The Criollo Horse: Argentina's Native Breed

The Criollo is the native horse of the pampas, the grasslands shared by Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil. It is small, compact and famously hard to wear out, and for centuries it was the horse the gauchos rode. Britannica lists the Argentine Criollo as one of the soundest horse breeds.

We run horseback trips from our family lodge in the Cholila valley in Argentine Patagonia. To be upfront, our own horses are not Criollos. Like most outfits around here, we ride a mix of breeds, because they handle the climate and the terrain well, and Criollos are not that common in this part of Patagonia. We wrote this as a tribute to the breed that carried the gauchos across Argentina: where it came from, what it looks like, the long rides that made it famous, and where you are likely to ride one.

Where the Criollo came from

The breed goes back to the horses the Spanish brought to the Río de la Plata in the 1500s, of Andalusian, Barb and Arabian blood. When the first settlement at Buenos Aires was abandoned a few years after its founding, some of its horses were left behind. They went wild on the pampas, and by the time the city was founded again in 1580 there were thousands of feral horses on the grasslands.

Generations of living wild, through hot summers, hard winters and long dry spells, made those horses very tough: able to live on poor grass and little water and to keep going over long distances. That is the horse the gauchos caught, broke and rode, and it became the working horse of the Argentine countryside.

The name tells part of the story. Criollo means native-born. In colonial Spanish America it was used for people and animals of Spanish descent born in the Americas, and in time it came to mean the native breeds of the region.

How the breed was saved

In the 1800s many Argentine breeders crossed their native horses with imported Thoroughbreds, coach horses and draft horses, looking for a bigger animal. The crosses came close to swamping the old type. In 1923 breeders founded the Asociación Criadores de Caballos Criollos, the Criollo breeders' association, to protect it.

The man most credited with developing the modern breed is Emilio Solanet, who bred Criollos at his estancia, El Cardal, and pushed for a compact, hardy working horse.

The breeders still test their horses the hard way. In the Marcha, the breed's long-distance endurance test, horses carry a rider about 750 kilometers (466 miles) over roughly two weeks, living only on grass and water along the way.

What a Criollo looks like

Criollos are not tall. Most stand around 14 to 14.3 hands, roughly 142 to 150 centimeters (56 to 59 inches) at the withers, with a short, deep body, a broad chest, strong legs and hard feet. The head has a straight or slightly convex profile, and the neck is short and muscular.

Dun is the color most people picture, often with a dark stripe down the back, but Criollos come in many colors, from bay, black and chestnut to roan, buckskin and overo patterns.

They are known for a calm, sensible temperament, good health and long lives, and for staying in condition on very little feed.

The ride that made Criollos famous

In 1925 Aimé Tschiffely, a Swiss-born rider living in Buenos Aires, set out to ride to New York on two Criollos, Mancha and Gato. Mancha was a piebald and Gato a dun, both in their mid-teens. They had grown up in Chubut, the province our lodge is in, where Emilio Solanet bought them from a Tehuelche chief, and both were still half wild.

Over three years they crossed the high Andes, deserts and tropical jungle, more than 10,000 miles (16,000 km) in all. Gato was left to recover in Mexico City after a kick from a mule, and Tschiffely rode Mancha into New York in 1928. Tschiffely's book about the journey, Tschiffely's Ride, made both horses famous.

Mancha and Gato spent their last years at El Cardal. Gato died there in 1944 and Mancha in 1947, both well into old age. The Aimé Tschiffely Literary Estate keeps their story.

Criollos today

The Criollo is still a working horse across much of the Argentine countryside, used for cattle and ranch work, and it is popular for trail and endurance riding. Criollo blood also helped shape the Argentine polo pony.

Breeders show their horses at ranch-work competitions such as the paleteada, where two riders bring a running steer down a marked lane between their horses.

Where you will ride a Criollo in Argentina

Outside Patagonia, on an estancia in the pampas or a mountain trip in the north, you will very likely ride one.

Around us in Patagonia it is different: most outfits, ours included, ride a mix of breeds. On a trail ride what matters most is a horse that is calm and knows the ground, and ours know the mountain.

If you are deciding where to ride, our region-by-region guide to horseback riding in Argentina covers the options, and our post on Argentine gauchos covers the horsemen behind the breed.

Riding with gauchos from the Cholila valley

Our Gaucho Experience is four nights at the lodge with four days on horseback in Los Alerces National Park: a short ride on the afternoon you arrive, then three full days. You ride with baqueanos from the valley, cross the Carrileufú on horseback and stop at a gaucho outpost that belongs to our guide's family.

No riding experience is needed, the guides set the pace for the group, and every evening ends back at the lodge by the fire. We ride from November to April, with never more than ten riders. For more on the riding itself, see our post on horseback riding in Patagonia.