Acknowledgement: I would like to acknowledge the help of Jeannette Beranger, Research & Technical Programs Manager, American Livestock Conservancy for her assistance with this article, especially for the comments on the phenotypic evaluations, DNA testing, and the scientific findings.
Contributed by Francine Locke Bray, Research Consultant and Great-Grand-daughter of Victor and Susan (McKenney) Locke. [email protected]
References cited:
Archer, Dollye Locke (Unpublished Letters). To Susan and Her Sisters.
Benson, Henry C, A.M. (1860). Life Among The Choctaw Indians and Sketches of the South-West. L. Swormstedt & A. Poe, Cincinnati.
Carson, James Taylor (1995). “Horses and the Economy and Culture of the Choctaw Indians, 1960 – 1840. Ethnohistory, Vol 42, No. 3. (Summer, 1995), pp. 495-511.
Cushman, H.B. History of the Choctaw, Chickasaw and Natchez Indians. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Edited, with a Foreword, by Angie Debo (1999). Originally published in 1899.
Foreman, Grant (1932). Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians. University of Oklahoma Press, Normal. P. 53: Brown to Gibson, April 30, 1832, ibid., 444, and OIA, “Choctaw Emigration”
Schedule of horses alleged to have been lost during removal, Horses and the Choctaw Indians 513
8 October 1837, United States, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Choctaw Agency West, 1825-1838, M234.
Chimera and her 2017 filly owned by Autumn and Mike Hamner, photo by Don Onofry
Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw Ponies are included as well as other Tribal Horses in the Heritage Horses of Oklahoma designation.
mountain. Since that time, several private landowners have provided grazing lands to the horses.
The scientific findings combined with oral and written history and
location show that these horses are descended from those horses
the Native American tribes would have kept and raised in the
Blackjack Mountain region of Southeastern Oklahoma.
In 2014 the State of Oklahoma Legislature named these
horses the Oklahoma Heritage Horse.