The Arabian Horse in America


The first horses on the American mainland since the end of the Ice Age arrived with the Spanish Conquistadors.

The Arabian Horse in America
The first horses on the American mainland since the end of the Ice Age arrived with the Spanish Conquistadors. Hernán Cortés brought 16 Andalusian, Barb, and Arabian horses with him to Mexico in 1519. Others followed, such as Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, who brought 250 horses of similar breeding to America in 1540. Many horses escaped, becoming the foundation stock of the American Mustang.

American colonists from England also brought horses of Arabian breeding to the eastern seaboard. One example was Nathaniel Harrison, who imported a horse of Arabian, Barb and Turkish ancestry to America in 1747.

George Washington rode a gray half-Arabian horse named "Blueskin" during the Revolutionary War. The horse was sired by the stallion Ranger, also known as Lindsay's Arabian, said to have been obtained from the Sultan of Morocco. Other Presidents are linked to ownership of Arabian horses. In 1840, President Martin Van Buren received two Arabians from the Sultan of Oman, and in 1877, President Ulysses S. Grant obtained two Arabian stallions, Leopard and Linden Tree, as diplomatic gifts from the Sultan of Turkey.

A. Keene Richard was the first American known to have specifically bred Arabian horses. He traveled to the desert in 1853 and 1856 to obtain breeding stock, which he used both to cross on thoroughbreds and to breed purebred Arabians. Unfortunately, his horses were lost during the Civil War and have no known purebred Arabian descendants today.

Leopard is the only stallion among the early imports who left known purebred descendants in America. This was because Randolph Huntington imported the desert-bred Arabian mare Naomi in 1888, and bred her to Leopard, producing Leopard's only purebred Arabian son, Anazeh. Anazeh then sired eight purebred Arabian foals, four of whom still appear in pedigrees today. Leopard is also considered a foundation sire of the Appaloosa breed.

In 1893, the Hamidie Society exhibited 45 Arabian horses at the World Fair in Chicago, some of whom remained in the United States and caught the interest of some American breeders, who traveled abroad to obtain more. As a result, by 1908, the Arabian Horse Registry of America was established, recording 71 animals. By 1994, the number had reached half a million. There are now more Arabians registered in North America than in the rest of the world put together.

Major Arabian importations to the United States in the 20th century were made by breeders such as Homer Davenport and Peter Hingham of the Hingham Stock Farm, who purchased several stallions and mares directly from the Bedouin in 1906; Spencer Borden of the Interlachen Stud, who made several importations between 1898 and 1911; and W.R. Brown of the Maynesboro Stud, who had a particular interest in the Arabian as a cavalry mount and imported many Arabians over a period of years, starting in 1918. Another wave of imports came in the 1920s and 30s when breeders such as W.K. Kellogg, Henry Babson, Roger Selby, James Draper, and others imported Arabian bloodstock from Crabbet Park Stud in England, as well as from Poland, Spain and Egypt. Several Arabians, mostly of Polish breeding, were captured from Nazi Germany and imported to the U.S.A. following World War II. As the tensions of the Cold War eased, more Arabians were imported to America from Poland and Egypt. In the late 1970s, as political issues surrounding import regulations and the recognition of stud books were resolved, Arabian horses were imported in greater numbers from Spain and Russia.

In the 1980s, popularity of the Arabian horse rose to unsustainable heights. Arabians became a popular status symbol for celebrities and other wealthy people, many of whom were inexperienced with horses and considered them "living art." Prices skyrocketed, especially in the United States, with a record-setting public auction price for a mare named NH Love Potion, who sold for $2.55 million in 1984, and the largest syndication in history for an Arabian stallion, Padron, at $11,000,000. The potential for profit led to over-breeding of the Arabian. When the Tax Reform Act of 1986 closed the tax-sheltering "passive investment" loophole, limiting the use of horse farms as tax shelters, the Arabian market was particularly vulnerable due to over-saturation and artificially inflated prices, and thus it collapsed, forcing many breeders into bankruptcy and sending many purebred Arabians to slaughter. Prices recovered slowly, with many breeders moving away from producing "living art" and towards a horse more suitable for amateur owners in many different riding disciplines. Today, the vast majority of Arabian horses in America are owned for recreational riding purposes.