Ancestors of the Assateague Horses
Their manes flowing in the wind, their hooves pounding the sand, wild horses roam the beaches of Assateague Island. Fascinated by their beauty and wildness, thousands visit the island to see them. A novel for children that immortalized one of them — Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry — was published in 1947.
The most popular origin story for how horses arrived on Assateague Island is that they survived a Spanish shipwreck.
A Spanish galleon, the La Galga, foundered in the shallow water on the Assateague shore around 1750. John Amrhein, Jr., researched the wreck’s location and concluded that the remains of the ship are now underground close to the Maryland/Virginia border where Spanish artifacts — a pistol, coins, and an anchor — have been found. Amrhein was told that local Native Americans discovered the wreck and helped the survivors.
La Galga was carrying 60 merchants from Cuba to Spain. The horses from the shipwreck were likely theirs and could have swum ashore to the island.
A frigate, the Juno, was also wrecked near Assateague Island. Bound for Spain from Veracruz, Mexico, Juno had spent 10 months in Puerto Rico and was carrying a cargo of silver and more than 400 passengers, including soldiers, civilians, and English military prisoners. Although there was no mention of horses on the cargo manifest, it’s likely that the soldiers were traveling with their horses.
In the 19th Century, these horses on Assateague were considered an “inferior breed,” mixed with other horses and ponies; however, they are the only herd on the coast and their genetic mitochondrial profile is known.
A recent article (“Analysis of the earliest complete genome of a Caribbean colonial horse”) reports that the remains of a late 16th Century horse in Haiti have been analyzed. That horse’s closest genetic relatives are the Assateague horses. The site where the remains were found was the old Spanish settlement of Puerto Real, now in northern Haiti. The Assateague horses and the Puerto Real horse show genetic affinities with the Paso Fino breed in the Caribbean.
The Spaniards introduced horses into the Americas in 1493. These were Iberian horses brought first to Hispaniola and later to Panama, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, and in 1538 to Florida. Lost or stolen horses formed large herds of feral horses, known as mustangs.
Iberian horses have a long history in Europe. They are depicted on cave paintings on the Iberian Peninsula as early as 25,000-20,000 years BCE. They were well known as war horses. Many of the horse breeds in the Americas are descended from Iberian horses, including the Paso Fino that is associated with Puerto Rico. It is the breed most closely related to the Assateague horses.
There’s another origin story for the Assateague horses. This has local farmers pasturing their horses on the Island to evade tax assessors. Records for Accomack County, Va., document that horses were indeed pastured on Assateague in the 1600s, but this account isn’t nearly as romantic as Spanish shipwrecks.
So, the next time you visit Assateague, greet the horses with “Hola! Cómo están?” Their ancestors were the Iberian Andalusian horse, and they just might understand you.
Jeanette E. Sherbondy is a retired anthropology professor from Washington College and has lived here since 1986. In retirement she has been active with the Kent County Historical Society and Sumner Hall, one of the organizers of Legacy Day, and helped get highway /historical markers recognizing Henry Highland Garnet. She published an article on her ethnohistorical research of the free Black village, Morgnec.
Common Sense for the Eastern Shore
