Horsemanship

Mongol children [and Sioux children after the Missouri crossing] grew up on horses. From infancy, they learned to ride with their parents or older siblings until, after only a few years, they managed to hold on by themselves and ride alone.

Usually by age four, the children had mastered riding bareback, and eventually how to stand on a horse’s back. While standing on the horse, they often jousted with one another to see who could knock the other off. When their legs grew long enough to reach the stirrups, they were also taught to shoot arrows and to lasso on horseback. Making targets out of leather pouches that they would dangle from poles so that they could blow in the wind, the youngsters practiced hitting the targets from horse back at varying distances and speeds. The skills of such play became invaluable to horsemanship in later life. Genghis Khan – Jack Weatherford pg 21.

The European knight was no match for the oncoming Mongol warrior who could fill him with arrows before coming within reach. Likewise the U.S. cavalryman was no match either with his heavy single shot, like the knight, having to hold his weapon with one hand and grasping reins with the other to guide his bitted horse compared to the warrior who had both hands free to fire from a steadier aim, by far, from a speeding horse. In the latter battles the warrior wielded the repeater, lever action rifle which fell into Sioux hands from willing traders and trappers by Civil War times.

If the first shot did not dispatch the cavalryman, the second shot from a skilled rider usually did.

Interviewed warriors often laughed at the errant aim of the soldiers under such conditions and how foolish were the Army Generals to never employ their style of guiding their horses’ equestrian style. That and the Winchester repeater which the Army never had due to the corruption of War Department officials, politicians and the Springfield/Allen single shot musket and rifle company were major factors as well, besides the conditioning of their mounts and leadership, of course, for unparalleled Sioux success in battle.

A favorite ploy of the Mongols was to feign retreat from the European knights after the initial engagement to get them away from their archers and infantry. The Europeans never reckoned the stamina and conditioning of the Mongol mounts. Often they would lead the heavier laden German, Russian or Hungarian knights on a merry chase lasting all day toward where fresh horses awaited them. The Sioux would stay just far enough ahead of the cavalry, also heavier laden with water, a heavy saddle and ammunition.

When the Army horses started to tire and become strung out they would turn in a circle to cut off retreat and hit them with fresh troops and/or their more conditioned mounts. The strategy was the same and most often ended in total victory especially when the Winchester came into Teton hands.

Mongol/Teton Lakota Horsemanship

By Ed McGaa (Eagle Man)