We have an awesome project where we are developing a new and unique strain of Nez Perce horse. That is what we call it, our new breeding project. We are crossing appaloosa mares with stallions of the Akhal-Teke breed. The Akhal-Teke horse is native to Turkmenistan and it is one of the rarest breeds of horses in the world. In Spain around 1491, early 1490’s Spain finally drove out the moors, the North Africans that had conquered their country for over 500 years. These people had hot-blooded horses, desert horses including the barb horses of North Africa, Arabian horses and strains of Turkmen horses. These were desert breed horses that were light bodied and thin skinned and had the ability to run long distances and were very fast. These horses were breed with native Spanish horses and these horses with the mixed blood were brought to Americas by the Spanish conquistadors right after Christopher Columbus stumbled upon the Americas. We knew that these horses were a large part, they played a large part in the horses that our ancestors wrote. As colonists from the Atlantic coast came further west they brought other strains of horses that were more powerful, built more for carrying weight. So these slimmer horses were slowly breed out. What we wanted to do is to recreate or reestablish a type of horse that our immediate Nez Perce ancestors were well known for in the 17 and 1800’s. The tribe thought that the best way to do that would be to locate a strain of horse that was one of the ancestors of these horses. In 1979 forty rare Akhal-Teke horses who are the purest strain of what is known as a Turkmen horse were imported to America. They were slim and lanky and they are known to be able to run 120 miles a day 10 days in a row.