Date Published:
September 2004

L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

Many Horses

[This text was originally published in 1907 by the Bureau of American Ethnology as part of its Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico. It was later reproduced, in 1913, by the Geographic Board of Canada. The work done by the American Bureau was monumental, well informed and incorporated the most advanced scholarship available at the time. In many respects, the information is still useful today, although prudence should be exercised and the reader should consult some of the contemporary texts on the history and the anthropology of the North-West Indians suggested in the bibliographic introduction to this section. The articles were not completely devoid of the paternalism and the prejudices prevalent at the time. While some of the terminology used would not pass the test of our "politically correct" era, most terms have been left unchanged by the editor. If a change in the original text has been effected it will be found between brackets [.] The original work contained long bibliographies that have not been reproduced for this web edition. For the full citation, see the end of the text.]

A Piegan Siksika chief, sometimes mentioned as 'Dog' and also as 'Sits in the Middle'; born about the close of the 18 th century. He was noted not only for his warlike character but for the large number of horses he acquired; hence his name. According to the account given by the Indians to Grinnell (Story of the Indian, 236, 1895), he commenced to gather and to breed horses immediately after the Piegan first came into possession of them from the Kutenai (1804-06), and also made war on the Shoshoni for the purpose of taking horses from them. His herd became so extensive that they numbered more than all the others belonging to the tribe and required a large number of herders to take care of them. Many Horses was a signer of the first treaty of his tribe with the whites, on the upper Missouri, Oct. 17, 1855, which he signed as "Little Dog." He was killed in 1867 at the battle of Cypress Hills between the Piegan and the allied Crows and Hidatsa, at which time he was an old man.

Source: James WHITE, ed., Handbook of Indians of Canada, Published as an Appendix to the Tenth Report of the Geographic Board of Canada, Ottawa, 1913, 632p., p. 273.