Polson Museum: Saddles (photo diary)

by Ojibwa for Museums

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Monday, Nov. 24, 2025 Monday, Nov. 24, 2025 at 7:15:12am PST

The Polson Flathead Lake Museum in Polson, Montana, has an exhibit of saddles.

We don’t know when humans first domesticated horses. We do know that horses first evolved in North America and then migrated across the Bering Land Bridge into Asia. About 8,000 years ago, horses became extinct in North America.

The domestication of the horse was certainly a cultural revolution which changed peoples’ lives. In her entry on the domestication of the horse in The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, Marsha Levine writes:

“The impact of the earliest domestication of the horse on human society must have been as profound as that of the invention of the steam engine, and yet we know very little about when, where, or how it happened.”

During the past twenty-five years, archeology has been uncovering more clues about the domestication of the horse and its impact on culture. At present, the archaeological record suggests that the horse was first domesticated in Asia for food and milk. Later, people began using horses to pull carts and chariots and eventually for riding. At present, the archaeological record suggests that horses were domesticated between 4500 BCE and 3400 BCE.

Some of the earliest evidence of horses being ridden comes from the mounds at the Novoilinovsky-2 cemetery in Kazakhstan where archaeologists uncovered two horses in a burial which were carbon-dated to between 1640 and 1530 BCE. In an article in Current World Archaeology, Christopher Catling writes:

“The mare and stallion were 18 and 20 years old respectively at the age of death—much older than they would have been if they had been slaughtered for food—and the remains of ancient bridles were found in the same grave.”

In other words, this is evidence of people riding horses at this time.

When people first began riding horses, saddles were probably not used. In an article in Archaeology, Eric Powell writes:

“When the people in what is now Mongolia began to ride horses, the first pieces of equipment they used to control them were reins and bridles. The bits the horses wore in their mouths were often made from bone and antler, which could cause the animals great discomfort.”

To ease the pain caused by the bit, by 1200 BCE people were practicing veterinary dentistry by grinding down some of the horse’s teeth. By 800 BCE, some horse nomads were extracting some of the horse’s teeth to prevent damage from metal bits.

The early equestrians rode bareback, maintaining stability by using their thighs to grip the horse. Eric Powell reports:

“This was not just hard on the horse; prolonged bareback riding was also hazardous to an equestrian’s health.”

Human skeletons from this era show trauma in the spinal column and lower extremities due to riding bareback.

The earliest archaeological evidence for the use of saddles comes from Scythian sites in the Altai region and eastern Kazakhstan and from the Chinese site of Yanghai which have been dated to the fifth century BCE. The Yanghai saddle was found in a woman’s grave and placed in such a manner to suggest that she was riding on it. This finely made saddle was made from cowhide and stuffed with straw.

During the first centuries of the current era, the saddle and stirrups were developed which revolutionized the use of horses in warfare. The invention of stirrups has been credited to the nomadic Xianbei people living in what is now Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and northeastern China in the fourth century C.E. Eric Powell reports:

“A terracotta horseman dating to A.D. 322 found in the city of Nanjing may be the earliest depiction of dual stirrups, which eventually joined the composite frame saddle as essential cavalry equipment. This saddle would not just have afforded even more stability in the rider but would have safeguarded the horse’s health as well by distributing the rider’s weight more efficiently.”

Eric Powell also writes:

“Stirrups, for their part, make the equestrian’s task of not falling off a horse much easier, allowing riders to brace themselves, engage in heavy combat, or shoot arrows from the saddle.”

One of the earliest examples of a saddle was found in the Altai region of Mongolia. At Urd Ulaan Uneer, archaeologists found a burial which included a horse that had been buried with the man—a ritual practice known as “head and hoof” which has been typical of the people in this region for thousands of years. In addition, the site contained a birch saddle, iron bit with antler cheekpieces, and archery equipment. Regarding the saddle, Eric Powell reports:

“It is composed of a frame carved from a single piece of wood—called a saddletree—a pommel, and a cantle, or backrest. Both pommel and cantle consist of two halves joined by wooden nails and attached to the saddletree with strips of leather.”

Spanish colonists brought horses back to North America where horses, and the Spanish style of riding, became an important part of the cattle industry in the American west. Horses are an important part of western history and thus saddles are also an important part of the West. Shown below are some of the saddles in the Polson Flathead Lake Museum.

P1530986 — The Museum calls this the “Rodeo Queen’s Saddle”: in the 1950s Lillian (Johnson) Stephenson (1924-2024) was rodeo queen and won this saddle for selling the most rodeo tickets.

P1540160 — Shown above is a woman’s side saddle from the late 1800s.

P1540167 — Shown above is a 1904 military artillery saddle.

P1540169 — Shown above is a 19^th-century saddle made by George Lawrence.

According to the Museum:

“The cartouche (logo or trade name) is on the back of the saddle. This cantle style was called a ‘bear trap’ since it was hard to get out of it. However, it was comfortable for long rides.”