Cayuse

Cayuse may refer to:

See also

Cayuse horse

Cayuse is an archaic term used in the American West, usually referring to a feral or low-quality horse or pony.

In British Columbia, the variant word cayoosh refers to a particular breed of mountain pony with shorter legs and large hindquarters, typically also of Indian husbandry.

The origin of the word is a Native American adaptation of the Spanish caballo, with the -s ending a noun form in Salishan languages. A variant adaptation, kiuatan, with a Sahaptian -tan ending, is the main word for "horse" or "pony" in the Chinook Jargon, although cayuse or cayoosh was also used in some areas. For this reason, some horses owned by Native American people were dubbed "cayuse," often with derogatory intent.

Two cayuses that made history were Nimpo and Stuyve who were depicted in Richmond P. Hobson, Jr.'s book Grass Beyond The Mountains. Both horses had been captured by a local Native American named Thomas Squinas near Nimpo Lake in the Chilcotin District of British Columbia. Hobson described the two cayuses as the best horses that he owned, because of their unrelenting spirit and hardiness that helped them survive the extreme conditions in northern British Columbia.

Cayuse people

The Cayuse are a Native American tribe in the state of Oregon in the United States. The Cayuse tribe shares a reservation and government in northeastern Oregon with the Umatilla and the Walla Walla tribes as part of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The reservation is located near Pendleton, Oregon at the base of the Blue Mountains.

The Cayuse called themselves the Liksiyu in the Cayuse language. Originally located in present-day northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington, they lived adjacent to territory occupied by the Nez Perce and had close associations with them. Like the Plains tribes, the Cayuse placed a high premium on warfare and were skilled horsemen. They developed the Cayuse pony. The Cayuse ceded most of their traditional territory to the United States in 1855 by treaty and moved to the Umatilla Reservation, where they have formed a confederated tribe.

History

According to Haruo Aoki (1998), the Cayuse called themselves Liksiyu in their language. Their name Cayuse was derived from a French word for them, adopted by early Canadian trappers of the area. The tribe has been closely associated with the neighboring Nez Percé and Walla Walla. The Cayuse language is an isolate, independent of the neighboring Sahaptin-speaking peoples.