A Mid Week At Work Blog Mirror: Kit Up; Trails Found: Training SOF to Operate on Horseback

Trails Found: Training SOF to Operate on Horseback.

The ghost of the Crow Treaty of 1868 appears in a Wyoming court.

 

 Crow Indians, 1908. These men may have been living at the time the Ft. Laramie Treaty came into being.

The Casper Star Tribune reported that today the trial of Clayvin Herrera, a game warden on the Crow Reservation in southern Montana, commences today in Sheridan.  Herrera is charged with taking a big game animal in Wyoming out of season in 2014.  In other words, with poaching.  He is not only a game warden on the Crow Reservation, he is also a Crow Indian.

Of interest, he's relying on one of the Fort Laramie Treaties of 1868 as a defense.  The thesis is that the treaty grants the Crows hunting rights in Wyoming, which it did (and not just to the Crows, but to other tribes as well, in related treaties of the same vintage) and therefore hunting in Wyoming out of Wyoming's season isn't necessarily a violation of the law.  It's an attractive and even a romantic legal defense.

It won't work.

Citation to the 1868 treaties (there is more than one) for various things has been made before and the point of the state; that subsequent developments in history and Wyoming's statehood abrogated that part of the treaty, are fairly well established.  A very long time ago, well over two decades now, one of the Federal judges in the state became so irritated by such an attempt that he actually stated that the treaty with the Sioux of the same vintage and location also authorized (which I don't think it did) shooting at tribal members off the reservation and nobody thought that was the case any more, stating that in the form of a question.  Again, I think that remark was not only evidence of frustration, and highly inappropriate, but it was flat out wrong, the treaty never authorized that, but citation to the treaty on dead letters within it is pointless which I suppose was in his inartfully made point.

Which brings us to the actual point.  Ineffectual though they are, and they are, the 1868 treaties really live on as a psychological influence, and that's interesting. Indeed, it's an interesting aspect of the first three of our Laws of History.  After all this time an ineffectual treaty lives on, wounded, but still there, in some odd fashion.  And with it, some old arguments and fights.

The Treaty:

Articles of a treaty made and concluded at Fort Laramie, Dakota Territory, on the seventh day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-eight, by and between the undersigned commissioners on the part of the United States, and the undersigned chiefs and head-men of and representing the Crow Indians, they being duly authorized to act in the premises.

ARTICLE 1.

From this day forward peace between the parties to this treaty shall forever continue. The Government of the United States desires peace, and its honor is hereby pledged to keep it. The Indians desire peace, and they hereby pledge their honor to maintain it. If bad men among the whites or among other people, subject to the authority of the United States, shall commit any wrong upon the person or property of the Indians, the United States will, upon proof made to the agent and forwarded to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs at Washington City, proceed at once to cause the offender to be arrested and punished according to the laws of the United States, and also re-imburse the injured person for the loss sustained.

If bad men among the Indians shall commit a wrong or depredation upon the person or property of any one, white, black, or Indian, subject to the authority of the United States and at peace therewith, the Indians herein named solemnly agree that they will, on proof made to their agent and notice by him, deliver up the wrong-doer to the United States, to be tried and punished according to its laws; and in case they refuse willfully so to do the person injured shall be re-imbursed for his loss from the annuities or other moneys due or to become due to them under this or other treaties made with the United States. And the President, on advising with the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, shall prescribe such rules and regulations for ascertaining damages under the provisions of this article as in his judgment may be proper. But no such damages shall be adjusted and paid until thoroughly examined and passed upon by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and no one sustaining loss while violating, or because of his violating, the provisions of this treaty or the laws of the United States shall be re-imbursed therefor.

ARTICLE 2.

The United States agrees that the following district of country, to wit: commencing where the 107th degree of longitude west of Greenwich crosses the south boundary of Montana Territory; thence north along said 107th meridian to the mid-channel of the Yellowstone River; thence up said mid-channel of the Yellowstone to the point where it crosses the said southern boundary of Montana, being the 45th degree of north latitude; and thence east along said parallel of latitude to the place of beginning, shall be, and the same is, set apart for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of the Indians herein named, and for such other friendly tribes or individual Indians as from to time they may be willing, with the consent of the United States, to admit amongst them; and the United States now solemnly agrees that no persons, except those herein designated and authorized so to do, and except such officers, agents, and employés of the Government as may be authorized to enter upon Indian reservations in discharge of duties enjoined by law, shall ever be permitted to pass over, settle upon, or reside in the territory described in this article for the use of said Indians, and henceforth they will, and do hereby, relinquish all title, claims, or rights in and to any portion of the territory of the United States, except such as is embraced within the limits aforesaid.

ARTICLE 3.

The United States agrees, at its own proper expense, to construct on the south side of the Yellowstone, near Otter Creek, a warehouse or store-room for the use of the agent in storing goods belonging to the Indians, to cost not exceeding twenty-five hundred dollars; an agency-building for the residence of the agent, to cost not exceeding three thousand dollars; a residence for the physician, to cost not more than three thousand dollars; and five other buildings, for a carpenter, farmer, blacksmith, miller, and engineer, each to cost not exceeding two thousand dollars; also a school-house or mission-building, so soon as a sufficient number of children can be induced by the agent to attend school, which shall not cost exceeding twenty-five hundred dolla

The United States agrees further to cause to be erected on said reservation, near the other buildings herein authorized, a good steam circular saw-mill, with a grist-mill and shingle-machine attached, the same to cost not exceeding eight thousand dollars.

ARTICLE 4.

The Indians herein named agree, when the agency-house and other buildings shall be constructed on the reservation named, they will make said reservation their permanent home, and they will make no permanent settlement elsewhere, but they shall have the right to hunt on the unoccupied lands of the United States so long as game may be found thereon, and as long as peace subsists among the whites and Indians on the borders of the hunting districts.

ARTICLE 5.

The United States agrees that the agent for said Indians shall in the future make his home at the agency-building; that he shall reside among them, and keep an office open at all times for the purpose of prompt and diligent inquiry into such matters of complaint, by and against the Indians, as may be presented for investigation under the provisions of their treaty stipulations, as also for the faithful discharge of other duties enjoined on him by law. In all cases of depredation on person or property, he shall cause the evidence to be taken in writing and forwarded, together with his finding, to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, whose decision shall be binding on the parties to this treaty.

ARTICLE 6.

If any individual belonging to said tribes of Indians, or legally incorporated with them, being the head of a family, shall desire to commence farming, he shall have the privilege to select, in the presence and with the assistance of the agent then in charge, a tract of land within said reservation, not exceeding three hundred and twenty acres in extent, which tract, when so selected, certified, and recorded in the “land book,”as herein directed, shall cease to be held in common, but the same may be occupied and held in the exclusive possession of the person selecting it, and of his family, so long as he or they may continue to cultivate it.

Any person over eighteen years of age, not being the head of a family, may in like manner select and cause to be certified to him or her, for purposes of cultivation, a quantity of land not exceeding eighty acres in extent, and thereupon be entitled to the exclusive possession of the same as above directed.

For each tract of land so selected a certificate, containing a description thereof and the name of the person selecting it, with a certificate endorsed thereon that the same has been recorded, shall be delivered to the party entitled to it by the agent, after the same shall have been recorded by him in a book to be kept in his office, subject to inspection, which said book shall be known as the “Crow land book.”

The President may at any time order a survey of the reservation, and, when so surveyed, Congress shall provide for protecting the rights of settlers in their improvements, and may fix the character of the title held by each. The United States may pass such laws on the subject of alienation and descent of property as between Indians, and on all subjects connected with the government of the Indians on said reservations and the internal police thereof, as may be thought proper.

ARTICLE 7.

In order to insure the civilization of the tribe entering into this treaty, the necessity of education is admitted, especially by such of them as are, or may be, settled on said agricultural reservation; and they therefore pledge themselves to compel their children, male and female, between the ages of six and sixteen years, to attend school; and it is hereby made the duty of the agent for said Indians to see that this stipulation is strictly complied with; and the United States agrees that for every thirty children, between said ages, who can be induced or compelled to attend school, a house shall be provided, and a teacher, competent to teach the elementary branches of an English education, shall be furnished, who will reside among said Indians, and faithfully discharge his or her duties as a teacher. The provisions of this article to continue for twenty years.

ARTICLE 8.

When the head of a family or lodge shall have selected lands and received his certificate as above directed, and the agent shall be satisfied that he intends in good faith to commence cultivating the soil for a living, he shall be entitled to receive seed and agricultural implements for the first year in value one hundred dollars, and for each succeeding year he shall continue to farm, for a period of three years more, he shall be entitled to receive seed and implements as aforesaid in value twenty-five dollars per annum.

And it is further stipulated that such persons as commence farming shall receive instructions from the farmer herein provided for, and whenever more than one hundred persons shall enter upon the cultivation of the soil, a second blacksmith shall be provided, with such iron, steel, and other material as may be required.

ARTICLE 9.

In lieu of all sums of money or other annuities provided to be paid to the Indians herein named, under any and all treaties heretofore made with them, the United States agrees to deliver at the agency house, on the reservation herein provided for, on the first day of September of each year for thirty years, the following articles, to wit:

For each male person, over fourteen years of age, a suit of good substantial woolen clothing, consisting of coat, hat, pantaloons, flannel shirt, and a pair of woolen socks.
For each female, over twelve years of age, a flannel skirt, or the goods necessary to make it, a pair of woolen hose, twelve yards of calico, and twelve yards of cotton domestics.
For the boys and girls under the ages named, such flannel and cotton goods as may be needed to make each a suit as aforesaid, together with a pair of woollen hose for each.
And in order that the Commissioner of Indian Affairs may be able to estimate properly for the articles herein named, it shall be the duty of the agent, each year, to forward to him a full and exact census of the Indians, on which the estimate from year to year can be based.
And, in addition to the clothing herein named, the sum of ten dollars shall be annually appropriated for each Indian roaming, and twenty dollars for each Indian engaged in agriculture, for a period of ten years, to be used by the Secretary of the Interior in the purchase of such articles as, from time to time, the condition and necessities of the Indians may indicate to be proper. And if, at any time within the ten years, it shall appear that the amount of money needed for clothing, under this article, can be appropriated to better uses for the tribe herein named, Congress may, by law, change the appropriation to other purposes; but in no event shall the amount of this appropriation be withdrawn or discontinued for the period named. And the President shall annually detail an officer of the Army to be present and attest the delivery of all the goods herein named to the Indians, and he shall inspect and report on the quantity and quality of the goods and the manner of their delivery; and it is expressly stipulated that each Indian over the age of four years, who shall have removed to and settled permanently upon said reservation, and complied with the stipulations of this treaty, shall be entitled to receive from the United States, for the period of four years after he shall have settled upon said reservation, one pound of meat and one pound of flour per day, provided the Indians cannot furnish their own subsistence at an earlier date. And it is further stipulated that the United States will furnish and deliver to each lodge of Indians, or family of persons legally incorporated with them, who shall remove to the reservation herein described, and commence farming, one good American cow and one good, well-broken pair of American oxen, within sixty days after such lodge or family shall have so settled upon said reservation

ARTICLE 10.

The United States hereby agrees to furnish annually to the Indians the physician, teachers, carpenter, miller, engineer, farmer, and blacksmiths as herein contemplated, and that such appropriations shall be made from time to time, on the estimates of the Secretary of the Interior, as will be sufficient to employ such persons.

ARTICLE 11.

No treaty for the cession of any portion of the reservation herein described, which may be held in common, shall be of any force or validity as against the said Indians unless executed and signed by, at least, a majority of all the adult male Indians occupying or interested in the same, and no cession by the tribe shall be understood or construed in such a manner as to deprive, without his consent, any individual member of the tribe of his right to any tract of land selected by him as provided in Article 6 of this treaty.

ARTICLE 12.

It is agreed that the sum of five hundred dollars annually, for three years from the date when they commence to cultivate a farm, shall be expended in presents to the ten persons of said tribe who, in the judgment of the agent, may grow the most valuable crops for the respective year.

W. T. Sherman,
   Lieutenant-General.

Wm. S. Harney,
   Brevet Major-General and Peace Commissioner.

Alfred H. Terry,
   Brevet Major-General.

C. C. Augur,
   Brevet Major-General.

John B. Sanborn.

S. F. Tappan.

Ashton S. H. White, Secretary.

Che-ra-pee-ish-ka-te, Pretty Bull, his x mark. 

Chat-sta-he, Wolf Bow, his x mark. [SEAL.]

Ah-be-che-se, Mountain Tail, his x mark. 

Kam-ne-but-sa, Black Foot, his x mark. 

De-sal-ze-cho-se, White Horse, his x mark.

Chin-ka-she-arache, Poor Elk, his x mark. 

E-sa-woor, Shot in the Jaw, his x mark.

E-sha-chose, White Forehead, his x mark. 

—Roo-ka, Pounded Meat, his x mark. 

De-ka-ke-up-se, Bird in the Neck, his x mark. 

Me-na-che, The Swan, his x mark. 

Attest:

George B. Wills, phonographer.

John D. Howland.

Alex. Gardner.

David Knox.

Chas. Freeman.

Jas. C. O'Connor.

  

Crow hunters, 1909.

Everything old is new again. Politicians

Huey Long.  1935.

Funny how this video seemed so very antiquated just two years ago, but this year, it sounds a lot like what we're hearing in some ways from some of the candidates.

The lingerings of Russian Alaska

One of the maxims of Holscher's Laws of History is that "Everything last occurred more recently than you suppose".  Given that, I should have realized that there's be lingering aspects of Russian culture in Alaska.  Nonetheless, I was surprised to find this true.

The United States bought Alaska from Imperial Russia in 1867.  Quite a long time ago, by how we generally reckon things, but not all that long, really, in cultural terms.  Russia started penetrating into Alaska in the 1740s and things really got rolling in the 1780s, although their numbers were always limited.  Naturally, they brought with them the Russian Orthodox faith.

I guess I hadn't appreciated the extent to which Russian Orthodox missionaries operated in Alaska, but they certainly did, and they were successful.  And, for no real reason, I would have presumed that the influence of Russian Orthodoxy would have dramatically waned after the US purchase of the territory.  I knew that it remained a bit, but I thought just a bit.

 

Holy Transfiguration of Our Lord Church, Ninilchik Alaska. 

Well, I was wrong.

About 12.5% of the population of Alaska is Orthodox.  80% of the population is Christian.  The Orthodox population rivals that of the Catholic population, which is really amazing as the Catholic Church is by far the largest of the apostolic churches in the United States.  That the percentage is this high is all the more amazing as the demographics of Alaska have undoubtedly changed significantly since 1974, when the oil pipeline brought in a large number of out of state workers, which would have increased the Protestant populations significantly and the Catholic population as well.  Therefore, if we look at the pre 1974 demographics, and the long term resident demographics, the percentage of Russian Orthodox would be even higher.

And this would be strongly reflected amongst Alaskan Native populations, who would make up the bulk of the Orthodox in Alaska.

All this goes to show that culture is indeed resilient, as we also previously noted in one of our laws of history.  In some places the Orthodox parishes have declined, but demographically, they're still strong.  I shouldn't have made the assumption that I did.

I actually found this out, I'd note, in a bit of a roundabout way, and I'd guess many who visit Alaska never realize this.  As I find church architecture interesting, and post photos of them to a blog, when I was in Alaska I ran across a reference to an Old Believer church near Homer and then did a short search and ran into a second Russian Orthodox Church.  The Old Believer church, I should note, does not represent an enduring Alaskan cultural feature, as they moved into the region in 1966 (and there are actually several Old Believer communities near Homer).  In looking up a Russian Orthodox Church I photographed in Ninilchik I was surprised to find that there'd been a church I'd missed in Homer itself, and not only there, but darned near everywhere.  There were a lot of them, as indeed there should be, as there are Catholic churches everywhere and nearly as many Alaskans are Russian Orthodox as are Catholic.

Which shows, I suppose, when observing something, a person must be open to observing the unexpected.

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Collecting Wood Wheeled History

Here's a recent post on Wheels That Won The West on collecting wooden wheels:

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Collecting Wood Wheeled History: Since I publish this blog on the same day each week it’s inevitable that, as the years pass, some postings will land on Christmas, New Year...

On that topic, here's something that suprrisngly has a set of wooden wheels:

This is a Renault tank from World War One.  Arguably the best tank of that war (not that there a lot to chose from) the large front wheel of this tank was wood.

Air Transportation

I really like aircraft.

 

My son, the pilot

But I hate flying.

So, here I'm dealing with a modern means of transpiration that I use a lot, dread taking, have a lot of familiarity with, have written about a lot here, and I find interesting.

I take airplanes all the time.  I've logged in more air miles than any member of my immediate family, and far more than my father, who was in the United States Air Force during the early 1950s.  As a kid, my fascination with aircraft lead me into the Civil Air Patrol, at which time I could imagine flying airplanes, prior to having to ride in them much.  But, while I like airplanes, and travel on them a lot, I really don't like flying.  Oh well.

Anyhow, as anyone who has ever stopped in this blog at all knows, I'm apparently interested in transportation topics, as they show up a lot. Recently I've been summarizing changes in transportation over the past century or so, and have discussed walking, water transportation, equine transportation and rail.  Here we'll look at one of the most revolutionary changes in how we get around.  It's one I've discussed here frequently, but its certainly worth taking another look at.

Trains were the fast transportation, and the basic means of interstate transportation, for most Americans after some point in the late 19th Century up in to the 1950s.  Now we wouldn't think of trains as fast, but they're a lot faster than equine transportation and water transportation, and prior to the Interstate Highway system, they were a lot more convenient and even more practical than automotive transportation, which tended to be local as a rule.  Now, as we know, for long distance transportation, aircraft are the default means of transportation for most people, with automobiles being a close second.  In much of the country, you couldn't board a passenger train if you wanted to.  And, with FeEx and the like also shipping by air, what the U.S. Postal Service started with air mail has become a major factor in mail and packages, paying a bit of a premium for shipping by air, of course.

 

FedEx Cessna at Natrona County International Airport.

How did this huge change come about?

Flight rose amazingly quickly. Faster, really, than any other means of transportation. And it evolved much quicker than any other as well.

Powered flight, i.e., the aircraft, only came about in 1903, as is well known.  Even prior to that, however, there were some who pondered the possibilities of air transportation on a grand scale.  Even prior to the American Civil War, one visionary took subscriptions for the construction of a dirigible to be powered by steam engines which would cross the Western prairies and mountains by air, safely (hopefully) delivering its passengers on the Pacific coast.  Of course, it was never built, but such a craft in fact did make a flight in Europe in 1852.

Dirigible patent, 1874.

In spite of their seemingly somewhat goofy nature, airships showed a lot of promise, which is why its somewhat surprising that in spite of a 50 year head start on the airplane, they really didn't get launched as a commercially successful means of transportation until After World War One.  There's undoubtedly a variety of reasons for that, with the weight and horsepower of available power plants being one, but they just didn't manage to really get started as a commercial endeavor by the time the Wrights flew in 1903.  They did get started as a military implement by 1900, however.

Given that airships had a big head start, you'd think the really primitive and scary nature of early aircraft would have still given them a big advantage, but aircraft evolved at such a rapid pace, it's stunning.

Early Air Transportation

The first attempt at an airliner was made by Igor Sikorsky, an early Russian aircraft designer who born in Ukraine and who later immigrated to the United States following the Russian Revolution.  He's most famously recalled today for being the founder of an American company that pioneered and dominated large helicopters for decades, but early on he designed large aircraft.  His airplanes were amazingly large for their era.  Sikorsky was a visionary, and he designed the Ilya Muromets to be an airliner in 1913, although World War One's arrival meant that it made but a single, fourteen hour, flight prior to his heavy designs being used for bombing during the Great War.  The early airliner was a luxury craft to a degree, even featuring a bathroom.

Multi engined 1913 design, the Ilya Muromets, the worlds first airliner, which made but a single flight in that role.  This airplane was designed only a decade after the Wrights first flight.

While the Ilya Muromet was a massive purpose designed aircraft, it would fall to the underpowered and utilitarian Curtis Jenny, the JN4, to be the first commercially used airliner, even though it isn't a big craft, and it wasn't designed for that. Elliot Air Service gets the credit for being the first commercial enterprise that moved people and items by air, using that craft.

The utilitarian Curtis Jenny, the United States first real military aircraft.  Built in large numbers during World War One, the airplane was really too underpowered for a combat role but is sparked the real dawn of American civil aviation.

The Curtis JN4 was an underpowered weak, but durable, aircraft whose real combat role would peak during the Punitive Expedition, where it was sued by the First Aero Squadron, an Army units whose trucks proved to be of nearly equal utility to this planes. But the Jenny would go on to become the first really popular civilian airplane in the world, being sold in large numbers in the United States and being pressed into every conceivable role by private pilots.  Jennys were used as trainers in the US during the  Great War but were pressed into the first really significant parcel delivery by air service in the US, by the Post Office, before World War One was over, with the Signal Corps Jennys being used to deliver mail starting in May, 1918.  Regular air mail would be a fully governmental service for the first eight years of its existence, with the air mail pilots being looked upon as glamorous, as individuals in dangerous occupations often are, but after that, the US went to commercial air carriers for the air mail, thereby encouraging private enterprise in this area.

Delivery of mail by air would seem to be a separate topic from passenger service, but in many ways it is not, as the early history of commercial air transportation dovetails the two, just as the late story of rail transportation also does. Passenger trains carried mail and people, and indeed mail hooks for railroads were set up along the rail lines so that trains didn't have to stop to pick up mail.  A video of that taking place, as a demonstration with a modern train, has just been posted on this site.  Moving mail by plane therefore was a natural extension of what was occurring by train, with a new means of transportation that began to compete with the train nearly immediately, or at least soon after World War One.

In order to make that competition realistic, of course, planes larger than the Jenny, and less scary than the Sikorsky, had to be developed, but they very soon were. Even late war aircraft had sufficiently evolved so that their conversion into airliners wasn't wholly unrealistic. The Farman Goliath, for example, was designed as a bomber but with a closed cockpit and fuselage, it made it possible to be converted into an airliner, a role which it was occupying by the early 1920s and still occupying at the end of that decade, a pretty amazing service life for an aircraft in the early history of commercial aviation.  In the 1920s, or even starting in the late teens just after World War One, some surprisingly modern monoplane passenger aircraft were introduced, however, and the future for some time was pretty set, with large biplane airliners, descendants of World War One bombers, yielding to more efficient monoplanes.

Starting in the mid 1920s, some really serious purpose built airliners started to be introduced.  Ford Motor Company introduced one of the earliest and best with the Ford Trimoter, relying on design lessons learned by its German born designer.  The Ford Trimotor almost immediately saw its twin spring up in Europe in the Fokker Trimotor, which is darned near the same aircraft as it was designed b the same people.  The Fokker and the Ford were amazingly reliable aircraft and they carried on in some locations for decades, with the last ones being retired only relatively recently.  In Europe, the type went on to be the basic cargo aircraft of the Luftwaffe during World War Two, although the military expression of the aircraft was hardly limited to the Germans, as variants were used by Switzerland, Spain, and the United States, amongst others.

United States Army Air Corps Fokker.

As good as the Trimotors were, a crash of one in 1931 would bring about a revolution in aircraft and the next great series of air liner.  TWA's Flight 599 crashed in a Kansas prairie on March 15, 1931, killing all eight occupants including legendary football figure Knute Rockne. Subsequent investigation revealed that structural failure of the wooden structured wings was the cause of the crash and the strict restrictions on such construction followed.  Taking that up as a challenge, Douglas Aircraft Company introduced the all metal DC-1 in 1933. The DC-1 soon yielded to the DC-2, after a single DC-1 was built, which came out in 1934.  Proving the type, DC-2 yielded to the most successful commercial aircraft of all time, the DC-3, of which a vast number were built.

The DC-3 itself was only constructed from 1936 to 1942, under that name, but the start of World War Two meant that the military version, the C-47, was built until 1945.  Production of a larger version of the airplane was commenced in 1949, but so many DC-3s and C-47s were in the air, with over 16,000 of the type having been built, that the new version wasn't really needed.

The impact of the DC-3 can hardly be overstated.  The aircraft remained in service all the way into the 21st Century and chances are that a few are still flying commercial short hops somewhere.  The DC-3, a sturdy, reliable aircraft, was the airplane that really brought regular commercial air service to the United States and the world, or at least interstate and somewhat international air transportation.  If you were going to your local airport in the late 1930s, the 1940s, or the early 1950s, your chances of boarding a DC-3 were good. And if you were shipping parts of something by air from the mid 1930s to the 1950s, chances are it was going by DC-3. For that matter, this would also be true in much of the Third World well into the 1970s or later.

 C-47s being built during World War Two.  The last U.S. Air Force use of the C-47 would come during the Vietnam War, during which some were changed from air transport aircraft into air assault aircraft by being equipped with automatic cannons.  Nicknamed "spooky", they were later transferred to the Central Intelligence Agency and used over Angola in support of SWAPO during the 1980s.

Which isn't to say that the DC-3 did or could do everything.  For transoceanic travel in the 1930s a person was likely to board a Pan American Clipper, or a similar aircraft owned by British Overseas Airways, but only if they were rich.  Planes like this were "flying boats", a type that acknowledged the lack of runways and the need for larger passenger compartments in an era prior to World War Two expanding airfields absolutely everywhere.

 Flying boat, 1930s.

In the United States, it was Pan American that exploited this market and dominated.  Started in 1927 to deliver mail (that again) and passengers between the United States and Cuba, Pan American very early saw the practicality of expanding into near shore routes and it accordingly set the market for flying boats.  Buying the products of Sikorsky, Boeing and Martin in the 1920s and 1930s, its air fleet was actually surprisingly small, with any one run of aircraft being also fairly small. At the same time, however, if a person was going to engage in international air travel from the United States, Pan American was by default the airline that a person took.  With a captive market, and high operating expenses due to the unique limited run aircraft and very long routes, it was a luxury airline, with travel being expensive by its very nature.  In that era, for example the luxury of taking Pan American to Hawaii is something that we can hardly imagine now, and which was only dreamed of by most people then.

During this entire period, it should be noted, the first device that was thought of in terms of commercial air travel wasn't idle.  Air ships, like aircraft, had received a big boost during World War One, and just as big aircraft were used for the first time as bombers, so were airships. The Germans in particular developed and dominated this technology, with Zeppelins, giant airships filled with explosive hydrogen, being used, as dangerous as they were, as bombers.  Zeppelins were even used to bomb London, although the Germans did that with Gotha bombers as well.

 Early (1908) Zeppelin passenger airship.

Following the war, Zeppelins kept on keeping on and were being sued for trans Atlantic air travel out of Germany.  Serious thought was given to switching the craft to Helium, which doesn't explode, but this proved impossible after the Nazis took over Germany, as the U.S., which controls the globes Helium market, wouldn't allow export to Germany.  Hence the airships continued on full of explosive gas.

Aircraft, coming on strong, would have taken out airships as a means of trans Atlantic air travel anyhow, but the explosion of the Hindenburg on May 6, 1937, ended airships day as a commercial carrier forever.  Occasionally revived in concept, airships have never gone away, but their lasts really major world role came on during World War Two, when U.S. Navy blimps patrolled for submarines off of the Atlantic.  Even at that, however, light private aircraft used by the Civil Air Patrol had a pretty major role.

And then came World War Two.

But before going there, let's summarize the first 45 years of air travel.  Basically, what the story is, is as follows"

1.  Airships got really rolling around 1900, but they didn't expand into passenger or commercial service right away.

2.  The airplane was invented in 1903.

3.  Visionaries could see commercial air travel as being viable by 1913.

4.  By the 1910s militaries around the globe were developing military aircraft.

5.  The first passenger, and mail, service started in 1915.

6. It isn't really possible to separate mail service from passenger service early on, and mail service got really rolling in 1918.

7.  Passenger service got rolling in the 1920s as World War One vintage bombers were redesigned for passenger service, and then real passenger planes were introduce in the 1920s.

8. Air disaster lead to air innovation, and the Douglas DC 3 came in during the mid 1930s.

9.  Over water air flight opportunities were picked up by Pan American who soon expanded into luxury transoceanic flight.

10.  Elsewhere, such as in Europe, the story is largely the same, but with the market for aircraft already being international.

Transcontinental air mail route, 1924.

And, while this was going on, private pilots flying really risky odd aircraft in the teens bought various World War One surplus aircraft immediately after the war and the age of private pilot civil aviation was really on.light dangerous war surplus airplanes soon gave way to relatively inexpensive single engine airplanes, and by the start of World War Two the United States and Canada had a pretty big private pilot fleet.

And then World War Two happened.

World War Two

C-47, rebuilt after World War Two as a D.C. 3, being rebuilt.

We've noted here before that Holscher's Fourth Law of History is that "War Changes Everything".  And so it does. And so it was for civil aviation.

Aviation was advanced incredibly rapidly from 1903 to 1939, but it can't help but be noted that during 1914 to 1918, World War One, it received a big boost.  In a lot of ways, however, that boost kept on keeping on following the war.  The top of the line fighter aircraft of 1918 were already obsolete by the early 1920s, hopeless relics of an earlier era.  By the early 1930s, the military aircraft of 1920 were obsolete, and by 1939 the military aircraft of 1930 were largely obsolete.  The best civil aircraft of the 1930s made those of the 1920s look pretty inadequate, although commercial designs, such as the Fokker and Ford Trimotors that came in during the 1920s were still serving.  Commercial aircraft made or designed by Marin, Fokker, Boeing and Douglas that saw service in the 1920s and 1930s would all see military service during World War Two.

United States Army Air Corps C-47, an airplane that hauled equipment, men and even mules everywhere, during World War Two, and which saw service in about every Allied air force, including the U.S., Canadian, Royal New Zealand, Australian, British and Soviet air forces.  Perhaps the greatest single airplane ever made.

But the war would change certain things about air travel in a way that would soon revolutionize it, in spite of the production of so many airplanes that it could have rationally been assumed that the post war manufacture of them would have collapsed.

Post War Aviation

During the war, U.S., British, German, Canadian, and Australian engineers put in airfields absolutely everywhere.  Locations in the United States that had been served by only a tiny airport, if at all, suddenly had massive airfields designed for bombers, as the US had put them in for training.  Casper Wyoming is a good example. Served by a small airport prior to the war, that airfield wasn't even really flat.  But during the war, the U.S. Army built a massive air training facility just outside of town, with runways so long that they remain long enough for the biggest aircraft today.

C-17 Globemaster at the Natrona County International Airport, an airport that was built as an air base during World War Two.

In addition to this, however, in spite of the superb serviceability the pre war airliners gave as military cargo planes, the technological leap that aircraft had taken during the war not only meant that the prewar designs were implicitly obsolete, but also that people and nations that had become acclimated to advances in air power would expect the civilian employment of them.

When the war started, an airplane like the DC3 was a big serviceable and modern airliner.  The really big aircraft just prior to the war were military bombers, but none of them were suitable for airliners and only a few nations had them.  Going into World War Two, in fact, only the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and Japan had really large strategic bombers, and the USSR's were not all that nifty.  It's notable that all of the powers that had really significant bombers were naval powers with oceanic concerns, which had a lot to do with the development of that type of aircraft.  Of those nations, arguably the United Kingdom's bombers were the best going into the war.

By the wars end, strategic bombing had caused the development of successive models or even generations of bombers, and the United States come out of the war with the best, if most problematic, bomber, the B-29.  The B-29 was generations ahead of the B-17 with which the US had entered the war, and the B-17 is indeed downright primitive in comparison to it.  The significant thing here is that during the war, four engined large aircraft had been completely proven and had developed considerably. And, additionally, new generations of air transport aircraft were also coming in.

At the same time, during the war, piston engines had become better and bigger.  More significantly, however, jet engines had also been proven. Introduced first by the British, in a plane that turned out to be significant but lackluster, it was the German ME262 that demonstrated that all future combat aircraft would be jets, at some point. And the introduction of jet engines meant, in spite of what might have been expected, that pretty soon every air fore, and every air line, would soon want fleets of jets.

That didn't happen right away. What happened at first is that the transport, and even the bomber, aircraft of World War Two came in right after the war as new, faster, and longer ranged, civilian aircraft.

Boeing Stratocruiser.  The Stratocruiser was one of two airliner versions of the B-29 which went into production in the late 1930s and which were retired in the early 1960s.  A luxury long distance airliner, they only carried a little over 30 people.  They were the replacement in the Pan American fleet for the flying boats.

These were soon followed by aircraft specifically designed as four engine commercial aircraft, such as the Lockheed Constellation.  The day of the flying boat ended nearly immediately, with the type relegated to odd search and rescue aircraft in various coast guards and navies.

 The four engined Lockheed Constellation started off as a military cargo plane in an era with the C-47 was the standard.  With modifications after the war, it would be the standard for airliners for a time.  A retired fleet of Constellations was parked at the end of a runway at our local airport for decades after they were no longer used in this role, and after that set had been briefly used as firefighting bombers.  One of them was the plane used by General MacArthur during the Korean War.

As new airplanes came in, competition between airlines increased.  Air travel seemingly came in everywhere.  And then, starting in the 1950s, jet airliners began to arrive.

Before we look at that, however, we have to look at two other areas, private and light air transportation, and a brand new aircraft, the helicopter.

As already noted, light aircraft had become big in the United States starting with the Curits Jenny. The US had a well developed private aviation community prior to World War Two, and indeed the country harnessed that population for anti submarine efforts during the war, in the form of the Civil Air Patrol.

Light airplane in Civil Air Patrol use during World War Two.

After the war light aviation took back off.  Cessna introduced the Cessna 120 and Cessna 140 right after World War Two, which introduced a basic type that it still makes today, although the 120 and 140 were tail draggers.  In 1956 it introduced the 172, which is the greatest light plane in aviation history.Still made today, with updates, the plane set the standard for light private aircraft.  With planes being affordable, at first, civil aviation really took off, so to speak.

The Jet Age

Introduced first by the British in the early 1950s, the U.S. introduced its first jet airliners by the late 1950s.  New fleets of piston engined airliners were obsolete nearly overnight.  By the 1960s they were rapidly on the way out, and by the 1970s only regional flights, if any, used piston engined aircraft.  By the late 1960s, jet airliners were the rule.

Still relatively expensiveness, jet air travel none the less totally supplanted long range train travel in the United States by the early 1970s, a process that had started off with big piston engined airliners like the Constellation.  Railroads discontinued passenger service most places, save for those places where local commuter rail continued to be viable.  Intrastate air travel and regional air travel also became more common, with turboprop aircraft being common there.  In most states local air travel became an option for at least business travelers.

Deregulation of the 1980s really ramped up air competition and the market became unstable but highly competitive.  Air prices steadily dropped and left us with the situation we have today, in which air travel has never been cheaper, or more uncomfortable.

Also in this age, but for a different set of reasons, the helicopter really came into its own.  An oddity in some ways when first developed, it proved itself during the Korean War and became an indispensable military tool by the Vietnam War.  Soon after the Vietnam War, one of the primary uses of the Army helicopter was carried over to civilian life, and the medical "dustoff" which sent in the Medivac UH-1 "Huey"  became a familiar site, with other helicopters, in the United States.  Now medical helicopters are in almost every town, and helicopters in all sorts of local uses, from traffic reporting to pipeline flying, are quite common.

Bell 206 helicopter flying a pipeline.

Private aviation, however, has taken a pounding since its glory days of the 50s and 60s.  By the 1970s law suits had taken their toll on the industry and Cessna even ceased offering light planes for awhile.  Federal intervention through statutory relief allowed it to reenter the market, but there's no doubt that lawyers and lawsuits pose as great of threat to light aviation as flak guns did to Allied bombers during World War Two, I'm sorry to say.

So this is basically where we are today.  In less than a century, given that early aircraft were both dangerous and really not practical for much, we've developed a wholly new means of transportation. That means of transportation had an incredibly rapid evolution, much the way, I suppose, personal computers have in our own age.  They displaced the train for long distance travel to a large extent, rendering the massive US rail passenger fleet obsolete.  They've become, moreover, a common tool of our daily life, and had been a not uncommon avocation for many who just liked flight.  Costs of air travel, except for the cost of being a private pilot, have decreased enormously, while at the same time its become faster and more uncomfortable.

 

Rail Transportation

Very early locomotive, on display on the back of a railroad flat car.

Recently we've been posting a lot about transportation. We've done horses and mule, walking, water transportation and bicycles so far.  Here we're considering trains.

 

Late oil fired steam engine, on display in Douglas Wyoming.

Locomotives, or at least steam engines, are so associated with the second half of the 19th Century that it's a shock to realize that the first steam locomotive was built in 1784 and the first railway model was built in the US in 1794.  Amazingly early.  The first actual working railway was built just a few years later, in 1804, in the United Kingdom.  That early line was an industrial ore hauler, so at least from the US prospective, trains have ended up where they started, hauling things, rather than people, for the most part.  Sort of a case of the past being prologue to the future, really.  The first working railroad in the US came on in 1830, with Baltimore and Ohio.  It was a hopeless crude thing, but it was a start, and from there on trains developed rapidly.

The first locomotives basically looked like a boiler, with gears, on a platform, because that's what they were. They soon began, however, to more closely resemble things we'd recognize as trains.

 

Really early train on display on the flatcars of a train in 1900.  Note that the passenger cars on the old train are coaches with wheels altered for rails.

 

Locomotive, 1850.  In the twenty years between the top photograph and this one, locomotives started to take on a more familiar form, and they'd grown larger.

By 1860, in North America, they'd not only taken on a familiar form, but their rails now stretched throughout the settled East.  In just 20 years the United States and Canada had gone from all roads and water ways to having an interconnected rail transportation system in the East.  Railways had already become an inseparable part of North American life.

 

Locomotive in California, 1865.

And not only that, but a major undertaking in the United States would, as is well known, link the West and East by rail, in the Transcontinental Railway, where the two sections of the rail would join on May 10, 1869.  Indeed, that accomplishment came in the context of an early example of the government sponsoring a business, something that we rarely think of occurring in the 19th Century, but which the Lincoln Administration, which got it started, recognized as a national need, or at least laudatory goal, that was beyond the means of private enterprise for a wide variety of reasons. The inducement in that 19th Century context involved the Federal government giving to the two building railroads what it had a lot of, land, with the railroad acquiring a swath of sections (square miles) across the path of their lines, which allowed them to have a certain economic payoff in the future, and which also accordingly encouraged the railroads to sponsor development.  The railroads descendants today still retain much of that original grant along what had been the Transcontinental line.

 Massive Union Pacific railyard in Laramie Wyoming, a town built on the Union Pacific.

As monumental achievement as that was, it was only the beginning in a seemingly ceaseless and relentless expansion of rail lines that would see rail penetrate nearly every section of the West by the mid 1880s.  What had taken days to achieve before the rail lines came in, accordingly shrunk in time, sometimes to just hours. And rail continued to be put down relentlessly in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century in the U.S.

North of the border, in Canada, the Canadians would have a trans Canadian railway completed by 1885, linking the two coasts of a nation that still had not yet taken its full continental form, and which struggled with a national identity that really started to fully form about that time.  Railways were being built all over Europe at the same time, of course, with national and trans European lines put down everywhere.  The Russians achieved a monumental chore with the completion of the Trans Siberian in 1916, achieving what is arguably the greatest railroad in the world, but doing so only one year before the fall of the government that backed it.  Railroad penetrated into China from Russia, and into Arabia from Turkey.  The British built them in Africa and Australia.  The trans Australia railway was completed in the midst of World War One, being completed in 1917, and bringing yet another example of continental expanses being closed by rail.

Railroads were the long distance land transportation of their era, and they dominated everything about it.  By the 1860s they'd revolutionized the transportation of people and goods.  Americans and Canadians were made into a continental people by the railroads, or at least more completely so, and the Russians could aspire to be the same.  Australia, a nation whose unification was completed by World War One found its coasts united during it.

 

Former Union Pacific Depot in Cheyenne Wyoming, on the line of the original Transcontinental Railroad.

In the U.S, and Canada, an economy that was mostly local prior to 1860s ceased being so by the end of the Civil War, when railroads penetrated into Kansas, and for the first time goods, and perhaps more significantly beef, could be transported across the nation by rail car.  A nation that had been principally a local pork consumer prior to 1865 in short order became a beef consuming nation, particularly as refrigerator rail cars came in about  the same time.  The great cattle drives that followed the Civil War, inspired in part by a huge increase in cattle in Texas during the war, were only made economically possible as the railheads had penetrated as far west as Kansas.

Refrigeration and rail also allowed the nation to have its first really national beverage company, Anhauser Busch, which made use of rail and refrigeration to ship beer all over the United States by the 1870s.  A nation which before had tended to look for everything to be local, now became accustom to every sort of good being shipped across the nation, even something as routine as something to drink.

And rail was glamorous, and would in some ways always remain so. Certain trains, and even railroad men, became famous, and were celebrated in song.  Casey Jones, a real railroad engineer, was for example celebrated in song for his dramatic effort to stop his train to stop his train to avoid a collision, and thereby save lives.  Working on the railroad was celebrated by a song dedicated under that title.

Rail occupied and dominated long distance travel, and even intrastate travel, for decades and decades. Rails continued to expand in the country throughout the first half of the 20th Century and rail transportation was the critical national means of transportation throughout the first half of the 20th Century.  When people traveled any distance at all, they normally traveled by rail.   My father, for example, traveled from Casper Wyoming to Lincoln Nebraska, where he was attending university, by rail, not by car, in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  U.S. troops were moved from coast to coat during World War One and World War Two by rail, not by truck as a rule, and not by plane.  Railroad labor troubles during World War One were so disruptive to the war effort that the Federal government took over the rail lines during the war.

And the situation was largely the same in other nations.  In Germany, the military was in control of the rail lines prior to World War One, and German mobilization was based on strict railroad timetables.  The rail lines themselves became lines of combat in World War One, and to a certain extent World War Two, inside of Russia and the Russian civil war saw the odd use of armored trains, which made a reappearance in Soviet use during World War Two.

Rail came to not only serve towns and cities, of course, but to impact their features and even their locations. This is well known in the West, as towns competed to be railheads, which could spell the difference between economic isolation and elimination and prosperity.  Locally, for example, Casper Wyoming beat out Bessemer Wyoming in these regards, meaning that Casper, which was established literally just days prior to the railroad entering Natrona County Wyoming would go on to become one of the largest cities in Wyoming and the county seat, while Bessemer passed away and is now a farm field.

 

Burlington Northern Depot, Casper Wyoming.

This meant that any significant town, and even many insignificant ones, had rail lines and features associated with them, such as depots. But now often missed, and often now neglected, it also mean that a towns hotels, including its best hotels, were typically within walking distance of a railroad depot. The same was true of anything requiring shipping of anything heavy.

 

 Parco Hotel, in Sinclair Wyoming.  Just a block or two from the main line of the Union Pacific Railroad.  This hotel is no longer an operating hotel.

 

 Union Station in Delver Colorado, photo taken from the front of the Oxford Hotel.

 

Virginian Hotel in Medicine Bow, Wyoming and Union Pacific station.

Consider then the state of the railroads in relation to nearly every society, just after World War Two.  Troops who had gone to training stations by rail and then to points of embarkation by rail, came home largely by rail.  All materials of any significant nature, except for short hauls as a rule, were moved by rail, with perhaps the only exceptions being intrastate hauling and oil and gas pipelines.  People traveling from one city to another traveled by rail.

World War Two era poster urging people not to travel if it wasn't necessary. This photo shows the inside of a packed train car.

But then, something began to happen to rail, and that something was two things really. The Interstate Highways and Air Travel.

Air travel changed everything about how Americans, and ultimately everyone else in the developed world, thought about traveling long distances. Acclimated to long trips by train as a rule, planes became an option. Expensive at first, as time went on traveling by air became more and more affordable, particularly when the time element was considered.  Even by the early 1950s air travel was displacing train travel. Businessmen started traveling by air.  The military switched from shipping men locally from their duty station to another duty station by train, to air.  Ultimately air became so efficient, that it displaced the train as a fast mail carrier for letters and small packages, with that becoming so efficient that large sections of that business were wholly privatized.

 Western Airlines airliner, Casper Wyoming, early 1950s.  Sailor is boarding aircraft.  This scene says a lot about the change after World War Two, as this airport was built as an Army Air Corps training base during World War Two, with enormous runways.  Post war, it became an international airport, replacing the much smaller local airport that had existed up until that time.

This didn't happen all at once, of course, and in this late era, there were a series of efficient locomotives designed just for fast passenger service. Streamlined steam engines yielded to streamlined diesels, as the internal combustion engine began to take over the rails. But for most of the country, the 1950s and 60s would see the end of passenger train service. The only exceptions were in densely populated sections of the country were commuter rail hung on.

And, also in the 1950s, a new threat to rail arrived in the form of greatly improved highways, particularly the Interstate Highway system.  With Federal funding for highways, under the guise of defense spending for highways designed to speed military mobilization, supposedly, tax funded highways provided a means for trucking companies to compete with privately owned raillines, albeit rail lines that had in some instances been put in with incentives, particularly land incentives, in the 19th Century.  The new Interstates boosted the commercial trucking fleet enormously, and over the road trucks took over quite a bit of commercial hauling.  Without having to pay for their "rails", and able to go anywhere there was pavement, the trucks were liberated from steel rails and could deliver more easily  from port to port.

So, slowly in this same period freighting saw major inroads from trucking, with some sectors of shipping, such as livestock shipping, going over to trucks entirely.  By the 1970s trains were no longer hauling, for the most part, mail, people, and livestock, as well as many other items.  By the late 1990s tracks were being abandoned in some locations, and the old rail lines converted to walkways under "rails to trails" programs.

Pedestrian path in Casper Wyoming, converted from the line of the Great Northwestern Railroad.  Old depot on the right, now an office building.

But rail is persistent, and in spite of the inroads it remains important to us today, even if its faded into a the background to such an extent we can hardly recognize it.  It remains the heavy hauler for the nation, transporting good far more cheaply, and far more environmentally benign, to the extent that anything is, today, carrying more pounds per gallon of feul cheaply than any of its competitors.  And in the expensive fuel world in which we've been recently living (but which seems to be potentially fading back out today), its seen a bit of a revival.  New lines have been put in, in the West, where it remains vital for heavy hauling.  Major coal hauling lines have been built, and even here locally a major petroleum loading hub was just constructed.  In Denver, as in many other cities, a local light rail service for passengers has dramatically expanded, and it will soon run from Union Station to the Denver airport.  Rail hasn't yielded easily, and even in North America, the domain of the automobile, it has kept on.

Horsepower

 Remounts. World War One.

I've been doing a series of posts here recently on transportation.  I started out with the default means of transportation, walking, and then recently I did one on bicycles, the device that first introduced practical daily mechanical transportation to most people, most places, in the western world, and which continues to be the default means of daily transportation for a lot of people around the globe.  Here I turn to nearly the oldest means of alternative ground transportation (accepting that floating transportation was the second means for humans to get around, following walking), that being animal transportation. And when we discuss animal transportation, we mean for the most part equine transportation, at least in the context discussed here.. 

Mounted men on saddle horses, draft transportation with wagon pulled by draft mules, and pack transportation with donkeys.  A unique photograph, in Yosemite, if the three basic types of equine transportation with the three basic equines.

I didn't start with horses in this recent series, in part because I'm pretty familiar with horses myself and so they're sort of second nature to me, part of what the process of posting here hopes to help me overcome as a writer.  But I also didn't start here with horses as:  1)  walking makes more sense, in terms of a starting point and; 2) we all think we're so used to the story of the Equine Era that we tend to misunderstand it, and have to start somewhere else.

 

Copper, a Saddlebred, which I once owned.

Of course, noting this, I'm not completely accurate as I've written on horse transportation quite a bit actually, and well before this recent series.  One of the relatively popular topics on this blog has been the Revolution In Rural Transportation thread, which was once one of the top ten popular ones.  But we're taking another look at it now, in any event.  And we're taking a look at it in the same fashion we did for walking and bicycles, that is, we're starting way back in antiquity, but we'll conclude by looking at that period in the 20th Century when things really began to change.  Like most things of this type, we'll tend to find that this topic is subject to Holscher's First Law of History, everything happened earlier than generally supposed, and Holscher's Second Law of History, everything last occurred more recently than you suspect.

As previously noted, for eons and eons, people basically walked. And also for eons and eons agriculture was extremely basic, or perhaps more accurately nomadic.  Archaeologist for a long time have spoken of "hunter gatherers", but in reality most "hunter gatherer societies" are actually hunter, small scale farming and gathering societies.  Not all, of course, in regions that are very well provided with vegetative food, there was no farming, and in some rare areas of the globe where these societies still exist, that's still true.  A recently issue of the National Geographic featured once such group in Brazil, for example, that still did very little or next to no farming, instead gathering and hunting.

Humans spread across the globe in vast antiquity, of course, and at some point somebody had the idea of herding the game animals that would cooperate, essentially converting themselves from hunter/gatherers into hunter/herdsmen/gatherers (or low yield farmers).  How long ago this occurred is debated, but it seems relatively clear that the animals that were first herded are the ones that pretty much still are, with some later additions.  Aurochs (wild cattle), horses, reindeer, onakers (wild donkeys) and camelids.  Something about these big animals made them easier to semi domesticate and herd than others, leading to domestication.  Reindeer, I have to note, still really surprise me in this category, and of course a wild reindeer differs from a tame one not at all, even now.

And it was reindeer, some believe, that humans first rode, and a long while back  As odd as that is, the origin of the idea to ride a reindeer, if you are a reindeer herder, makes obvious sense.  It'd get tiring following them around on foot day after day.  If they are there anyhow, why not just ride one, assuming that it'll put up with it, which apparently they can be broken to do.

According to those who have studied this, it was in the region where reindeer herders and nomadic horse herders overlapped that riding horses first occurred. This is no surprise, really, in that anyone who has herded horses must find the prospect of herding them from the ground a daunting prospect.  Only on horseback could the herdsmen really plan on keeping up.  When they saw mounted reindeer herders, the idea of mounting a horse must have come nearly immediately.

 

Imperial Russian soldier riding a reindeer, the first thing, it seems, humans rode.

But it probably took at least a little time. Those horses weren't domestic horses in any sense of the word. They were barely what we'd consider horses at that, more in the nature of ponies really, and very wild. But the men were wild too, and soon entire steppe cultures were mounted.

The horse spread out everywhere in the old world from there.

But they didn't really spread evenly.

 

Crow Indians, who repeated in the 18th Century what our distant ancestors in vast antiquity experienced on the Steppes, adopting animal transportation as a start up proposition.

Contrary to the schoolyard myth, where some romantic child proclaims "we could all go back to riding horses", there was never a day in any sort of farming community or urban community in which "everyone rode horses". At the same time, however, the impact of horses was so vast, and their use as a transportation and draft animal so significant, that it can hardly be appreciated by most people today. Truly, as we've tried to explore in at least one other thread, it was a world in which people worked with animals.

Only in nomadic and semi nomadic cultures did everyone, or at least nearly ever male, ride.  The original tribes coming out of the steppes certainly did.  Their successors, people like the Mongols and the Huns, did as well.  The Arabs were a horse, and camel, mounted people back into their early history, and a certain percentage of them remained that way until quite recently, indeed some still are, giving their name to the hot blooded horse which lived throughout the region.*  Certain African peoples were heavy uses of horses.  Some Germanic tribes along the Rhine were reported by the Romans to be nearly entirely mounted, as a culture, on the cold bloods of the region.  Turks were a nearly completely mounted people when they came out of Central Asia on a horse that was, for all practical purposes, the same stock as the Arab Horse.  the Cossacks, a Central Asian people in their own right, were a nearly unique mounted people in close association with a much more agricultural and industrial people.  And of course, when horses came on to the North American plains in the mid 1700s, some Indian tribes adopted them to the extent of becoming completely mounted people.

 Imperial Russian Cossacks. Cossacks are associated with military service, but they were a mounted people in any event and their use as cavalry reflected a cultural trait.  It must have been cold when this photograph was taken, as the Cossacks depicted have their hats pulled down, which was not the norm.  Usually, they cocked them at an angle and pushed them towards the back of their heads.  Horses depicted here may be panjes, Russian ponies, with "panje" meaning "peasant".

Otherwise, however, in other societies, and very early on, riding a horse generally meant that the rider was some sort of agriculturalist who lived with and used horses, such as a mounted stock worker; occupied a role in society that meant he had to have a horse issued to him, such as a soldier or mounted policeman, or was wealthy and could afford the expense of keeping a horse, even though he didn't live, perhaps, where the horse was kept and didn't take care of the horse, or the tack, himself, on a daily basis.

 

 Cavalier and Round Head (Rich and Poor).  The cavalier rides a hot blooded horse, the peasant is riding a donkey. The position of the donkey rider is correct, that being for reasons I'm unaware of, except for very large donkeys called today "Monster Jacks", people ride the rear of the donkey, not its middle, perhaps for the reason depicted here in which the peasant's donkey is carrying a load in addition to a rider.  This scene depicts a condition which existed for eons.  Even in ancient Greek society only the well to do were mounted.  Everyone else generally walked.

 

Rural family returning from market.  This family, man, woman and child, are using horses as saddle animals, with the lead horse also packing quite a load.  Pretty typical farm family scene the globe over.

 

 British cavalry during World War One.  British officers, going into the war, were largely drawn from a traditional landed or semi landed class, and would typically have learned to ride at home in their youth.  Regular enlisted volunteers wold have learned to ride in the Army.  Mounted reservists were typically in Yeomanry units, who were drawn from rural regions and probably also learned to ride at home.

The archetype of the British cavalryman in World War One, mounted on a very large charger.

This meant that the great mass of people in most societies, in anyone era, weren't regularly riding horses and probably weren't riding them at all. This was certainly the case after the start of the Industrial Revolution, but was even the case in most places before that. If we take Medieval Europe as an example, the reason that we find Medieval Chivalry so interesting is that they're an example of what we note here.  "Chivalry" comes from the word "cheval", French for horse.  Chivalry were the well to do landed gentry who could afford to own horses, and therefore part of their obligation in society was to serve as mounted warriors, i.e., knights, in times of war.

 Saracens, North Africans, and French Chivalry, at the Battle of Tours.  French mounted combatants would have been largely drawn from the landed class.  Foot soldiers from less well funded classes.  The Saracens, on the other hand, probably were drawn mostly from North African mounted tribesmen.

But even in the United States, at least by the mid 19th Century, this was tending towards true.

Now, surely early in the country's history, the percentage of men who rode was undoubtedly fairly high.  When farming dominated as it did at that time, most men would have had some ability to ride and in some regions of the country it was a necessity.  Even New England fit that category early on, with one type of horse, the Narragansett Pacer being associated with that region and being noted for being a pacing gaited horse, suitable for comfortably traveling significant distances.  But as cities and towns developed, this became less and less true.  Which isn't to say that there weren't occupations that rode, there were, some of which would surprise us today.

Many lawyers, for example, rode as part of their occupations.  Judges frequently did. Indeed, that fact is memorialized today by the term "circuit court" which remains in use, although nobody rides or even really drives a circuit today (although there are districts, at least in Wyoming, where one judge presides over courts in different locations).  One now retired judge in Wyoming's Seventh Judicial District had a small statute of a circuit riding judge in his office for years.  At any rate, for many years, entire teams of lawyers rode circuits, following a judge who also did.  This was particularly true before roads were improved in any fashion, as a coach is an uncomfortable or impossible vehicle if the roads are bad, but a horse can go absolutely anywhere.

Some clerics did as well, all of which was referred to as "riding a circuit".  Methodist ministers are frequently associated with this, and Catholic Priests in some regions of the world relied on mules to such an extent that mules were somewhat reserved for them at law.  In one South American diocese an early Bishop, who was later canonized as a saint, spent something like the first seven years of his appointment in the saddle, just covering his very large diocese.  Well into the 19th Century, or even the 20th, there were certain regions of North American where to be a Priest or minister meant you had to ride.

Mail carriers also did, and to such an extent that a "post" rider was part of the post office's original seal.   And the term "posting" is associated with the Post Office, although that's not the only explanation for that term referring to rise to the trot.  Some rural routes in the United States were still served by mounted mail carriers as late as the 1940s.

Rural mail carrier, Kentucky, 1940.  Of note here, this rider is using a flat, or "English" saddle, which we would expect for this region of the country at this time, but which films invariably do not get right.

Mounted policemen were a common feature of most big cities well into the 20th Century, and there were also rural police forces that were entirely mounted.  This is something, in a diminished fashion, that carries on to the present day.  Urban police forces themselves really started making an appearance in the US after the Civil War, when towns and cities had grown sufficiently large that a county sheriff's office or a town marshal no longer would suffice for city policing.  As policemen covered quite a bit of ground a fair number of them were mounted. And as this tended to immediately follow the Civil War, quite a few early police forces were equipped with forms and tack that strongly resembled that of the Union Army.  Even today police departments with significant mounted units tend to use tack that strongly recalls that of the late 19th Century U.S. Army.

And while this thread doesn't really seek to fully explore it, well into the mid 20th Century the military used a tremendous number of horses and mules.  Every army that fought in World War Two used at least some mounted troops, and some armies used significant numbers of them.  Even the United States, contrary to what is commonly believed, had some mounted men in Europe during the war.  The Germans and the Soviets had a lot of mounted men.  The last mounted assaults by formations of mounted men in the U.S. Army, the Soviet Army and the German Army, all occurred in the spring of 1945.**  The United States, recognizing the declining importance of horses in the war, but still requiring huge numbers of mules, continued to have a Remount program until about 1947, when it was finally turned over to the Department of Agriculture, complete with some captured German horses brought back into the US post war.***

Jonathan Wainright being promoted to Brigadier General in 1938. Wainright would become a prisoner of the Japanese early in World War Two and would famously endure the war in captivity.

Some armies used huge numbers of horses for transport. The Germans, again, provide a prime example. The Germans actually used more horses in this role during World War Two than they did during World War one, and by the wars end they were principally horse powered in terms of transport and artillery transport.

Cavalryman training at Ft. Riley Kansas, 1942.  The U.S. Army's cavalry training facility remained in operation until after World War Two. The date the last cycle was trained is uncertain, but it was likely in 1946 or 1947.

Cavalry, globally, had a much longer run that people imagine, because it actually still exists, or perhaps more accurately mounted infantry does in some armies.  At least one central African army still has mounted infantry.  Mounted infantry units figured prominently in the wars in Rhodesia and Angola of the 1980s, proving to be highly effective in both instances.  Paramilitary mounted troops, moreover, exist in a lot of armies that patrol remote areas of the globe.  And, mounted bands continue to exist as irregular troops in some places of the globe where mounted banditry lives on.

And then there's military mules.

Mules, in fact, remain a big untold, in part, story for World War Two. The US, German, Italian, and British armies all used huge numbers of mules, with the Allies having a particular advantage in this category a the United States produced the best mules in the world, and really still does.

U.S. Army mule, 1863.  Most Civil War mules were pack mules, but some infantry formations were ultimately mounted on mules to give the infantryman mobility. This was repeated again during the Indian Wars, when it was found that on campaigns infantry couldn't keep up in the early stages of the campaign with cavalry.  They generally could if a campaign became long, however, as cavalryman were mounted one trooper per horse, something generally not done with civilian horsemen.  Cowboys, for example, typically rode seven horses to the man in the 19th Century and still ride several horses to the man today.

U.S. Army mule, World War Two,. or perhaps 1930s.  This mule sports a Phillips Pack Saddle, a type of load specific pack saddle system developed after World War One.

U.S. Army mule column.  Note that this string of mules is not tied together, the way civilian pack strings normally are.  These mules are so well trained they are following each other in a single column, without being tied.

Pack mules remained in the U.S. Army until the late 1950s, at which time the last U.S. Army unit that was a pack transportation unit, a reserve unit in Colorado, was phased out.  However, even at that, the Armed Forces never quit training troops how to pack horses and mules. The Army's Special Forces still does, and within the past decade it has issued a new manual on the topic. The Marine Corps has maintained an active pack transportation school the entire time.  As horses and mules have been used recently in Afghanistan the wisdom of doing this has been demonstrated.

Pack horses and mules were not just a military thing, of course. Certain industries and enterprises relied extensively on pack horses and mules well into the 20th Century.  While its sometimes claimed that the Jeep replaced the horse in the Army, what it really replaced was the pack mule, sort of, and this is sort of true of the pack mule in the civilian world as well.  Be that as it may, there's still pack mule, and horse, use today, including by the Federal Government. The Forest Service maintains a remount program even now, in which it teaches a small number of its personnel in riding and pack mule use, and it keeps a string of pack mules in the Rocky Mountain West.  Pack mules and horses receive extensive use by outdoorsmen, particularly large big game hunters, and some continue to use them simply for packing trips.

 Jeeps and mules, World War Two.

Setting riding (and packing) aside, and military use, the big presence of horses that has really been forgotten was the use of horses in draft, or draught.

 

Street scene, New York City, 1904.  This photograph was taken the year after Henry Ford introduced the Model T, and the year after Harley Davidson first started manufacturing motorcycles.

For most people, horses intersected with daily life in the form of a horse in harness.  While most people didn't ride, everyone depended on draft horses, and this became more the case during and after the Industrial Revolution, than before.

Omaha Merchants Express and Transfer Company, 1908.

For most people, horses intersected with daily life in the form of a horse in harness.  While most people didn't ride, everyone depended on draft horses, and this became more the case during and after the Industrial Revolution, than before.

While its hardly appreciated now, the means of transportation, at least locally, for most of the Industrial Revolution and well into the 20th Century was by draft horse.  Local transport companies owned thousands of horses across the United States. And in the first quarter century of the 20th Century, railroads were the largest owners of horses in North America. That may seem odd, but that's how the things delivered by rail were delivered.

Transport horses so dominated in North America that they impacted the types of horses produced by individual farmers, who were the sources of nearly the entire supply.  Prior to the Industrial Revolution, farming dominated the horse market and farmers, always being practical and economically minded, raised horses of a type called a "chunk", that being a short blocky horse that could be used for riding, driving, or pulling.  The Morgan or Canadian horses (the two being closely related to each other) provide perhaps the most familiar example of that type of horse to us today.  But in the cities, transport companies had demands for specific types of horses that they desired, and heavy haulers wanted a heavy horse.  The common view today that the big draft horses we see in parades were "farm" horses isn't really correct.  In fact, they're not desirable as a rule for farming, as their angle of draft is to severe.  They became that big and blocky when heavy haulers favored that type of horse, and that type of horse really only became so big and blocky at the end of the horse transport era.

In fact, the urban draft market was so heavy, and so dominated what private horse supplieres were producing, that it concerned the British Army, which relied upon Canadian horses for a reserves supply of remounts, and began to concern the U.S. Army, which had always secured its horses from private vendors as well.  The English never did develop a Remount program, but the United States did after World War One, when the direction things were headed in was pretty plain.  This put the U.S. Army directly into the horse ranching business, leading to a system in which the Army owned the stallion and had its choice of offspring.  Governed under strict military guidelines, this lead to an improvement in the quality of horses in the United States, and in fact is largely responsible for the conformation of Quarterhorses today.

Remounts, 1923.

Draft horses in cities and towns were such a part of ordinary life that we can hardly even conceive of it today, or the same reason that we don't think of light trucks and work vans much. They're just part of the background of life, and dominated much of what would have been regarded as normal, necessary and vital of everyday life.  In other words, stuff we totally tend to ignore in our own lives today.

Small beer wagon, 1939.  Note the heavy draft horses being used.  The wagon driver is a "teamster", giving rise to that term, and to the original union for them which survives today.

Draft horses and freight wagons delivered beer to bars, ice to butchers, fish to fish mongers, milk to people's houses, ice to their homes for their "ice boxes" and coal for their furnaces.  By the early 20th Century the first cars and trucks had made their entry and long distance travel was by rail, but in towns and cities horses were truly the beasts of burden, pulling wagons and carts in every town and city.

 
 Budweiser wagon, 1943.  Probably the archetype of horse drawn freight wagon, in many people's minds

Ice wagon, with very placid light draft horse.

And how the ice was cut.  Horse drawn ice saw, heavy draft.

United States Fuel Administration poster urging Americans to order coal early, due to the potential of World War One shortages.  This poster depicts heavy draft horses in use, which is no doubt accurate for this type of work.  It also depicts a dump box on the wagon, showing how wagons were as specialized as truck boxes are today.

Horses also performed the role that dump trucks and blades performed in cities and towns.  Dirt, and snow, removal was horse powered.

Draft team removing snow from a railroad crossing, St. Lambert Quebec, early 1940s.   Horses are heavy drafts.

Snow removal, New York City, 1908.

And all of this well into mid Century as well.  The delivery of ice tended to be carried on by wagon, as a dying industry, until it died, being perhaps one of the last urban horse drawn freighting services to continue, but it continued in some locations in to the 1950s, as people slowly replaced their ice boxes with refrigerators.  Today, perhaps somewhat ironically, it's Budweiser's giant beer wagons that are popular in the public mind, as they've made it a symbol, and the big beer wagons were always dramatic. But a lot more ice was hauled in towns and cities than beer.

Horses also provided light transportation, both through the private ownership of carts and buggies for those who could afford to keep them, and for hire as well.

Light Irish cart of a type typical in Ireland up through the 1940s.  Irish carts of this period are typically referred to as a "dog cart", reflecting that they were light carts.  In the United States another type of light cart was called a "dog cart", but it was a light two seated cart, which was sort of the sports car of its day, and used in pretty much the same fashion as sports cars today, by pretty much the same class.  Ireland and the Irish were heavily associated with horses, being a rural people who depended upon them enormously, and horse related sports remain popular in Ireland today.

Once again, it was of course the case that not everyone owned a buggy by any means. They cannot be thought of as the equine powered predecessor of the automobile.  The same problems that confronted the average urban dweller in regards to a saddle horse, confronted them in regards to a buggy, if not more so, as it entailed keeping at least one horse. Some occupations did typically own buggies, however, with physicians being particularly likely to own one.  Indeed, this was so much the case that one type of buggy was called a "doctor's buggy".

Sign for physicians office, 1940s, recalling the relatively recent era when doctors had buggies as part of their occupations.  Oddly, the buggy depicted is not the type which is called a "doctor's buggy", but is more of a "dog cart".

Stage Coach, 1910, Riverside New York.  Note, this is well after most people would associate traveling in this fashion, and in a location you wouldn't typically hear of either, but both were common.

Hansom Cab, New York City, 1896.  A wagon called a Hansom Cab is still a tourist attraction in New York today, although New York's recently elected mayor, in an act of unreality and political buffoonery, declared an intent to eliminate them, showing the increasing extent to which the politics of that city are divorced from the the real world.  Horse, it should be noted, has his head in a feed bag.  The horse is a light or medium draft horse.

Public Transportation, Washington D.C.

All of this doesn't even begin to address, of course, the services horses that were present in any one city, such as the thousands of horses used for fire departments all over the country.

Washington D. C. Fire Department

 New York's Engine Company No. 205, the last horse drawn engine company in the New York City Fire Department, 1922.

Horses even had an impact on the features of cities and towns. A nationwide public effort was undertaken in the early 20th Century to provide nice watering basins for them, and they still exist in quite a few towns and cities.   A nice one, for example, exists in downtown Denver, although I have yet to take a photograph of it. Iron rings were sent into sidewalk cement as well, for tying horses up while their owners did their business.  One of those remained in a sidewalk near my office building, at which point it became a victim of  a sidewalk reconstruction effort.  And of course every town of any size had a livery to accommodate horses.

Shower for horses, a feature in big cities during hot weather, put in by people sympathetic to horses.

Outside of the cities, horses provided the horsepower, if you will, for everything, for a very long time.  That they supplied the muscle for freighting in the 19th Century is no surprise, but what may be a surprise is the extent to which this continued on well into the 20th Century.  Indeed, as odd it may see, the early transport for the oil industry was horse powered.  One of my wife's great uncles worked as a freighter with a large team for one of the early oilfields in this region.

Water wagons.

A unique photograph showing every mode of transport, almost, in the early 20th Century in Alaska.  Horse, foot and bicycle.

And of course horses and mules were critical for agriculture and for much longer than people generally suppose.  This is very well known, but how long this continued on is not appreciated.  People suppose that tractors came in around the same time as the car, and the conversion to the internal combustion engine happened overnight.  This is simply untrue.  Engine powered farm machinery was slow to come in, in some ways, and horses and mules remained the farm standards well into the mid 20th Century (and remain the ranch standard, in some roles, today).  The Great Depression, for one thing, slowed mechanization of the farm, which had only barely begun to commence when it got rolling, and while tractors and other machinery had existed for a long time by that point, they were far from universal on the farm.

Plowing, late 1930s.

Sheepherders, early 1940s. Scenes like this still occur, and were very common in the West well into the 1980s.

A mule and a plow, what the Government advertised for those seeking farm resettlement loans.

Horse drawn water barrel, Louisiana, 1938.

 Combine, 1910.

 Saddle horses at branding.

Perhaps the most surprising thing for most people may be how long this went on, and that it even does to a small extent today.  A common conception of things is that cars came and the engine replaced the horse overnight, but it did not work that way.  Cars did come in rapidly for personal transportation, which isn't a surprise as they offered something that their main competitor, the bicycle, did not for average people, that being distance.  A person could cover a lot more ground with a car than they ever could with a bicycle, and even go from town to town.  But things were slower in other areas.  Horses carried on in urban freighting well into the 1920s and in some roles into the 1950s.  Horses carried on in the everyone's army until the after World War Two, and mules beyond that.  In agriculture average farmers in some instances kept on farming with horses and mules into the 1950s and in ranching horses have carried on in the West to this very day.

 Horse market, Omaha, 1914.

Epilogue

This is a topic that's actually a bit hard to conclude, as in some ways the story of horse use isn't complete.  Horses remain with us, and even in the most industrialized countries, there are working horses today.  Horses remain in use in ranching for example, to a far greater extent in the West than people imagine.  They even carry on in the stock industries of Italy and Spain, which we don't think of much here. They continue to have a role in policing, and have been reintroduced in some towns and cities in recent years, and have gone back into use patrolling the border.  The Army, which went away from horses with finality following World War Two, and from mules in the late 1950s, has even found that it isn't possible to completely escape them, and Special Forces troops were mounted once again at the start of the war with Afghanistan.

Truth be known, but for the fact that we're so acclimated to machinery, the horse would be well suited for more roles than it currently fulfills.  Horsemen know that, but it's hard to advance that point without sounding hopelessly romantic.  Anyone who has ever ridden much, for example, well knows that the vantage from the saddle is much greater than that from the ground, and searches that are routinely undertaken by parties of walking people, or sometimes with aircraft, would be better off supplemented by riders. Frankly, the walking people could entirely be replaced with riders.  Much more policing work could be done with them, police forces just aren't all that familiar with them today.  And so on. Of course, all that's easy for me to say, as I like horses.

The horse continues to cast a pretty long shadow today.

*Hot Blood v. Cold Blood.  Hot blooded horses are those lighter horses that stem from more southerly regions, originally, such as Arabs.  They're generally "hotter", more lively, than Cold Bloods. Cold Bloods are heavy horses, stemming originally from a wild Northern European horse.  They've given their blood lines to the draft breeds today.  Of course, there are mixes and most horses have some hot blood into them today, to some extent.

**The last U.S. Charge by a mounted unit was one conducted by the Mounted Reconnaissance Troop of the 10th Mountain Division in 1945.  Commonly it is claimed that the last US charge was by the 26th Cavalry Regiment, in the Philippines, in 1942, which is correctly only if only a cavalry unit, rather than mounted infantry, is considered.  The last charges in which U.S. troops of any kind participated have occurred in Afghanistan with Special Forces troops attached to the Northern Alliance.

The last German charge may have occurred when a German cavalry unit charged across a US unit in an effort to flee the advancing Red Army in April, 1945.  However, so many German troops were mounted during World War Two this is somewhat difficult to determine.  Likewise, the Red Army used cavalry until 1953 and determining when the last Soviet charge occurred would be difficult. The Soviets may have conducted mounted actions internally after World War Two as they confronted internal resistance after the war in areas that had formed anti Soviet guerrilla bands during the war.

The last regular Army that the US probably served alongside that had mounted cavalry formations might be the Republic of Korea's army, which still had mounted units in 1950 when it was attacked by the North Koreans.  On the other hand, the British have actually used provisionally mounted troops in the Balkans in recent years, so this may not be correct, and the US has used, as noted, some Special Forces troops who have been mounted in Afghanistan.

***For more on the topic of Military Horses, including this topic, see The Society of The Military Horse website, the place that's the absolute last word on this topic.

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Related threads:

A Revolution In Rural Transportation.

Riding Bicycles

Walking.

Working With Animals.