by Mildred Boyd

      Although the tiny “dawn horse,” eohippus, originated in the Western Hemisphere some 60 million years ago, the horse had been extinct here for countless millennia before man first appeared. Only those few that had crossed into Asia before the last Ice Age survived and it is from them that all horses eventually evolved.
      So it is hardly surprising that, when the indigenous peoples of the Americas first encountered the horses ridden by the Conquistadors, they were terrified. Convinced that the banished god, Quetzalcoatl, had returned, bringing fearsome, two-headed demons to punish them, they fled in panic. The canny Cortez, of course, did nothing to discourage that superstitious fear, and his tiny cadre of 16 horses played an important part in the conquest.
      The Indians, however, soon learned the truth about these easily-trained and extremely useful creatures and so began a profitable relationship with the huge animals that has lasted until this day. Some of the finest pure-bred hunters and jumpers are raised in Mexico and Mexican horsemen do extremely well in equestrian competitions world-wide.
      On a lesser scale, horses and their small cousins, the burros, have long been a favorite subject of artisans and artists all over Mexico. You will find them cast in bronze, carved in stone or wood, molded in clay or pulped paper and painted on every possible surface and in every possible attitude and color, including some no self-respecting member of the equine species would ever assume.

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