Click here to go to the page I made on; what were the plains and who lived there
Click here to go to another page I made on; How were the Buffalo a major part of the Indians lives?
You may have thought that the plains Indians had always had their horses. In fact the plains Indians did not have their horses until about the end of 1600's. They got their horses from the Spanish. In 1600 when the Spanish were moving into New Mexico, and towards Texas, they took some of the Pueblo and Navaho Indians slaves. The explorers had brought their horses that the Indians had never seen before and the slaves would work at the ranches where they would learn about the horses. They were not allowed to ride them but they learned how to anyway. They also learned how to use them to carry their possessions. In 1680 the Pueblo Indians attacked the Spanish villages forcing them back into old Mexico. The Indians took their horses and began making large herds of them. The Pueblo Indians taught other tribes how to use the horses and how to raise them. The horse spread very quickly through the plains, although the horse did not reach the Canadian tribes until about the late 1700's. This was great for the Indians because it made a lot of their tasks easier. When they were hunting buffalo on foot they could not keep up to them, but with the horse they could ride up right beside them and shoot a bow. It made traveling from place to place a lot easier. When they did not have the horses, they would have dogs pull all of their supplies like their food on a sled made out of two logs tied to the dogs side that dragged on the ground behind them. These logs were called travois's. The horses also proved very valuable when raiding other tribes and during times of war. The Indians soon became masters on the horse and were very good at riding them. They moved the idea of a travois on a dog and put it on a horse. They could move a lot more supplies this way.
Here is a page were I got lots of info on the horse, you can link to it at http://www.texasindians.com/horse.htm