page_title: Appaloosa
section_title: Nez Perce people
hierarchical_section_title: Appaloosa / History / Nez Perce people
caption_attribution_description: Nez Perce Indians with Appaloosa horse, around 1895
context_page_description: The Appaloosa is an American horse breed best known for its colorful spotted coat pattern. There is a wide range of body types within the breed, stemming from the influence of multiple breeds of horses throughout its history. Each horse's color pattern is genetically the result of various spotting patterns overlaid on top of one of several recognized base coat colors. The color pattern of the Appaloosa is of interest to those who study equine coat color genetics, as it and several other physical characteristics are linked to the leopard complex mutation. Appaloosas are prone to develop equine recurrent uveitis and congenital stationary night blindness; the latter has been linked to the leopard complex.
  Artwork depicting prehistoric horses with leopard spotting exists in prehistoric cave paintings in Europe. Images of domesticated horses with leopard spotting patterns appeared in artwork from Ancient Greece and Han dynasty China through the early modern period. In North America, the Nez Perce people of what today is the United States Pacific Northwest developed the original American breed.
context_section_description: The Nez Perce people lived in what today is eastern Washington, Oregon, and north central Idaho, where they engaged in agriculture as well as horse breeding. The Nez Perce first obtained horses from the Shoshone around 1730. They took advantage of the fact that they lived in excellent horse-breeding country, relatively safe from the raids of other tribes, and developed strict breeding selection practices for their animals, establishing breeding herds by 1750. They were one of the few tribes that actively used the practice of gelding inferior male horses and trading away poorer stock to remove unsuitable animals from the gene pool, and thus were notable as horse breeders by the early 19th century.
  Early Nez Perce horses were considered to be of high quality. Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition wrote in his February 15, 1806, journal entry:  "Their horses appear to be of an excellent race; they are lofty, eligantly  [sic] formed, active and durable: in short many of them look like fine English coarsers  [sic] and would make a figure in any country." Lewis did note spotting patterns, saying, "... some of these horses are pided [pied] with large spots of white irregularly scattered and intermixed with the black brown bey  [sic] or some other dark colour". By "pied", Lewis may have been referring to leopard-spotted patterns seen in the modern Appaloosa, though Lewis also noted that "much the larger portion are of a uniform colour". The Appaloosa Horse Club estimates that only about ten percent of the horses owned by the Nez Perce at the time were spotted.  While the Nez Perce originally had many solid-colored horses and only began to emphasize color in their breeding some time after the visit of Lewis and Clark, by the late 19th century they had many spotted horses. As white settlers moved into traditional Nez Perce lands, a successful trade in horses enriched the Nez Perce, who in 1861 bred horses described as "elegant chargers, fit to mount a prince." At a time when ordinary horses could be purchased for $15, non-Indians who had purchased Appaloosa horses from the Nez Perce turned down offers of as much as $600.
caption: Two Nez Perce men with an Appaloosa, about 1895
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