THE STUFF OF LEGEND
Who created the Quarter Horse? Independent-minded men who knew just what to look for in a horse, families dedicated over several generations to finding and breeding speedy “short horses,” pioneers who established cattle operations that grew to become vast empires … add in a few horse thieves, high-stakes poker players and a scattering of standard-issue horse traders---and you have the frontier mix that created the foundation of the American Quarter Horse. The frontier I am speaking of, however, was not in Texas; it was not in the trans-Mississippi “Old West” of the decades after the Civil War. Instead, the Quarter Horse arose in Colonial Virginia and its first important phase of development occurred on farms in Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and Missouri.
Quarter-path racing---from which the Quarter Horse gets it name---came to America with the English, Scots and Irish, so that for example in Colonial New England, Justin Morgan regularly put his stallion Figure up against all comers. Thanks to lively betting interest as well as to Figure’s “short” speed, Mr. Morgan appears usually to have gone home the richer for it (see “Mystery of the Morgan Horse,” EQUUS 469). Races were held on a straight section of dirt road measuring 80 rods by the surveyor’s chain---one-quarter mile. Many taverns or country inns maintained a race-path, and on Sundays after church, all and sundry in the neighborhood would repair to the “pub” for a pint of ale and an afternoon of high-spirited fun. Owners rode in leading their fast horses, bringing with them African-American slaves who acted as jockeys (it was not thought dignified for the white owner to jockey his own horse; his job rather was to work up the betting interest by bragging about his horse’s outstanding abilities).
“Short” races differed greatly from flat-track heat racing, which was the exclusive purview of the wealthy. Heat racing required a large tract of open, level turf; quarter-path racing by contrast required only a strip of cleared forest. Much lampooned by the wealthy, this rustic and simple form of competition remained throughout the 19th century a favorite pastime of the middle and lower classes. Breed historian Alexander Mackay-Smith observes, “Quarter racing was basically a frontier sport that spread west with the pioneers…. As the frontier expanded beyond the Allegheny Mountains, quarter racing was transplanted to the bluegrass regions of Tennessee and Kentucky and to the river towns of the lower Mississippi.”
A HOME IN KENTUCKY, A REFUGE IN MISSOURI
In the decades between 1780 and 1820, thousands of people came over the Appalachian Mountains from New England and the Eastern Seaboard states, bringing horses with them. They established settlements in Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois; already by 1818, all of these areas, originally “territories,” had officially become states.
Statehood brought with it both advantages and disadvantages with reference to the acquisition of land. In most states, acreage could not legally be acquired merely by “squatting” on it. As each state voted itself into the Union, state legislatures became the regulators of liens and deeds. Just as now, most families in that long-ago time found that land costs money---often more money than they possessed. A loan would be necessary; only the male head of household could legally secure such in his own name. Typically, the money to buy a homestead did not come from a bank, but rather from wealthy neighbors whose money originated back East. There were no laws regarding usury, and the horrifying specter of debtor’s prison was the method employed to squeeze the last penny from those who either would not or could not pay.
Hence the myth of the restless pioneer. Daniel Boone, often cited as the supreme example of a man who got an itch in his boots as soon
