Which Great Basin peoples acquired horses earliest after contact with Spanish settlements?

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Indigenous peoples of the Great Basin Kaylei Weed (left) of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe with her two sons and mother, Elaine Ethel Weed, at the Wind River Indian Reservation in 2015.

The Southern Ute and Eastern Shoshone were among the first Indigenous peoples north of the Spanish settlements in New Mexico to acquire horses, likely by the mid-1600s.1

These groups subsequently served as middlemen, facilitating the transmission of horses and horse culture from New Mexico to the northern Plains. By adopting the horse, these bands were able to shift toward a lifestyle oriented around bison hunting and the use of tepees, practices characteristic of the Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains. In contrast, other groups in the Great Basin proper did not widely adopt the use of horses until the mid-19th century.12