The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 67, July 1963 - April, 1964 Page: 163
672 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews
reviewer from the Carolina Low Country still prefers pinders,
croker sack and cooter to peanuts, burlap bag, and turtle).
D. M. McKEITHAN
The University of Texas
Appaloosa: The Spotted Horse in Art and History. By Francis
Haines. Austin (University of Texas Press), 1963. Pp. xii+
10o3. Illustrations, footnotes, bibliography. $1o.oo.
Although the present popularity of the Appaloosa horse dates
mainly from 1938, when the original Appaloosa Horse Club was
formed, spotted horses of this type have been in demand since
ancient times. Francis Haines, historian of the club, shows that
paintings of such horses were made in the Stone Age on the walls
of caves in France.
While the men who made those pictures probably valued the
horses only as food, early horsemen in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Eu-
rope, and Asia were partial to spotted mounts and often paid
premiums for them. The Chinese called them heavenly horses, and
a Persian legend claims that the best war horse in the world was
the spotted Rakush, ridden by the great hero, Rustam, about
400 B.C.
The Appaloosa apparently received its name from a river in
the Northwest which French-Canadian fur traders called the
Pelouse or Palouse. Along this stream the Nez Perce Indians bred
spotted and other horses obtained indirectly from the Spaniards.
The Nez Perce valued the spotted horses because they were
speedy, intelligent, and hardy. Their appearance also made them
popular; they were flashy at close range but at a distance blended
with their background to make a camouflage valuable in enemy
country.
Scarcity of written records of spotted horses forced Haines to
depend largely on pictures for his history of the Appaloosa, pres-
ently registered as a distinct breed. His patient research has been
amazingly successful. His sixty-five illustrations, fourteen of them
in color, reproduce a wide variety of art forms, including cave
paintings, mosaics, vases, and water colors. They show spotted
horses being ridden by such varied personages as King Louis
XIV, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.163
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 67, July 1963 - April, 1964, periodical, 1964; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101197/m1/185/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.