Profiles
A Who's Who of Horses and Their Humans
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I
have changed my mind about this
page. It will be organized alphabetically instead of according to breeds
with people and horses listed together. If there is enough information
about a particular horse, for instance, I will make a separate page for it. I
do still want to have a good picture for every profile
eventually, just like I have on the breed pages. The profiles on the breed
pages will eventually all be linked to here for more information.
One thing I will not change yet: I will keep the
categories of people and horses listed below separate for now. I may link
the same pages somewhere else on the site and keep this page for a quick
search. I have not yet fully decided what I'm going to do, so I don't want
to make any drastic changes at this point.
Certain
horses have shared the heroic stature of their masters.
El Morazillo, ridden by Hernando Cortez in leading the
conquest of Mexico, was deified and worshipped by the Mexican Indians for two
centuries after his death.
The horses of mythology, though fictional, deserve mention
with the famous equines of the epic past. To the Greeks, horses symbolized
the blessings of the gods, see Pegasus, the winged
horse of Bellerophon.
In the ancient sagas of many lands, the horse is often
courier between heaven and earth, or bearer of heroes to the hereafter.
Norse heroes were borne to Valhalla by the horses of the Valkyries.
Mr. Ed, the
talking equine star of the 1960s television series, was a golden palomino. He
learned an enormous amount of tricks for his role, including answering a
telephone, opening doors, writing notes with a pencil, and unplugging a light.
Apparently, Mr. Ed would occasionally have a fit of temper, as befitting his
star status, and would stand stock still, wheezing and refusing to move.
El Cid, the Spanish warrior, called his horse Babieca,
a Spanish word meaning "stupid."
Courtesy The Empire of Equus by David
Willoughby, I have included this brief summarization of several important horses
(and their people). Hopefully I'll be able to get more information on all
of them in time.
The Quarter Horse breed was started with the English
Thoroughbred "Janus" in 1760 in Virginia and North Carolina. The first
purebred Arabian horse in the United States was a stallion named "Ranger,"
imported to New London, Connecticut, also in 1760. Never forget the
American mules were first bred from Spanish ones, gifted to George Washington by
the king of Spain in 1787. The American trotter (or Standardbred) traces
back to "Messenger," foaled in England in 1780, and "Bellfounder," foaled in
England in 1815 (the book indicates, though does not explicitly say, that
Messenger was a Thoroughbred and Bellfounder was a Hackney).
The following are some famous horses and their generals (I
choose at this point in time to simply list them with a few brief notes, saving
details for another time): Alexander the Great's Bucephalus (the name
means "bull-headed"), Napoleon's Marengo (an almost-Arab stallion, 14.1 hh,
lived to the age of 36), George Washington's Nelson (light chestnut with white
face and legs, 16 hh; the general also owned a stallion named Douglas and a
another white horse named Lexington, among others), Robert E. Lee's Traveller
(grey gelding, 16 hh; Lee once said, "There is many a war-horse that is more
entitled to immortality than the man who rides him."), Ulysses S. Grant's
Cincinnati (black, 16 hh, 1200 lbs), Philip Sheridan's Winchester (black, over
17 hh). There is also brief mention of General Sherman's Sam, General
Meade's Baldy, and General McClellan's Black Dan.
A Who's Who of Humans