Chincoteague Pony Origin Story Supported by New DNA Evidence

Some have dismissed the legend of the Chincoteague ponies’ origin as overly romantic, but researchers recently uncovered evidence that supports the story.

As captured in the opening chapters of Marguerite Henry’s Misty of Chincoteague, the legend is certainly a dramatic one. The story goes that a storm ravaged a Spanish galleon, and in the shipwreck, only the ponies in the hold made it out alive, swimming to nearby Assateague Island. The ponies have called Assateague their home ever since. 

1893 illustration of a Chincoteague pony published in the Abbeville Press and Banner.

Alternative theories range from the equally fantastic (The ponies were left on the island by pirates!) to the utterly mundane (The ponies were left on the island by townspeople who didn’t want to pay taxes on them). Experts aren’t sure when exactly ponies began living on the island, though they’ve been written about for over two hundred years.

Horses themselves are not native to the Americas. In his second trip to the Americas, Christopher Columbus brought the first horses to the Virgin Islands, and they were brought to modern-day Mexico in 1519. 

In an academic article published in July of 2022, researchers from the University of Florida and the University of Georgia described how they performed DNA testing on an equine tooth fragment discovered at the site of an early Spanish colonial settlement, Puerto Real. 

Puerto Real was founded in 1503 in what is now Haiti, and one hundred years later it was burned and its inhabitants removed. In 1980, archeologists found several materials at the site, the tooth fragment among them. Archeologists say that the tooth fragment is from the late 16th century. 

DNA testing on the tooth fragment can tell us a lot of interesting things about early colonial horses–and it also tells us something about the Chincoteague ponies.

The researchers say that the 16th century horse tooth’s DNA is closest to the DNA of the modern Chincoteague pony. 

This discovery reinforces the shipwreck theory. Though we cannot yet say for sure, it’s possible that Chincoteague ponies are descendents of horses similar to those in Puerto Real, horses en route to early Spanish colonies. After all, there are multiple Spanish shipwrecks just off the coast of Assateague, albiet from the 18th and 19th centuries.

As the fictionalized Grandpa Beebe says in Misty of Chincoteague, “'Course it’s a legend. But legends be the only stories as is true!”

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