Question Regarding the Pony Express

Factual Questions
1

As many of you know, I’m an animal welfare advocate and in keeping with my philosophy of “We domesticated them!”, I tend to explore all the ways the 4-legged ones have contributed to advancing and improving our way of life.

So lately I’ve been thinking about the Pony Express which was how horses were used to deliver the mail.

I know they utilized the fastest horses available, but I cannot help but wonder how many of those animals died because their hearts just burst from the “load” which was placed upon them?

I know: No one would have kept records, but generally speaking, if we could ask someone in charge of the Pony Express how many animals died in the effort to deliver the mail in a timely manner, what would he answer?

Considering the source (me), I guess my question is was it worth it and did anybody at that time give a shit that these animals ran their legs and hearts off for us?

Thanks

Quasi

2

Each pony only ran about 10 miles, where the relay stations were placed. They carried 40lbs of mail, plus the rider (who could not be over 125lbs), which is not an inhumane load.

I’m sure they had some pony deaths, from the usual equine maladies, but for a horse to die from sheer exertion, it would have to be an usual circumstance based on how the Pony Express was normally run.

3

Missed edit window. The horses were a valuable asset which had been carefully selected for their suitability to the job and at considerable expense. They were by no means disposable.

4

Pony Express horses like most horses were a valuable commodity. Riders generally couldn’t just abuse them because that would be destroying their equipment so to speak. Horses can’t run at a full gallop for many miles anyway. They can go a lot farther at a full trot but that is an uncomfortable ride especially for males. It was in their own best interests to figure out the best pace for the horses and switch them off every ten miles or so. It is possible to ride a horse to death but most horses won’t do it and simply won’t cooperate after they get too tired and sweaty. The system couldn’t work under abusive conditions reliably. Most people don’t abuse their cars or personal airplanes. It was the same for horses back then.

5

Thanks, Hello Again, for the answer and the link! :slight_smile:

As a kind of “parallel question”, once a pony was “retired”, might it have proved useful in other ways? (Think racetrack greyhounds).

Also, Hello Again, I hope I didn’t give the impression that I thought the animals were mistreated or not cared about. Looking back on what I wrote, it does read that way, I know.

I’m just very passionate about the animals and what they did (and are doing) to advance our civilization.

Thanks

Q

6

Wouldn’t they have been used for food? People didn’t have today’s qualms about horsemeat then. Or they were sent to the famous glue factory.

Or probably they were just switched to other duties. Most people forget that the Pony Express (the famous one: there were zillions of others) existed for only a year (1860-61). Horses wouldn’t even have had time to grow old in service. The ones that retired would have been treated exactly as every other horse of the time. Everything depended on horses in the 1860s. The vast majority of horses of the day probably were worked much harder and longer than those. The Pony Express horses maybe constituted 0.01% of the work horses of the day.

If they were worked to death it was much more likely to happen in the Civil War, which used up hundreds of thousands if not millions of horses.

7

I bought this book a couple of decades ago, and I found it to be a good one on the subject.

Saddles and Spurs: The Pony Express Saga

I should find which box it’s in and read it again.

8

I have no answer for the exact number of horses that died in the service.

On the other hand, it’s just as likely that no horses died from exertion. You have an incorrect idea about horses, probably based on what you’ve see in the movies and TV about horses in the military and the old West.

Of course, horses were regarded without any of the concerns that we might have now. They were domestic animals like cows. You could raise them for meat, but they were more valuable as transportation. Some people recognized that mistreating a horse was a poor use of assets, while others didn’t care. There was less romance about horses than today.

Still, knowledgeable riders in the West and in the military realized that horses were a precious commodity. A horse can gallop for a length of time measured in minutes. It can move faster than man can walk for hours at a time, day after day, carrying substantially more weight than a man. It is this stamina, rather than speed, that makes a horse valuable.

Even so, a knowledgeable rider would get off and walk his horse from time to time to let it rest. In a distance of 10 miles, this wouldn’t be necessary, but cavalry columns did it several times a day when moving cross-country. A John Ford movie (I think it’s “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon”) shows soldiers doing this.

Cowboys had to be on their horses most of the day, so walking them wasn’t always an option. Instead, they used “remudas” or packs of horses. As needed, they’d pick out horses from the ranch’s stock and add them to their personal pack. Then they’d switch off on a regular basis to a fresh horse, letting the “worn” one out to graze and rest. The horses were herded and handled right along with the cows.

I would guess that Pony Express horses were ridden at a fast trot between stations. That’s a day’s good exercise for a horse, but no more. A horse wouldn’t be ridden every day, either.

Stagecoach horses were handled the same way.

In the city, some stupid tradesman might abuse a horse in anger, but in rural areas a man wouldn’t dare. If the horse collapsed, the rider would be stuck miles from nowhere with a lot of walking to do.