Kiger History

No other horse in the world today is quite like the Kiger Mustang. To truly appreciate this special breed one must understand the unique relationship that grew between man and this remarkable horse, and the historical path they rode together. We invite you to read on as we take you on a journey through history.

The Spanish Horse reigned for several centuries throughout the world as the embodiment of perfection in horseflesh. But with the advent of the motor-car many believe that the true Spanish Horse has been cross-bred and abandoned nearly to the point of extinction. The Kiger Mustang is thought to be one of the most pure herds of Spanish Horses in the world today.

While many historians claim that domestication of the horse first took place around 5000 B.C., Evidence has been found that strongly suggests the domestication of the Iberian Horse as early as 25,000 B.C. Cave paintings have been discovered in the mountains of Northwestern Spain portraying Mesolithic horses being led by men and women with what appear to be rope halters on their heads. The horses depicted bear an undeniable likeness to the Kiger Mustangs of today, with the so-called “Barb” head clearly evident. At first these horses were probably kept as meat or for beasts of burden. The horses that did not show a propensity toward man, became dinner. It is clear that the cave dwellers hunted the early horse for food, but some obviously were captured and domesticated. Without realizing it, early man was selectively breeding horses that had a partiality and fondness for man.

The horse continued to live and strive on the Iberian Peninsula. By the Golden eras of Greece and Rome the Iberian Peninsula became known throughout the Mediterranean as the land of Equus. It was there, according to traditional Greek fables, that Zephyr the Greek God of the wind bred the Iberian horses and produced Pegasus, the famed winged horse of Mount Olympus. Greek armies and the famous Legions of Rome mounted on Iberian Stallions conquered the ancient world of their day. Southern Iberia became the Roman province of Betica and the Iberian charger was Betica’s main export. The Iberian horse became known worldwide for their fire, agility and were a perfect example of controlled power.

Over the next thousand years we do not know what infusions or strains of imported horses impacted the development of the Iberian horse. Greeks, Roman Goths, and Moors all occupied the Iberian peninsula at one time or another, and without a doubt these cultures impacted the development of the Iberian horse. The Arab invasion in 711 A.D. was the frosting on the cake in the recipe that produced Europe’s greatest horse breed. The Iberian charger was no match for the fast Berber horses who literally ran circles around them. The Berber warrior’s horses brought refinement and refreshment to the heavier breed. Over the next centuries in the southern provinces of the Iberian Peninsula the melding of the Iberian charger and the Berber horse produced the perfect combination of desirable characteristics in agility, strength, and beauty and, in addition, possessed great docility, an obedient nature, and strong loyalty to man.

From this time forward there would never be a war-horse to equal them. Every army desired the Iberian Charger. Besides agility and strength, this horse has always had a regal carriage and high step fit for any king. There was hardly a breed in ancient times, which did not feel the dynamic impact of the Iberian’s blood.

It was in the hands of the bullfighters of Spain that the Iberian steed earned its reputation as the greatest stock-working animal in the equine world. Spanish vaqueros used their Iberian horses to handle temperamental bulls. With incredible speed and handiness they maneuvered the angry bulls, dodging in and out, barely missing the hooking horns. The famous American Quarter Horse and other breeds noted for their “cow sense” inherited this ability from their Iberian ancestors.

By Columbus’s second voyage, the early 1500’s, Spanish Explorers began to bring Iberian horses to the New World. These horses were instrumental in the conquest of Native American civilizations like the Aztec and the Inca. The principal kind of horses imported to the New World, were at first, the North African Barb, the indigenous Iberian horse or Sorria, and various mixtures of the Andulusain and the two breeds. A few Andulusian stallions were brought over, however, the early Spanish Explorers were not prepared to risk valuable Andulusian stock to a perilous sea voyage and unknown dangers, aware that their return was beyond consideration and their survival in doubt.

By the late 1500’s and into the 1700’s Royal breeding Farms were established in the Indies and Mexico. Adulusians of the highest order were provided to them. Consignment after consignment arrived. The Adulusian was crossed and recrossed on the stock brought over on previous voyages. Eventually the horse population from these bases spread with the onward march of the conquistadors, the priests and the settlers that followed them.

Long before the Castillain, Cortes crossed lances with the people of the Aztec civilization, a trail etched deep through centuries of use linked the Blue Mountains of Oregon with the Aztec capital of Central Mexico. The indigenous people at both ends and in the middle of the trail shared a common ancestry and a common language. Trade goods passed back and forth along what would later be known as the Shoshoni Trail. The Aztec in the south and the Hopi in the Colorado basin obtained gold, obsidian, silver, pine nuts and otter skins from the north. The Shoshoni received turquoise, corn, tobacco and parrot feathers from the south. This trade route extended from Vera Cruz north along the coast to the Rio Grande River. From there it continued north to Santa Fe, angled across western Colorado through Hopi country, thence into Utah where it crossed the White River; then on to the Green River crossing the Uinta Mountains to the Snake River and then west where it followed the Malheur River into Harney Basin in outheastern Oregon. Again it turned north to the headwaters of the Crooked River and crossed Big Summit Prairie into the John Day Valley. At Picture Gorge on the John Day River the Shoshoni Trail from Mexico joined the trade routes of the Columbia River to the coast of the Pacific Northwest.

The Spanish horse supplied the power for Hernado Cortez to destroy the Aztecs, the most advanced civilization on the North American continent, and a few years later the Spaniard and the Spanish horse would provide the Aztec’s cousins the Shoshoni the means to not only survive but to emerge as the leading and most powerful and feared tribe in western North America.

In 1541, the Shoshoni watched and marveled as Coronado fought his way up the Colorado River, retreated to the Red River and the plunged north towards the Cimarron. However, it was not the Spaniards who inspired them with awe. They were men, no different and no worse than other men. What held the weary Shoshoni spellbound were the soldiers gliding across the sage, riding on the backs of large animals. Grass fires flashed the word ahead. Strange men on large dogs, as dogs were the Shoshoni’s only beasts of burden, were prowling the southern wastelands. Before the Shoshoni stood the means to a new wealth, a means for greatness.

After months of observation, the Shoshoni were convinced that if the clumsy aliens could ride such a creature, so could they. It was relatively easy to catch one, Coronado left horses strung out for 900 miles in his epic crossing of the southwest plains. Within a very short span of time the Shoshoni became accomplished horsemen. Small mobile units of Shoshoni mounted on fast horses covered 800 miles in a single trip. This was no more than a pleasant outing for a people who had walked every inch of ground between the Cascade Range and the Coast of Mexico. With the added strength and speed of the horse the Shoshoni was able to trade over vast distances, hunt large game and maintain much larger family units or villages. Soon they also held a decisive military advantage over neighboring tribes. The Spanish horse then became the primary trade item of the Shoshoni.

The Spanish crown established missions over northern Mexico, Texas and the American Southwest. The Spanish missionaries contributed their share of horses to the wild herds and the Shoshoni. There where no fences and the mission herds wandered over vast tracts of land claimed by the missions. It was an easy job to gather a hundred mission horses and head them north to Oregon country. In addition the Jesuit Priests often gave horses to the Indians when they were attempting to convert them to Catholicism.

After the destruction of the Aztecs, the Hopi were the next members of the Shoshoni family to feel the bitter sting of Spanish dominance. The Hopi endured Spanish rule for seventy-five years until 1675 when a plea for help reached the war camps of the northern Shoshoni. The thousands of Spanish horses at Santa Fe were all the plunder necessary to lure a large war party of northern Shoshoni to come to Hopi country and drive out the Spanish. In late July of 1680 five hundred Shoshoni arrived after a twenty-nine day march at the nearly deserted Hopi Pueblo of Kisa’ kobi. On August 10, 1680 the Spanish would reap a bumper crop of the seeds of cruelty they had sown. One fifth of the 2500 Spanish settlers where wiped out. The remainder fled south along the Shoshoni Trail, now called Deadman’s Road, leaving behind all of their possessions. They fled They did not stop until they reached the safety of El Paso del Norte.

After the defeat of the Spanish at Santa Fe the Shoshoni, their appetite now whetted for horses and blood, moved south into the Texas Panhandle. From camps along the Canadian and Red Rivers, the Shoshoni raided Spanish settlements for horses and whatever they had to offer. War parties sometimes thrust hundreds of miles into Mexico, returning with as many as 1000 stolen horses. Most of the horses and goods were funneled north into Oyer’ungun as the Shoshoni called the Blue Mountains of Oregon. They found horses so plentiful in Mexico that this band of Shoshoni raiders decided to take up permanent residence to serve as a supply depot for the northern Shoshoni. These Shoshoni became the fourth segment to break away form the mother nation. They called themselves Kansas, the Europeans called them Comanches.

The introduction of the Spanish horse by the Shoshoni to the western tribes changed the way of life of many Indians tribes. So radically did their culture change, that tribal existence only a few hundred years prior the acquisition of the horse became to many tribal cultures a forgotten way of life. For the plains Indians to gallop 100 miles in a day was not uncommon. The horse became a measurement of wealth, the war pony a symbol of great pride.

The Spanish horse is a hot-blooded, Old World horse, the culmination of centuries of superior breeding, honed to perfection in Spain as the world’s finest war, stock and pleasure horse. When transplanted to American soil the Iberian horse never lost its cutting edge. It’s agility, intelligence, courage and endurance only sharpened as its metal was tested in the wild interior of the continent. Never grained or sheltered, the Iberian horse endured and thrived under the harshest of conditions.

By the mid 1800’s the American west began to be forged and molded by the cattle rancher. The Spanish Mustang was used to gather millions of wild longhorns off the Texas range. These mustangs were ridden by a breed of men as wild as the longhorn and as tough as the Mustangs they rode. The Spanish Mustang swam every river from Texas to Canada, enduring stampedes, tornadoes, hailstorms and freezing blizzards. They did it all while foraging on bunch grass and bitter brush without grain. They came through it
with their eyes alert and heads up.

The once pure Spanish herds received continual contamination and mixture with other breeds as settlements and ranches were established across the American West. Sometimes wild stallions tore down fences and made off with tame mares, other times tame mares went through the fences on their own. Work horse teams were lost all across the country from farms and wagon trains. Horses from French Canada were introduced throughout the Mississippi valley as French explorers and settlers descended the valley as far south as New Orleans. The U.S. Cavalry also added to the mix. They felt the need for a larger horse so began a systematic program of shooting the Spanish Mustang stallions and turning lose English Thoroughbreds into the herds on the American Plains. By the late 1800’s the use of the horse by the U.S. Army became directed more to the pulling artillery or heavy wagons. So the U.S. government purchased Friesian stallions from Germany and
released them into the vast herds of American Mustangs. This practice continued well into the early 1900’s. By this time the pure Spanish Mustang was all but extinct.

Once, the large herds of wild horses posed no particular threat to human interest, just the opposite they were the transportation. But eventually this all changed. Ranchers began to resent the horses which ate grass needed for their cattle. Many ranchers adopted a policy of shooting any wild horses they could. By the later part of the 19th century, most purebred Spanish American horses had been reduced to near extinction by crossbreeding and extermination by ranchers who viewed them as compition for much coveted grass for domestic livestock. There were an estimated two million wild horses in the United States at the end of the 1800’s. By 1935 that number had been reduced to an estimated 150,000. Mustangers began to use various, often cruel, methods to capture the remaining horses for sale to the meat packing industry for the production of pet food. By 1971 it was
estimated that fewer than 30,000 horses remained of the once vast herds of the American West.

The American Mustang herds of the 1930’s were vastly different from the pure Iberian horse introduced by Columbus, the horses that served the early Spanish explorers, the American Plains Indian and the Cowboy for four hundred years. Most horse enthusiasts thought the vast herds of pure Spanish Mustangs had become extinct. Imagine the delight of the BLM wildhorse specialists when in 1977 in a remote area of South Eastern Oregon they noticed a group of twenty-seven horses that carried the color, confirmation and primitive markings of the Spanish Mustang. All the horses in the herd were some shade of Dun ranging from buckskin to claybank and Grullo. All had the dorsal stripes and zebra stripping on their legs and the classic barb head. For four hundred years these horses had apparently inhabited the remote and rugged desert of southeastern Oregon undetected and unchanged. They had been culled by nature, the most critical judge of all, fired in the crucible of war and molded by the necessity of survival. The BLM immediately began to take steps toprotect this national treasure. This herd of twenty-seven horses were gathered and held in the Burns district facility until a suitable area was found to release them. To prevent losing all the horses to a natural catastrophe, two Herd Management Areas were established in a remote area of southeastern Oregon. Twenty were let loose in the Kiger Herd Management area and the remaining seven were released in the Riddle Mountain HMA. Today, the BLM protects and manages these unique horses (The Kiger Mustang) to maintain a pure gene pool.

Since the discovery of these special horses, blood tests done at the University of Kentucky have found genetic markers intact and clearly tying the Kiger to the Spanish horses ridden by early Spanish Explorers (the Andalusian, Sorraia). The Kiger is very intelligent, and learns extremely fast. It is noted for its stamina and toughness. The Kiger matures slowly and has a long and useful life-span. Broodmares continue to produce well into their mid
and late twenties. They are easy keepers, thriving on grass alone even under working conditions. The disposition of the Kiger displays a unique combination of hot blooded Spanish temperament combined with a gentle, calm willingness to please. Stallions are well mannered and easily managed.

For two thousand years equestrians have considered the horses of the Iberian Peninsula the ideal horse. The Greeks used the Iberian horse as a model for Pegasus; the Romans ruled the known world from the back of Iberian stallions. Spain conquered the vast empires of the New World riding the world’s greatest war-horse. Bred to handle the agile bulls of Spain, they were a tailor-made buffalo horse and war pony for the American Indian, and for the American cowboy more than a match for the wiley longhorn. Centuries ago, the conquistadors sailed to the New World with horses. Since this rugged steed set foot on the rocky soil of America, it has remained a legend so intertwined with the conquest of a nation that it has become history in the flesh.

For today’s equestrian or horse lover who is looking for stunning equine beauty, the most noble of companions, a mount combining spirit with gentleness; and for the sportsperson who wants a partner who is a fast learner with supreme athletic ability, there is no better choice than the Kiger Mustang, the embodiment of an American Legend.