DesignScape - 2'x4' Splashing Stallions

That fourth horse is off starting an apocalypse. The most widely accepted theory is that horses were brought to the Americas by Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century. The Spanish had been breeding horses in Europe since the Middle Ages, and they brought these animals with them when they arrived in the New World.  However, a recent study published in the journal Science suggests that Indigenous peoples had spread horses through the American West by the first half of the 1600s—before they encountered Europeans. The findings align with oral histories from Indigenous groups, which tell of interactions with horses prior to colonizers arriving in their homelands.