Historic Horse Sketches - 1800s

Native American rider on a horse. Because we like horses around here.

I think it was the great historian Arnold J. Toynbee who said it best, "History is a bunch of stuff that happened in the past with which you can win at pub trivia." And those words still ring true today. 

If you took never took a history class, you might need a refresher of elements about the 1800s. Europe got bored after Napoleon stopped invading things. England was all busy trying to keep China British. And Theodore Roosevelt was getting around to doing some fairly mundane things that North Dakota would NOT brag up and embarrass themselves, carrying on as though it was ridiculously more impressive than it really was, many, many, years later. Ha ha! I'm kidding of course. 

But if it's real pub-trivia you're after, it's hard to beat the railroads. Railroads abounded in North America in the 1800s. You couldn't swing a stick for running into somebody who was trying to get you to invest in their railroad.  
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Horse team, 1860s. Yes, there were railroads in the 1860s. But there was still a lot of horse traffic going on.

Horsepower was the way to get where you were going if you were not too particular about where you went to the bathroom and you didn't mind eating without utensils. 
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Native riders sketch

Horse riders.

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