardship of this locality." Ruffin
didn't believe that horses not native to the Outer Banks would likely survive
the first year. "Water that is fresh, but badly flavored", he
said, "may be found anywhere (even on the sea-beach) by digging from
two to six feet deep. The wild horses supply their want of fresh water by
pawing away the sand deep enough to reach fresh-water which oozes into the
excavation, and which reservoir serves for this use while it remains open."
1866 The Banks horses had been "claimed" by various people
living along the coast, and were often listed as property of value to be
handed-down at their deaths. In a will dated Sept 22, 1866, Josiah Daniels
willed to his sons Randolph and Eason "all my horses on Core Banks...to
son Eason Daniels my rite to the nets, and my rite to the horses at North
Bay..; to grandson Valentine Daniels - a mare at the Beach Marsh".
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III. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
1926 In an article in the May issue of "NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC"
magazine, writer Melville Chater, who had traveled the Outer Banks northward
from Beaufort Inlet, (Barden's inlet not being in existence then) wrote
as a photograph caption:
"SUPPOSED DESCENDANTS OF THE BARBARY PONIES BROUGHT TO AMERICA BY
SIR WALTER RALEIGH'S COLONISTS. Between 5,000 and 6,000 of these wild horses
roam the sand banks of the North Carolina coast....." The article continues:
"TRADITION SAYS WILD HORSES ARE DESCENDED FROM RALEIGH'S PONIES"
..For centuries they have been roaming on the Banks, and
current tradition has it that they are descended from Barbary
ponies which were brought over by Sir Walter Raleigh's
Our quest landed us on a naked sun baked spit, where
men were driving the so-called Banker ponies along the beach
into a coral made of timbers from old wrecks. Perched on the
pen's top rail, we took lens shots at the enclosed jam of 200
horses. The sun blazed, the sand blazed. The men were shouting in
their broad dialect, so like that of the rural England of their
ancestors. The United States seemed worlds away.
The heat drove some of them to a waterhole on the beach,
where they lay prone and drank the brackish fluid. It was a
wild animals drinking place, for the banker ponies slake their
thirst by scooping holes in the sand with their forefeet.
The gates were flung wide, and the herd trotted forth to
liberty, snorting disapproval of man and his strange ways.
Then a chosen dozen were auctioned off at about $6.00 a head.
A few years ago, these putative descendants of Raleigh's
'little Barbary ponies' were bringing from $50 to $125 apiece.
The auctioneer in explanation complained, "Tew much gasoline
1957 Raleigh, NC - 40 YEARS AGO: Five Harkers Island residents, owners
of ponies on Shackleford Banks appeared before the Conservation and Development
Committee. They made a plea for allowing the ponies to remain on the Banks.
Dan Yeomans, 79 years of age, was the spokesman. Mr. Yeomans said that he
has owned ponies for 60 years stock passed on to him by his forefathers.
He told the committee, "You know, we have pennings ever summer and
sell lemonade, and our friends from upstate come to see us. We have a good
1980 (MAY) The magazine, WILDLIFE IN NORTH CAROLINA covered a pony penning
on Shackleford Banks. It stated: "Because of public interest in the
ponies from both a cultural and scientific viewpoint, removal of the ponies
is locally a sensitive issue...The Outer Banks Ponies are believed to
be descendants from horses that survived the European shipwrecks...The
ritual of pony-pennin'... is deeply rooted in tradition, and the practice
continues without economic interests. To be successful, pony-pennin' requires
the community participation and cooperation. The event is a communal function
uniting people for a time in both work and pleasure. Skills for roping and
branding are handed down to younger horsemen, and the tradition is passed
on. ... The cultural significance of the ponies is difficult to measure
and quantify. To the local people, they are no longer a source of income.
To them, they are more than that--they are a reminder of a way of life which
is rapidly vanishing".
1980 In November, Governor Jim Hunt forwarded recommendations from NC Department
of Natural Resources & Community Development to The National Park Service,
Southeast Regional Office in Atlanta, concerning the Draft EIS for Cape
Lookout National Seashore. It read: "The National Park Service should
not act to remove any species from the seashore until a detailed management
plan for wildlife has been developed and approved ...Further, the department
questions whether the banks ponies should be considered exotic since there
are accounts of their presence before permanent settlement of the area."
1982 In June, members of the Spanish Mustang Registry came to the
Outer Banks to observe the last known remaining bands of Banker Horses still
existing in the natural state as they have been for the last 400 years.
At Harkers Island, fisherman Weldon Willis, in white clam boots, ferried
Wyoming mustangers wearing cowboy boots, to Shackleford Banks in his fishing
boat. "People don't know how rare this little horse is and how hard
it is to come by", said one of the cowboys, "They don't know what
a prize they're getting." Standing on a dune, looking out over Shackleford
Banks, Emmett Brislawn, son of the founder of the Registry, admitted it
was a little hard at first to picture such a Western horse in such an Eastern
setting. "But that's why we're here", said Cody Holbrook, also
of Oshoto, Wyoming. Two of the men, [stationed at Fort Bragg], became interested
in the horses in 1981, bought a few and registered a few. Realizing that
the isolated Outer Banks were an ideal place to find horses pure enough
to qualify, they convinced the SMR to meet here. The SPANISH MUSTANG REGISTRY, INC.
STUD BOOK, 1996 contains two Shackleford horses: #600 - "Mr. Shackleford
Banks, a sorrel stallion; and #704 - "Scotch Bonnet", a sorrel
1986 In April, the Carteret County News-Times reported: 110 cows, 320
sheep, and seven goats were removed from Shackleford; about 100 "ornery"
goats and 12 sheep got away, and were to be rounded up within the next year.
"The estimated 104 ponies on Shackleford will be allowed to remain,
because they are considered part of the island's history. Some historians
believe the animals are descendants of ponies that survived 16th century
shipwrecks off the NC coast."
1993 In the Yukon Territory, a freeze-dried horse was found by miners.
This 26,000 year-old horse was intact from stomach contents to hair, mane
and tail. He resembles modern day horse, which eliminates hypotheses that
evolution of the horse completed itself on the Asian Continent.
1994 In his book, INTO THE WIND: WILD HORSES OF NORTH AMERICA, Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick
writes, "As early as 1565, shipwrecked horses found their way onto
the shores of the Shackleford Banks (otherwise known as Shackleford Island)."
1995 (Oct) Phillip Sponenberg, DVM, PHD, in his NORTH AMERICAN COLONIAL
SPANISH HORSE UPDATE writes: "One type of southeast horse is the Banker
pony from the Outer Banks of Virginia and the Carolinas. These descend from
Spanish horses, but in some islands have been subjected to a variety of
stallions of other breeds. A good example of this are the Chincoteague ponies.
...The history of some of the other island populations is more vague (Hatteras,
Shackleford and Ocracoke). Some of these horses are included in the Spanish
Mustang Registry, but these are not numerous. .... Some of the Shackleford
and Ocracoke horses seem to be especially unique, others may less so."
1995 The University of Oklahoma Press published INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA
OF HORSE BREEDS, by Bonnie Hendrix. This lists as a breed, Banker Horse
- population status...RARE.
1996, 4 Aug In a letter, Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick, Director of Science and
Conservation Biology, ZOOMONTANA writes - "The Shackleford wild horses
are the oldest documented population in North America and they should be
managed with the utmost care. By that I mean, they should be managed to
insure their continuation, and certainly the people who manage them should
be sensitive to the immense historic and cultural resource that they represent.
Dr. Kirkpatrick explained that the NPS' "exotic" designation is
based on written policy, but not on scientific veracity. "The wild
horse", he says, "is one of America's most valuable wildlife species...and
the Shackleford horses are one of our oldest legacies."
1996, 25 Nov NC Department of Environment, Health and Natural Resources
(DEHNR) letter states: "As you know, the State of North Carolina considers
the horses at Shackleford as native to the area, because they are an important
part of the area's heritage."
1997, 3 FEB NC Secretary of Cultural Resources, Betty Ray McCain wrote:
"To Whom It May concern: I am writing this letter because of my great
interest in the Shackleford Wild Ponies. They are truly a cultural resource
for North Carolina and a source of much interest and visitation by tourists.
It is my sincere and earnest hope that everything will be done, that can
be done, to save this herd of interesting characters who draw so many to
our state. They are part of what makes North Carolina one of the most interesting
and best places to live, and we are most hopeful that all agencies will
cooperate to save them. Thank you for your consideration of this letter.
I would appreciate any help that you can give to the Shackleford Wild Ponies,
and the great excitement and enjoyment that they create for the tourists
and residents of North Carolina."
1997, 13 Feb Congressman Walter B. Jones, Jr. introduced H.R. 765, "Shackleford
Banks Wild Horses Protection Act".
1997, 8 Apr Governor James B. Hunt, Jr. wrote to Congressman Walter
B. Jones, Jr.:
"I have heard from numerous citizens across the State and even outside
North Carolina who are concerned about the preservation of the wild horses
on Shackleford Banks in the Cape Lookout National Seashore. These horses
are truly a treasure for our state's citizens, as well as, tourists visiting
the coast of North Carolina and I feel it is important that this cultural
resource be maintained for the future. Your legislation will certainly be
helpful to assure that these wild horses are indeed preserved in the Cape
Lookout National Seashore for us to continue to enjoy."
1997, 22 Jul 8:26 p.m.: "Shackleford Banks Wild Horses Protection
Act" passed the United States House of Representatives by a vote of
416 to 6; 12 members absent. Two of those, Mr. Kennedy of Rhode Island,
and Ms Cubin of Wyoming, stated for the record that had they been present,
they would have voted "Aye".
1997, 25 Jul Governor Hunt wrote President Clinton, pointing out
the importance of the horses to North Carolina, the messages of concern
that he has received from people in NC and other states, and the history
of the horses. The governor ended by saying, "Again I urge you to sign
this legislation and ensure that Americans will be able to enjoy the wild
horses of the Cape Lookout National Seashore for generations to come."
1997, 19 Aug Dr. Gus Cothran, Director, Equine Genetics Lab, Gluck Equine
Center, University of Kentucky, presented his blood evaluation findings
in, "Genetic Analysis of the Cape Lookout National Seashore Feral Horse
Herd". Dr. Cothran established the Spanish link in the Shackleford
Banks horses through identification of several gene variants associated
with Spanish horses. In discussing his findings, Dr. Cothran explained that
one variant (Q-ac) is a very old genetic marker he has found in only three
equine populations: The Puerto Rican Paso Finos, the Pryor Mountain mustangs
of the Montana high country, and the Shackleford Banks wild horses. He said
this variant is one that is easily lost through "genetic drift",
and he was pleased to have been able to identify it and document it in these
1997, 1 Oct "Shackleford Banks Wild Horses Protection Act"
went before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on National Parks, Historic Preservation
1998, 25 June The U. S. Senate passed the Shackleford Banks Wild Horse Protection Act.
1998, 9 July The President of the United States signed legislation protecting the wild horses of Shackleford Banks. On 16 July, the legislation became Public Law 105-202.
1998, 9 July H.R. 765 was brought back to Congress by it sponsor. The intent of the legislation was established. Then, it passed the House and Senate, and was signed but the President it as stand-alone legislation. On 13 August, it became Public Law 105-229.
1999, 23 January In the Raleigh New and Observer, Jerry Allegood reported:
"The wild horses of Shackleford Banks are once again free to roam their island range after a roundup and tests last week found no signs of an incurable horse disease.
The Island herd ... tested negative for equine infectious anemia..."
The Foundation for Shackleford Horses, Inc., will continue to research
and document the history of the Shackleford wild horses. We hope to explore
more of the Spanish histories in future, and will update this Timeline as
heretofore unseen books, articles and documents come to light. Carteret
County has for centuries been the home of a unique and wonderful population
of wild horses. These fascinating animals are a source of fondness and pride
to the local residents, of delight and interest among visitors to Shackleford
Banks, and a national treasure and living history of the United States.
This Foundation is dedicated to protecting and preserving the wild horses
of Shackleford. It is our fervent hope that "History on Hooves",
in the form of these living legends, will remain a permanent part of the
old and colorful history of the great State of North Carolina and of Carteret
Carolyn Mason 11/17/97
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